With only days to go until we move to camp for our 24th summer season, I find myself thinking about all the campers whose lives have been touched by Centauri over the years, and who are now too old to return. Today, I’m thinking about one girl in particular, who first joined our camp at the age of about 10. On her first day at Centauri, she found a pair of fairy wings in the costume store, and put them on. She wore those wings all session – to meals, to her program, even folding them neatly by her pillow each night. At the end of the summer, she went home without them, but the next year, returning to camp, she reclaimed them, wearing them day after day, leaping around camp with a broad smile on her face and the glitter on her wings flashing in the sun.
It was probably the second or third summer when I asked her what the wings meant to her. She told me that at Centauri, she felt she could be anyone she wanted to be, and in her heart, she was someone who could fly. The wings made her feel powerful and strong – feelings she didn’t always have outside of camp, where she had no wings. I thought of her answer all that summer as I watched her find her place in the heart of the camp community again.
Then came a summer when she wore no wings. She had started high school that fall, and confided in her counsellor that it had been a tough year. But as the session went on, I realised this girl was as strong as she had ever been, as self assured and confident. By then, she was emerging as a leader at Centauri: supporting younger campers, driving the positivity and spirit in her dorm, leading cheers in the dining hall, and thriving. At last, I had to ask her: “why did you put away the wings?” She thought for a moment, then smiled. “I haven’t put them away,” she said. “The wings are on the inside, now.”
Like so many of our campers, this girl disappeared from our lives when her high school life was over, and we never found out what she did with her life. I’m betting it was something amazing, though. We think of our camper alumni all the time, and this was what prompted us to set up a Facebook group for them, earlier this year. Within days, the group had almost a thousand members, and there were hundreds of messages – some from young adults who had spent only a single session at Centauri, others from campers who had been with us a decade – all attempting to put into words what camp had given them, and how we had contributed to the person they had become.
In a few days, I will stand in front of the 2018 camp counsellor team, and I will tell them, as I always do, that being a camp counsellor is far more than a summer job. It is one of the most significant contributions they could ever make to the future. A great camp counsellor – like a great camp – leaves a deep impression upon young lives, helping youth grow in strength, in confidence and in skills. Our hope for our campers is not only that they have the time of their lives with us, but that they discover something of who they are and who they want to be, facing their futures with courage, excitement and hope. We want to give them magic and a space to create.
Most of all, we want to give them the wings to fly.
Julie Hartley
Director
Centauri Arts Camp
Centauri Arts Camp is an overnight camp for the arts in the Niagara region of Canada.