Hidden Valley Camp
I began my journey at Hidden Valley Camp (HVC) in the summer of 2016 working as a Group and Relief Counselor. As a Group Counselor, I had a group of 7 girls ages 9-11 who I was in charge of for 3 weeks! We did activities together, ate meals together, went on hikes together, and slept in a tent together. As a Relief Counselor, I filled in for other group counselors on their days off and provided support on hikes and overnight backpacking trips. Although I had volunteered a lot at summer camps before, this was my first time as a staff member, and my first sleepaway camp. I learned and grew a lot that summer!
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In 2017, I was excited to come back to HVC as the Nature Counselor, which meant that I lead daily nature activities with different tent groups and helped them prepare for hikes and overnight trips. I had a lot of flexibility within this role, which was exciting although a bit intimidating at first! My main goal though was for the kids to enjoy their time in nature. I tried to give them as much flexibility as possible with picking what activities we did, and whatever we were doing I made sure to show my genuine enthusiasm for whatever cool bug/slug/berry they found.
I came back as the Nature Counselor in 2018 and 2019 and over the years developed a lot of different activities based on ideas from the kids. These included making pies and jam, brewing tea, building fires, building shelters, catching water bugs, hunting for frogs and snakes, pressing flowers, geocaching, playing camoflauge, and even once hunting for flying pigs (with the help of the drama counselor)! |
One of my favorite activities was building fires because it was something that almost every single kid was excited about, no matter their age or gender. Although I was careful to always be supervising, I let them have a lot of autonomy with this activity - building their own fires in small groups and lighting it themselves with matches - and I found that they were always very responsible. Over the three years of leading this activity, the only injury I saw occur was one very small burn. As kids got older I would challenge them to use ferro rods instead of matches, or to eliminate paper, or to build the fire completely on their own, and they always welcomed the challenge.
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Another job I took on at HVC starting in 2017 was being the Camper Leader (CL) Counselor for one session each summer. This meant supervising and mentoring the group of CLs, which are 16 and 17-year-olds who help the staff with activities and act as role models for younger campers. For the most part they were amazing kids and it was honestly an easy job, but the challenges that did arise helped me grow a lot as a mentor.