My friend Rob heads up to New Hampshire every summer to help his parents run their summer camp for boys in the White Mountains. I have been checking their website occasionally for good shots of campers in the outdoors that I have used on this blog. Here's some last pictures for the season that catches the simplicity of the camp experience. Makes me want to get out and start a fire just to cook some hot dogs over the flames.
While these are simple pleasures, I'm afraid that our society may have made waste of cooking hot dogs and smores or chucking a water balloon, or playing capture the flag. In the blog post yesterday I quoted a writer as saying kids thought that outdoor play was dull. Have we gotten past cooking over a fire because it's too dull? Is swimming in a lake not exciting?
Maybe not. The kids at Rob's camp seem to agree with me, we can still enjoy some simple pleasures outdoors. And there lies a hopeful key to engaging those who think it's dull to play outside--summer camp. Perhaps we should do all we can to make a camp experience possible for as many kids as possible.
