Below is a piece that I wrote for my friend Liana, a fellow counselor and dear friend, who was working on a class project to capture the way Nuhop has affected our lives and perspectives. Her project gave me a reason to finally sit down and think deeply about the influence of a single summer at Camp Nuhop, and how that feeling could be implemented in every aspect of my life.
I’ve started and restarted this sentence a dozen times now, but I can’t figure out the right words to describe how Nuhop makes me feel. From a scientific perspective, it requires a qualitative, categorical collection of information, so here’s my bit. What feeling does Nuhop create within me?
It comes from the jolt in your stomach as you drive at twice the speed limit up the twists and turns to camp, only slowing as you approach the last leg, prolonging the feeling of excitement of seeing the “Camp Nuhop” sign and the first glance at the field and the orchard and the lodge and the Junior CIT cabin.
It’s walking back to a campsite after the kids are in bed: it’s your first week, you have no idea what you’re doing, but you already feel a sense of comfort in your heart as you turn off your headlamp at the sight of a warm fire and the weary but bright smiles from your first co-counselors.
It’s working with someone you thought you might not like, only for them to become a confidante and friend. It’s learning to understand someone that has been through much more than you’ve experienced, and still letting them be there for you when your woes might seem petty in comparison. It’s seeing the understanding in their eyes when they look at you, regardless of the situation, knowing that they have faith in your abilities not as a counselor, but as a human being.
It starts at the break of dawn, waking up surrounded by whispering woods and the sun peeking its first rays in your direction. It even comes from being rudely awoken in the middle of the night by heavy rain or murmuring raccoons, when you're frantically racing to wake up campers or scaring away nocturnal visitors, and you’re loving every second of it because it’s all a part of the adventure and wouldn’t be fun without it.
It comes from the enchantment on a camper’s face as they discover something cool on a hike and a love for rocks and turtles and canoeing and edible trees and the story of Ceely Rose and what it means to have and be a friend. It’s their enthusiasm for collecting firewood and making banana boats and chasing Amigo and learning to love the world around them, unbound by labels or stratification set up by a society that seeks to normalize and fails to appreciate the littlest things that make us beautiful and full individuals.
It’s seeing them sit in a circle at the end of the week, forgetting any thrown blows or bitter tears or angry words, and exchanging the most meaningful words of appreciation to one another. It’s hearing them sing along at SongFest, arms wrapped around each other like they never want to let go.
It’s the way they smile at you and they way they scream at you and the way they’re back to smiling at you and the way that you’ll never forget when they held your hand when they were walking alongside you or when they were scared and confided in you. It’s the way that they trusted you to know what you were doing, and the way that you barely trusted yourself to do anything but buckled down and faked it until you actually, somehow, managed to do it.
It’s seeing your friends, only strangers moments ago, spend their weeks doing everything they can to make the kids as happy as they can be. It’s seeing them unwind on the weekends, always together, around a fire or drinks or a handful of guitars and the sweet sound of their voices in unison. It’s seeing them fall in love with each other through all conditions, whether washing soiled pants under harsh fluorescent lights or taking a quick walk across the field bathed in moonlight. It’s feeling that love yourself, whether it’s a hug from your roommate or a hand in yours or a bar of chocolate slipped in your bag or a gentle squeeze on your shoulder with a wordless promise of help and support when a camper just won't lie down and fall asleep. It’s their words of advice when you just feel stupid and hurt and completely incompetent: it’s the belief and compassion of people who truly care.
It’s a bit like falling in love with everything around you, but at every moment and all the time, and it’s the most overwhelming feeling in the world: you love the campers and the trees and your co-counselors and the lime green Nuhop bags and the staff and the games and the dew in the morning and the irresistible urge to scratch bites and the clucking chickens and going over archery expectations and the rush in your stomach as you put on a harness and making up bedtime stories and driving Old Blue and waking up to a boar’s head in your bed and making your own constellations and watching your junior counselor calm down an angry camper with the greatest calm you have ever seen.
And the more you think about it, you remember how much you love the smell of citronella and discovering your nature name and getting weak in the knees from an understanding glance when you need it most and flipping over in an inner tube and the sun on your skin and crawling through the culvert and seeing your big brother win over your best friend and slipping a note to a friend on a rough day and eating s'mores by the beach and feeling your shoulder get soaked by tears of a friend and exploring new peaks of self-understanding and finally singing Row, Row, Row Your Boat on the teeter-totter and sneaking in a shower and watching a camper try something they were scared to do and loving it.
And then you recall the guilt after restraining a camper and the feeling of joy when they come back to you with a new level of understanding of themselves, and the feeling of joy even when they go back to their old ways because this, this is the one place where they can be themselves, forever and always. And we let them scratch and bite and yell and cry because sometimes you feel absolutely everything, and sometimes it’s absolutely uncontainable, and that is absolutely okay.
Because at Camp Nuhop, it is absolutely okay to be yourself.
Warm Fuzzies. It’s the warm and fuzzy ball in the pit of your stomach that feels like it’ll never leave you and probably never will. It slumbers in your depths as you go about your life, and you might forget it’s there, sure, but then you get a letter in the mail from someone you worked with, or see their names pop up on Facebook, and suddenly, you’re back, hauling a wagon up Thrombosis or reveling in the fact that you built a one-match fire or ate fresh granola or watched your campers figure out an initiative and knowing that it can’t get any better than this. And when all of those moments are threaded together—every memory and and drawing and scar and word and feeling of everyone who has stepped a foot into this world, when you can somehow manage to collect all of these pieces, then maybe then we can figure out how Nuhop makes us feel.
Until then,
Acorn
I’ve started and restarted this sentence a dozen times now, but I can’t figure out the right words to describe how Nuhop makes me feel. From a scientific perspective, it requires a qualitative, categorical collection of information, so here’s my bit. What feeling does Nuhop create within me?
It comes from the jolt in your stomach as you drive at twice the speed limit up the twists and turns to camp, only slowing as you approach the last leg, prolonging the feeling of excitement of seeing the “Camp Nuhop” sign and the first glance at the field and the orchard and the lodge and the Junior CIT cabin.
It’s walking back to a campsite after the kids are in bed: it’s your first week, you have no idea what you’re doing, but you already feel a sense of comfort in your heart as you turn off your headlamp at the sight of a warm fire and the weary but bright smiles from your first co-counselors.
It’s working with someone you thought you might not like, only for them to become a confidante and friend. It’s learning to understand someone that has been through much more than you’ve experienced, and still letting them be there for you when your woes might seem petty in comparison. It’s seeing the understanding in their eyes when they look at you, regardless of the situation, knowing that they have faith in your abilities not as a counselor, but as a human being.
It starts at the break of dawn, waking up surrounded by whispering woods and the sun peeking its first rays in your direction. It even comes from being rudely awoken in the middle of the night by heavy rain or murmuring raccoons, when you're frantically racing to wake up campers or scaring away nocturnal visitors, and you’re loving every second of it because it’s all a part of the adventure and wouldn’t be fun without it.
It comes from the enchantment on a camper’s face as they discover something cool on a hike and a love for rocks and turtles and canoeing and edible trees and the story of Ceely Rose and what it means to have and be a friend. It’s their enthusiasm for collecting firewood and making banana boats and chasing Amigo and learning to love the world around them, unbound by labels or stratification set up by a society that seeks to normalize and fails to appreciate the littlest things that make us beautiful and full individuals.
It’s seeing them sit in a circle at the end of the week, forgetting any thrown blows or bitter tears or angry words, and exchanging the most meaningful words of appreciation to one another. It’s hearing them sing along at SongFest, arms wrapped around each other like they never want to let go.
It’s the way they smile at you and they way they scream at you and the way they’re back to smiling at you and the way that you’ll never forget when they held your hand when they were walking alongside you or when they were scared and confided in you. It’s the way that they trusted you to know what you were doing, and the way that you barely trusted yourself to do anything but buckled down and faked it until you actually, somehow, managed to do it.
It’s seeing your friends, only strangers moments ago, spend their weeks doing everything they can to make the kids as happy as they can be. It’s seeing them unwind on the weekends, always together, around a fire or drinks or a handful of guitars and the sweet sound of their voices in unison. It’s seeing them fall in love with each other through all conditions, whether washing soiled pants under harsh fluorescent lights or taking a quick walk across the field bathed in moonlight. It’s feeling that love yourself, whether it’s a hug from your roommate or a hand in yours or a bar of chocolate slipped in your bag or a gentle squeeze on your shoulder with a wordless promise of help and support when a camper just won't lie down and fall asleep. It’s their words of advice when you just feel stupid and hurt and completely incompetent: it’s the belief and compassion of people who truly care.
It’s a bit like falling in love with everything around you, but at every moment and all the time, and it’s the most overwhelming feeling in the world: you love the campers and the trees and your co-counselors and the lime green Nuhop bags and the staff and the games and the dew in the morning and the irresistible urge to scratch bites and the clucking chickens and going over archery expectations and the rush in your stomach as you put on a harness and making up bedtime stories and driving Old Blue and waking up to a boar’s head in your bed and making your own constellations and watching your junior counselor calm down an angry camper with the greatest calm you have ever seen.
And the more you think about it, you remember how much you love the smell of citronella and discovering your nature name and getting weak in the knees from an understanding glance when you need it most and flipping over in an inner tube and the sun on your skin and crawling through the culvert and seeing your big brother win over your best friend and slipping a note to a friend on a rough day and eating s'mores by the beach and feeling your shoulder get soaked by tears of a friend and exploring new peaks of self-understanding and finally singing Row, Row, Row Your Boat on the teeter-totter and sneaking in a shower and watching a camper try something they were scared to do and loving it.
And then you recall the guilt after restraining a camper and the feeling of joy when they come back to you with a new level of understanding of themselves, and the feeling of joy even when they go back to their old ways because this, this is the one place where they can be themselves, forever and always. And we let them scratch and bite and yell and cry because sometimes you feel absolutely everything, and sometimes it’s absolutely uncontainable, and that is absolutely okay.
Because at Camp Nuhop, it is absolutely okay to be yourself.
Warm Fuzzies. It’s the warm and fuzzy ball in the pit of your stomach that feels like it’ll never leave you and probably never will. It slumbers in your depths as you go about your life, and you might forget it’s there, sure, but then you get a letter in the mail from someone you worked with, or see their names pop up on Facebook, and suddenly, you’re back, hauling a wagon up Thrombosis or reveling in the fact that you built a one-match fire or ate fresh granola or watched your campers figure out an initiative and knowing that it can’t get any better than this. And when all of those moments are threaded together—every memory and and drawing and scar and word and feeling of everyone who has stepped a foot into this world, when you can somehow manage to collect all of these pieces, then maybe then we can figure out how Nuhop makes us feel.
Until then,
Acorn