We spend most of our lives with our faces buried in screens. In fact, you’re reading this on a screen right now. And likely, you learned about this post not from a personal interaction but from social media, email, or maybe even a text from a friend.
As wonderful as FaceTime is, there is simply no substitute for face-to-face time. Especially when you’re part of a community that only gathers in-person for one week each year. So for that one week, we ask everyone to leave video games, tablets, laptops, and cell phones at home, a policy the majority of camps nationwide have adopted as well.
We spend the whole year working on programming to foster camaraderie. But often times, the moments that strengthen the bonds between campers aren’t the planned ones. They’re the inside jokes that get created during down time. The stories that are shared as a cabin is drifting off to sleep. The lulls we so naturally fill in our lives outside of camp by pulling out our phones.
By removing electronic distractions, we’re able to leave space for those special moments to occur.
At the same time, we realize phones aren’t just phones anymore. For some of our campers and staff, they’re also cameras, alarm clocks, and jukeboxes. So, we do allow phones at camp as long as they are in airplane mode. This allows for them to connect to our bluetooth speakers and share music with others or take photos without letting in those distractions from the outside world.
So if you need to be reached or reach someone at camp during the week, please call or text our camp phone number. We’ll be happy to pass along a message or have someone give you a call back. And if someone at camp needs to call you, they’ll be able to reach out using this number as well!
–Post by Terin Izil
