Last night we finished a perfect picture day at campfire. We sang our favorite Agawak songs, listened to MP play guitar and was serenaded by the beautiful voices of Emma Morgan, Emma Swerdlow, Lily Emalfarb, Natalie Frankel, Ava Reed, Norah Polonsky, Ava Friedman and Kennedy Cannon. It takes courage and confidence to get in front of 200 of your camp sisters and I’m proud of these girls for sharing their special abilities with all of us.

Nothing captures the spirit of the camp experience quite like the “snap-crackle-pop” of a hot fire and the magical smells of freshly split logs on the open fire. Even if everybody sings out of tune, the harmony comes from the camp community’s commitment to keep our historic camp melodies alive-especially the completely goofy ones. Camp simply wouldn’t be the same without our weekly campfire. After all, our weekly campfire represents tradition, togetherness and so much more.

One of those campfire traditions is our key-log ceremony. Each week campfire girls are selected to represent the entire camp and are given the honor of speaking at campfire. Last night, Casey Luchs, Ellen Polen, Emily Kaplan, Hannah Felman and Lucy Bonfield became campfire girls. Below is campfire girl speech.

“I throw this key-log into the fire for all the new things I’ve learned. Recently, I just got up on water skies for the first time. It took about a year or so of learning and practicing to finally get up. Thank you everyone in cabin 2 for believing in me. Thank you Kate, Grace, Hayley, Meredith, Olivia, Ginger, Alexis, Ruby, Naomi, Annie, and Amelia. You guys have taught me so much. Amelia you have taught me how to be a better friend. Grace and Ginger you have definitely taught me that people in the world are a lot crazier than I am. Liv you have taught me that people can be so different but still be great friends. Hayley thank you for being a life long friend. Kate thank you for being someone that loves the blue team as much as I do. Meredith, Ruby and Naomi, thank you for believing in me. Especially thank you Alexis for introducing me to your group of friends last year. Everyone in cabin 2 has taught me so much. Thank you Tatum and Isabelle for being there for me and showing me how much fun camp is. Everyone who works at the activities has taught me so much. Especially at the ski docks. When I arrived at camp last year I thought about if I was going to fit in. Would I miss my parents? What new friends would I make? This year I got off the bus thinking about different things because I got my answer to all of those questions answered last year. This year I thought about all the new adventures I would encounter and how excited I was to get camp started again. Finally, thank you Mary and the office staff especially my counselors Steph, Kiley, and Dani for making camp the place I look forward to going whenever I’m not at camp.”

Campfire girl speeches like these typically leave us in tears and feeling more connected to one another. It’s easy to see why campfire is my favorite evening program.

Today we had lazy breakfast, sign-up, loads of tubing, watched the junior campers perform the junior dance parade and will finish the evening with a blow-out Halloween party and our own fireworks display. Games of every type will be spread throughout camp and the CIT’s will be taking turns in the dunk tank. Halloween Cookies will be decorated by all and the junior counselors have a haunted house set up for those brave enough to enter. Fire truck rides will leave every twenty minutes from the grassy triangle and Sydney Salit is equipped to tell a spooky hayride story on the hayride wagon. All aboard…it’s going to be a spooktacular evening.  

Tomorrow is the big day many have been waiting for. Our campers are ready for the 4th of July and will be dancing their way down the main street of Minocqua. It will be an action packed day with the parade, a cookout, the water ski show and fireworks to end the day. I’m exhausted just thinking about it. Our days are action packed but tomorrow we will be at warp speed.

Enjoy your 4th of July with friends and family. We’ll be having a fun-filled day as well.

Smile on,

Mary & staff