It is the middle of January and I find myself committing a very “camper-like” sin; daydreaming about summer camp.  As I squint at my computer screen, bathed in fluorescent lighting, my mind wanders to the woods of Ranch Camp and all that one encounters there.  When we image taking a walk in the woods, it is a quiet, meditative experience.  However, when campers are in residence at Ranch Camp the forest really comes alive and you never know what you might run into!

On a walk in the woods of Ranch Camp you might encounter…..

-A troop of campers building intricate forts and hideaways

-Petrified wood next to the riding arenas

-“Wild” horses grazing and basking in the sun

-Mountain bikers racing down trails and through turns (or laboring up grassy hills!)

-Wild flowers; usually red, violet and yellow depending on the time of summer.

-Groups of trip campers meditating and journaling before or after their journeys

-Staff members catching a quick jog on an hour off.

-Equestrian campers taking a tea break in the trees amidst a group waiting horses

-Campers improving their collections of rocks, pinecones, dirt, etc to pack in their trunks with their clothes before bringing them home (For you to unpack and wash!).

-A few brave souls feeding the Highland cows and walking away with slobbery fingers.

-Boulders covered with scrambling children, braced and spotted by watchful counselors

-Deer, if you are very quiet and very still, tucked in the rocks at the top of the Ropes Course.

-Trip campers working to carry their first fully packed camping backpack.

-Sleepy eyed campers having breakfast tea on the rock outcropping over-looking the south side of camp.

-Mindy, our protecting and elusive (and somewhat mystical) camp llama.

-Cabins of new friends trekking the well-worn paths to archery or the lake.

-Campers, staff and guests praying, singing, dancing and celebrating Shabbat.

Even though outside my office it is the middle of winter and my coat, gloves and hat are within easy reach, what a blessing it is to be able to escape to summer, if only for a few stolen moments!

Gina McReynolds – Assistant Director – 8 Happy Summers at Ranch Camp

Yet, although we all may want to achieve happiness for ourselves and for our children, I think this article points out that in order to achieve this, we need to spend the time and invest the energy in actively talking about happiness and offering our children specific tools that will allow them to grow into happy, healthy individuals. In other words, it may not happen if we do not work proactively to make it happen. Carter contends that happiness precedes success because it breeds creativity, better perception, and better problem solving. Positive emotions not only help us fulfill our potential at school, home, and in the workplace, but can also effect our health. As Carter notes, “[I]t’s pretty widely acknowledged that anger is damaging to our cardiovascular and immune systems.”

I believe that Ranch Camp and parents, within their homes, need to make the commitment of creating environments that are filled with Hit-o’rerut, the value of gratitude, wonder, and awakening. We also need to provide our children with a safe environment in which they can take risks and sometimes fail (yes, I said fail), so that they are allowed to experience disappointment and discomfort. This is very difficult for many parents to do but Carter suggests that enabling children to experience these emotions in a safe environment enables children to gain resilience. Young people who are allowed to fail within a supportive, caring environment are better able tolerate and overcome stress and challenges, which in turn enables them to better handle challenges, failures, and disappointment that they might experience in their future life.

Together, we can create a strong, positive generation of children who are not afraid of challenging themselves and taking risks, of going outside of their comfort zones, and who are caring, compassionate individuals full of gratitude for the many blessings that surround them every day.

Ideas for creating Hit-o’rerut at home (adapted from article cited above):

• Sharing gratitude for one simple thing each day during your family meal
• Create a gratitude wall in your home with handwritten notes and artwork depicting things what family members are grateful for
• Go on a photography scavenger hunt around your home and neighborhood and have children take pictures of things they appreciate

In closing, to get the ball rolling, I would like to express gratitude for getting to live and work in a beautiful setting (Ranch Camp), being able to work with amazing people (my husband, Gilad and great friend, Gina), and serving hundreds of phenomenal families each summer (YOU).

As I celebrate Hanukkah this year, followed in quick succession by the New Year, I am drawn to the etymology of the Hebrew word Hanukkah, whose root (chet, nun, chaf) means “to dedicate”.  After all, this is the time of year when we find ourselves thinking about resolutions for the next year – eating better, exercising more, spending more time with our family, spending less time in front of a screen, etc. – and upon settling on the perfect resolution, I don’t know about you but I also immediately start to wonder how long I will keep my resolution until inevitably my best intentions fall by the wayside. Why then do we enter into these seemingly empty self-contracts each year? Here is my thought –

When Judah the Maccabee returned to the Temple in Jerusalem after leading a miraculously successful revolt against Antiochus, he found that the Temple had been desecrated. Judah then ordered for the Temple to be cleaned, for a new alter to be built, and new vessels to be made to replace those that had been tainted by the Syrians. And in this way, the Jews re-dedicated the Temple.

So, I contend, that what we are really doing each year through the ritual of making resolutions is taking a moment to return to our “temple”, a.k.a. ourselves. Quite often upon introspection, we find that we have desecrated this temple (our bodies, minds, and lives) through a myriad of bad habits and thoughts. Just like Judah, we must take inventory of the things that need to be repaired or replaced and then we make a plan to clean-up, purify, and re-dedicate ourselves to the kind of life that we want to live. Our New Year’s resolution is an act of dedication and re-dedication to our self; an act that we are driven to make in our pursuit of self-actualization. To me, it matters little how long we are able to keep our resolutions; what is important is that we take the time to examine, reflect, and to experience (if even just through visualization in our mind’s eye) the best version of who we are at this point in time.

At this time of year, Gilad and I are also professionally re-dedicating ourselves to making Ranch Camp the best that it can be under our leadership. For us, this means critically examining what we can do to improve our camper and staff experience for the coming summer and making sure that we are staying true to our camp mission. Here are some ways that we are working towards improving the Ranch Camp experience for 2012:

• Renovation of our Banim (boys) Village: All cabin units will be renovated in time for the opening of our 2012 season.
• Completion of millwork in our Banot (girls) Village: Built-in shelving will be installed to help keep belongings organized and off the floors.
• More activity choice in the camper day: Our second elective period each day will be converted into a free-choice activity period so that campers have more choice and flexibility during each day to do more of the activities that they want to do, more often.
• Enhanced bullying and bystander training for staff and camper groups: Staff will receive more training about how to identify and react to bullying at camp, and will also receive training and tools for how to create true cabin communities so that we may create a Kehillah Kedosha (a holy community).

We hope that you have a wonderful holiday season and that you are able to take time to re-dedicate yourself to the things you love.

Chag sameach (Happy holiday),
Miriam Shwartz

I wanted to take a few minutes this week to share with you a 21:00 minute video on nutrition that will not only entertain you but also open all our eyes to the nutrition crisis that is right here in America.  Jamie Oliver, founder of the Jamie Oliver Foundation, gave the following award winning speech for TED Talks.

Here is the video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIwrV5e6fMY

In a nutshell, people are saying that this might be the first generation of children that has a shorter life expectancy than their parents.  The rate of heart disease related to obesity is absolutely overwhelming.  The amount of sugar and unhealthy additives we eat in our processed diet is alarming.  The most terrifying bit for me is that our society is setting our youth up to fail.  I am not okay with that.

Camp has always been seen as a healthy place thanks to the fresh air and exercise camp guarantees.  Now camps are being seen also as a haven for nutrition.  Campers eat three healthy meals per day prepared by professionals in the nutrition business.  Not only that, but we at Ranch Camp have access to a garden where we are growing some of the food we eat.  We are giving children a chance to see where their food comes from and what it takes to prepare it.

Now it is time to go further.  Start at home.  Teach your children to cook and prepare healthy meals.  Check out the Jamie Oliver Foundation at http://www.jamieoliver.com/foundation/ for more information and for the 10 Recipes that will save your life.

Bete’ Avon!

Gina

With this philosophy in mind, you will understand and appreciate that August/September is my favorite time of year. Now is the time when we clean and pack-up camp, rummage through mounds of lost and found, and get feedback from our families and staff. I cannot tell you how gratifying it is to hear from families about the wonderful experiences that their children have had over the summer with us at camp – learning new skills, meeting new friends, and asking important questions about themselves and the world. Of course, I would be amiss if I did not also recognize that some of this feedback is not always so positive in nature or easy to hear. But I want to take this opportunity to state very clearly, so that everyone knows – as wonderful as it is to get compliments, it is critical to receive and accept criticism as well. After all, as James Joyce said, “Mistakes are portals of discovery.” It is truly rare in life that we improve as a result of success; we must struggle, and sometimes fail, in order to achieve greatness.

With our successes and failures, we become stronger as a camp, just as our campers become stronger from the opportunities and challenges that they face during their time with us. One of the most vivid examples I can think of happened only a few short weeks ago – It was Friday night and we were out at the basketball court for our song and dance session. I was walking around, making sure that everyone was having fun and not straying too far away from the court area, when I happened upon a very upset camper. “What’s the matter?” I asked. “I’ve done something terrible,” she replied. “What did you do that was so terrible?” I queried. “I made fun of someone and then I found out that they have a condition that makes them act that way and they can’t help it. I feel so bad…” she said through her tears. “That is terrible,” I told her, “but there is only one thing to do in order to make the situation right and for you to feel better. It is not about the mistakes we make in life,” I told her, “it is about what we learn from them, and how we move forward. You have to go to the camper you hurt and apologize for your behavior.

This situation pained and troubled me very much, but as I watched her walk towards the court and approach the camper that she had made fun of to reconcile, I was incredibly struck by her sense of guilt and conscience; I could see that she had taken something extraordinarily valuable from this experience and would not likely find herself in this kind of situation in the future. I don’t know if she will recount this moment when she looks back on her life and thinks about pivotal moments and decisions that she made along the way,  but I wouldn’t be surprised. From this situation’s end, came a new beginning for this camper; she moved forward having a better sense of self, of what was right, and how to make amends.

As we move into our final Shabbat of this summer, I am excited to have parents fill out our end of the season survey and let us know how we have impacted their children this summer. Sifting through this data and the emails we have gotten along the way, our camp team will pull together and start to plan for 2012. As I said at the start of this piece, this is a wonderful time of year. From where I stand now, I can see all of what we have accomplished over the course of the last 10 weeks since the start of camp, but I can also see all the potential of what is yet to come; all of the new beginnings that will emerge from closing and reflecting upon the end of this season.

Shabbat Shalom!

Fill out our Customer Satisfaction Survey Now!

Camp Survey Link

Miriam Shwartz

JCC Ranch Camp, Co-Director

The adventure experience is best described as ‘multi-phasic’; as the experience develops, so do the individuals participating in it. Personal and collective identities are altered in preparation for, interaction with, and separation from the natural environment. And while wilderness expeditions are typically viewed as a chance for solitude, we find that it is the social element of these experiences that is imperative. It is the friendships and intense camaraderie that is the true foundation of the camping experience. However, I argue, it is the process of “returning to Nature” that allows, supports, and encourages these strong bonds to form. After all, there are not many settings in today’s world that children can enter into and have limited or no exposure to media and digital devices (sad, but true). As William Borrie, a researcher on the benefits of outdoor recreation found, “When visitors enter wilderness, they may gradually discard many of the concerns of the outside world as they adapt to the ancient rhythms and demands of the wilderness world” (Borrie, et al, 2001: 208). Perhaps this is the key to the success of summer camps – here, we allow children (and adults) to leave the modern world behind, albeit for a short while, and allow them to return to a more simple existence.

I happened by our Teva area today as a group of children were participating in the “Chilling with the Chickens” Chug. A few kids surrounded Missy and TJ, our goats, as they lazily grazed, other campers were sitting in the shade and had chickens sitting on their laps, and the rest of the group was happily rummaging around the garden and weeding. For these children, and most children at camp, it just feels good to be outside in the sun, surrounded by animals – a part of Nature. And this connection plays into Ranch Camp’s overall mission of providing “a resident camping experience that enables children to strengthen their Jewish identity, become more caring members of society, and connect with the natural world.” At camp and on the trips we send out of camp, the natural world is explored, and from these experiences (we hope) springs the desire to protect and preserve them. Environmental awareness increases as campers become tied to their surroundings, and therefore, the benefits that participants derive from these wilderness experiences are intimately tied to the well being of Nature itself. I feel confident that the children who participated in this Teva chug will look at the produce and eggs that they buy from the store when they get home a little differently now that they have had the experience of helping to tend to a garden and care for and harvest eggs for themselves here at camp. And I venture to guess that our Teen Village participants will see their surroundings differently too – now they know how little they need in order to be happy and will look to the mountains and not see simply a thing of beauty, but see themselves. As William Shakespeare noted, “One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.”

Shabbat Shalom!

Miriam Shwartz

JCC Ranch Camp, Co-Director

As the campers and their “buddies” clamored off the van and started heading towards the barn, I saw some familiar faces of participants from year’s past that I recognized intermingled with some new faces of first-time participants. “Who is ready to put on their helmet?” I asked, as the group arrived. And once everyone was ready, we headed towards the horses, who (it seemed apparent to me) were poised and prepared to greet this special group as well. Some of the Summer Magic participants were escorted over to a station where they learned how to groom horses, and a few at a time headed up to the arena to ride. After their corral experience, they were escorted by our Staff-in-Training (SIT) participants and several TASC volunteers to finger painting, Teva (Nature), lunch, and Israeli Dancing.

Summer Magic is truly one of the best days of the camping season for me each year. One of the many reasons why I love having Summer Magic come to camp is that it teaches our camping community about the concept of inclusion. In Judaism, as in many cultures, there is great emphasis and importance placed on hospitality and welcoming strangers into our homes. And I believe that the inclusion of people with disabilities into the camping environment has a large foundation in the concept of hospitality. Welcoming Summer Magic into our “camp home” allows campers and staff an opportunity to totally focus on the needs of another person, rather than on our own needs, and endeavor to make these guests feel comfortable and as much a part of the community as possible.

Throughout the day, I observed the SITs and TASCers extending true chesed (kindness) and care to these special guests. Within Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers) it is said that, “The world stands on three things: Torah, Avodah, and G’milut Chasadim” (Mishna, 1:2); on wisdom that is acquired through study, on work that enriches our lives, and on acts of loving-kindness. The experience of having Summer Magic at Ranch Camp for a day allows staff and campers to actualize their own human potential for good. I am so proud of our Ranch Camp community for their continued commitment to hosting this program, showing so much love and care to everyone within this group, and making our camp a community of inclusion.

Shabbat Shalom!

Miriam Shwartz

JCC Ranch Camp, Co-Director

Standing in the Chadar Ochel (Dining Hall), it is amazing to gaze across the room at the virtual sea of children that we are serving. Each child is unique and special, and yet together we form this big, beautiful community.

Camp provides a forum to meet people that we may never have encountered in the outside world. I know this to be true from personal experience, as the odds that Gilad and I would have ever connected outside of this environment are slim to none. And in this session, I am definitely struck by this because of the number of campers who are joining us from out of state and out of the country. Within Session 3, we have campers from 16 states within the U.S., as well as campers from Israel, Norway, Spain, and Costa Rica! What an amazing thing it is to me that somehow Ranch Camp has brought all these children together.

I remember that a couple of years ago, during Session 3, we had a TASC group that was comprised of American, Israeli, and Venezuelan campers. When they returned from their trip, we talked to the campers about what the experience was like for them to go on this kind of journey together, coming from such diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. And do you know what they said? Instead of focusing on the vast array of differences that probably came up during their travels together, one camper’s remarks summed up the groups’ feelings, “Really,” he said, “we found out that we are a lot more similar to each other than we are different.”

At the crux of it all, I think that’s what this is really all about – learning to live together, understanding our strengths, respecting our differences, but at the end of the day, realizing that there is more that unites us than divides us. And in a world that suffers from war, hunger, and poverty due to many social, economic, religious, and cultural divisions, I believe this is a very important lesson to learn.

Shabbat Shalom!

Miriam Shwartz

JCC Ranch Camp, Co-Director

When the wind of change blows, some build walls, others build windmills.

– Chinese proverb

All the campers had run back to their cabins after dinner in preparation for a camp favorite – Capture the Flag. They hurried to put on red or blue shirts, according to their assignments, and were mentally ramping up for what promised to be a great game. And just as I was heading over to meet the camp group and watch it all unfold, the alert came through that there was a tornado warning in our area.

Change of plans.

So we gathered everyone at camp up and prepared to have an impromptu “party” under the dining hall, our storm shelter. Campers divided into rooms and counselors began singing songs, playing games, making friendship bracelets, and creating other diversions. Disappointed as everyone was to not be able to be outside and have our camp-wide game as planned, everyone (staff and campers alike) identified that there was really no other choice than to make the best of the situation that we had been presented with – we had to accept and embrace change.

And then, after a short hour and a half, it was over. The storm had passed and we were able to open the door to return everyone to their cabins and head to bed. But incredibly, as we turned the handle, pushed the door open, and peered out into the cool night, camp had changed. An immense amount of precipitation in a very short period of time and had altered the landscape of camp; water had carved new features in the land and made pools of water where there had been nothing before. It was incredible.

Our camp community went to bed that night and awoke to a wondrous series of surprises the next morning. The most exciting of the changes were certainly that camp suddenly acquired two large water features! So despite the fact that some activities could not be run as scheduled, suddenly new activity opportunities arose. Campers enjoyed playing in our new-formed pond, playing mud ga-ga, and exploring new wildlife that had been brought in with the rain. Just as Nature bends and alters itself under the influence of water, heat, pressure, and time, we too must acknowledge that change happens and that we must welcome it.

The camping environment champions change. From the moment a child leaves their parents and embarks on their camping journey, they are faced with situations that require them to be flexible, adapt, and work as a part of a team to make the most of any given situation. Being able to handle change in positive ways and learn to see change as an opportunity and not as a challenge is what breeds success in life. A successful camping experience, ultimately, is about supporting and helping children cope with, and make the most of change. As Lao-Tzu noted, “Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them – that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.”

Shabbat Shalom,

Miriam Shwartz