Jun 25, 2022

Posted by: Ryan Bocchino

We Are One

Oh man, what a session. What a week! What an amazing way to kick off 2022.

As we wind down into our second soul-filling Shabbat of 2022, I couldn’t be more thrilled with the start to what has already been an amazing summer. We’ve had an action-packed Session 1 and the second week launched it truly into orbit. From seeing the sales pitches made during our camper ‘Shark Tank’ to the amazing acts including a live-singing of ‘We Don’t Talk About Bruno’ during Kaleidoscope (our talent show) as well as a camp dog doing wild tricks on stage, it’s been a wild week of seeing campers step outside their comfort zones and show us the best they have to offer as their individual selves.

On top of all of that, we also broke the week up with some pretty intense competition! This past Thursday was the first of our three camper Maccabiahs for 2022, with an over-the-top afternoon where the green team ultimately took the cake (quite literally, for some of the challenges) at the end of the day. It was an awesome day culminated by the Mac-o-Peel, thecross-campus relay race that starts at the front gate and finishes all the way at Niven Field.

Weeks like this are a special time at camp. We break up and have some pretty serious competitive events, which, depending on your camper, may sometimes be taken a little too seriously! We struggle, we yell, we scream, all in the name of our team winning and, most importantly, having as much fun packed into a single day as we can. It’s a nice reminder at the end of the day, when we celebrate with a color powder party, that our teams, at the end of the day, don’t really matter too much. The wrap up of this day serves as an important reminder that we are one family, no matter who we are, what we look like, how we identify or where we come from.

Despite our early challenges in the session and taking an impromptu evacuation field trip to the Elbert County fairgrounds, it’s been so great having a ‘normal’ first session of 2022 so far.  It was great hearing our 8th grades reflect on their four-day, and amazing to hear from all our campers on some of their reflections on what they’ve enjoyed most about camp during this week’s Shabbat service. I can’t wait for the stories to be shared with you.

Shabbat Shalom Ranch Camp. We’ll see you Sunday morning!