Waterfront talk with Aileen before swimming evaluations

Hello hello hello! Cara B. here with an Orientation Day update.

Boy, has it been a busy day so far! We woke up this morning to the beautiful sunshine and a yummy bagel Sunday breakfast. We headed over to morning meeting and listened to Tom and Meg’s lovely dulcimer playing, as per Sunday tradition. At HVC, campers have the opportunity to build a mountain dulcimer with Tom if they choose to take his class! We heard about some other classes being offered by our awesome pro staff that we didn’t catch last night, including extreme art, junior firefighters, book making, and stomp dance. We heard our first thought de jour, our first spirit animal, and wished our first happy birthday of the session as well!

After morning meeting, cabin groups went their separate ways to sign up for classes, take photos to send back to folks at home, and get a talk from the nurses at the Health Lodge (ouch!) about drinking lots of water and doing frequent tick checks. We’ve also been doing swim evaluations at the lake and the pool, playing get-to-know-you-games, going over chore charts and cabin community expectations, and taking tours of camp. It has been shvitzing on and off throughout the day, so we made sure to keep our boots and jackets on hand and found some time to chill indoors. Luckily, all of our amazing campers are cool just going with the flow.

Later today after we’ve checked everything off our Orientation Day to-do lists, we will come back together as a camp for evening meeting. Our gurus will tell us their first useless fact of the session and Weather Guy Gal what a gal! will give us the weather report. We’ll head into the dining hall for a yummy spaghetti dinner and then gather at the bottom of Tipi Hill for opening Pine Grove! Pine Grove is a super special evening program where we open and close the session. We will talk up Tipi Hill in silence guided torch light (there’s not technology up at Pine Grove, not even flashlights!) to a clearing where we will build a big bonfire. Cabins will share songs, stories, and poems to welcome our community and celebrate the beginning of a new session- Mama Iguana and I can hardly wait! We’ll be sure to tell you all about it tomorrow on the first day of classes!

That’s all for now folks! Enjoy some photos from Orientation Day!

Climbing away,

Cara B. Ner