Experience

October 25, 2017October 25, 2017 by Camp Mason

Art in the Heart

By Dan Dickerson, Naturalist at the Mason Outdoor Center

When I was ten, I spent a lot of time inside of the house, avoiding the facets of the worlds around me; lost in the land of video games.

When I turned 19 after my first year of college I took a leap and applied for my first job working as a summer camp counselor at Camp Mason. I didn’t really know what it was going to be like, but I did know that I would make friends and do my best to go above and beyond. What I didn’t expect to find, was my passion. Sometimes you have to be lost to truly find yourself, and being lost in the woods of Hardwick, New Jersey has allowed me to find the true educator within.

Education is my passion and art is my medium. YMCA Camp Mason provides a place to foster your individual skills through active community support systems utilizing outdoor education. Being challenged to step out of my comfort zone allowed me to discover the power of expression and how to teach it to children.

Being able to bring the ‘Improvisational Contemporary Flow Art’ form know as gloving to camp mason has allowed me to share my belief in the power of expression through art, and has fortified my love for the therapeutic attributes that art can provide. Gloving is micro dance form where you use LED lights on your finger tips to express music like poetry. The improvisational skills acquired through flow arts can help anyone understand their strengths – change can start with art in the palm of your hand.

A camper once shared with me that they were glad that they joined my gloving class because it helped show them how to refocus their attention; as they were easily distracted. The following summer they had told me their grades we exponentially better ever since they started using gloving as the outlet for their frustrations in school. Hearing that, I realized my true passion is education using the skills of art therapy. The power to express your self is already in your hands, and with art you can teach others how to make a difference.

Whether I’m speaking to a parent, teacher, co-worker, or student I am always inspired by the strength they exhibit to push past their comfort, to step into their growth zone. Camp has granted me a sense of Identity, discovery, and ability.

There is a light in every person and the people you meet at camp are a lot like the stars, no matter the time or place we are surrounded by stars. The memories you create at camp are crystal gems crafted within to assure you you’re not alone, and to remind you to return to your greatness.

October 3, 2017October 3, 2017 by Camp Mason

Stewardship, Sustainability & Service

By Nikki Reiff, Outdoor Center Program Director

Sometimes you need to stop and smell the flowers, and sometimes you need to stop and save the flowers. Here at Camp Mason, we do both. What I mean by this, is that when visitors come here-they are immersed in a culture where stewardship and sustainability take the forefront. Sometimes it’s in the form of litter picking as you head to an activity, often times in the form of an environmental education class that creates an understanding of why protection of the environment is so important, and sometimes it’s palpable.

This past week, the French American School of New York brought their 6^th grade class to Camp Mason for a unique outdoor experience. Aside from zip-lining through the trees, orienteering themselves through the woods, and forging group bonds in our Low Ropes course—they built bat boxes from scratch as a service project to our camp, and to the entire north east. Bats in the north east are important animals that help maintain an ecosystem and are of great service to humans. One colony can consume more than 250,000 mosquitos a night, and they also predate on pesky invasive species, such as tent caterpillars, that threaten a forests’ health or farmland. These bats are threatened for a few reasons- fungal infections that gets spread in some hibernacula (or habitats), the installation of wind turbines, and destruction of habitat in forests. All of these reasons can be summarized as unsuitable habitat. So in a matter of 3 days, a team of naturalists and a couple dozen students addressed this problem and created new habitat for 5 colonies of local bats.

Facilitation of activities like this are not uncommon here at Mason. The Outdoor Center team incorporate sustainability and stewardship into nearly every program here. Giving back to the earth or to one another is a recurrent theme across team building, recreation, and environmental classes all the same. In the fall, NJ District Circle K help Camp Mason with litter picks along nearby roads and streams. In the spring, United Nations International School visited and created water-awareness murals with the same idea in mind–to make a difference. St. Lukes School helped us remove invasive species along our trails. We are always looking to unite with schools and groups to complete more projects like this!

So whether it’s composting our brown napkins, maintaining trails, or physically creating animal shelters When you take a moment to look around at our guests and staff alike, its’ easy to see that stewardship and sustainability are key values we hold dear to us at YMCA Camp Mason. And if you don’t see that, you’d have to be blind as a bat.*

*Bats actually are not blind, they however, use echolocation to hunt rather than their vision. But you get the point!

December 17, 2015December 18, 2015 by Camp Mason

How Do You Know Camp is as Important as You Say it is?

By Anna Bilton, Summer Camp Program Director

If you know any of us personally or have ever read any of our blog or social media posts the chances are you’ve probably heard the staff here at Camp Mason talk about the benefits of camp. We really do believe that a camp experience can have a powerful, positive impact for children and young people (and we can’t stop going on about it)! We can say this because we see the impact every day around camp and we even feel it’s effect on ourselves. But what is it that we see? What is it that makes us so sure of the value of camp?

I can’t speak for all of us but I can share a recent moment when I felt a big, old dose of camp magic that screamed volumes to me about the positive impacts children experience at Camp Mason. This past summer was a blast and that makes it a pleasure to travel back in time all the way to the second Wednesday in Session 2A.

As I made my usual afternoon round of camp I quite literally stumbled on the Making the Movie activity group. They were crouched down in the undergrowth, speaking only in excited whispers and focusing so hard on their project that they hardly noticed me arrive. It turns out I had showed up at just the right time and was quickly told to get down and quiet down. The campers and activity leaders were in the middle of filming a nature documentary about the wildest of all beasts; Camp Mason counselors. If we made too much noise we would disturb the staff in their natural habitat and draw attention to ourselves. I was told this would not only ruin the documentary but that it could be dangerous. From a safe distance we watched the archery counselor run the range until the last arrows were fired and then we made our move. He spotted us and we had no choice but to retreat, and retreat fast.

After we’d reached safety I went on my way continued to walk through the woods visiting archery, riflery and high ropes. I couldn’t stop thinking about the five minutes I’d spent with our camper film makers. The Making the Movie is an elective for campers and while this group only got together on Monday, by Wednesday they were already as thick as thieves. Each camper was an important part of that group and was equally involved in the acting, filming and directing process. Their idea showed a ton of creativity and everyone was perfectly in character. This group was full of confidence and appeared to be enjoying working together to complete their project. This group was having fun together!

The few moments that I was a part of that group I felt included, important and happy, not to mention entirely convinced that watching the staff was akin to being on a safari. That’s what camp does. That’s when I know for sure that camp positively impacts children and young people. That’s why I harp on and on about how great camp is. And this was just one moment with one group during one afternoon in one summer. There are so many more wonderful moments like this at camp. Children develop invaluable life skills all while enjoying what they’re doing. Camp does this. Just ask any of us! We’d be happy to tell you, and then tell you again and then again and again…

I’d like to thank our tireless media team for their hard work and dedication in running, leading and editing the Making the Movie activity. In case you wanted to see the finished documentary (and you do, it’s hilarious) check out the video below. It’s the best 3 minutes you’ll spend all day!

Movie Credit to Trent Lawson.

June 12, 2015June 12, 2015 by Camp Mason

Summer Camp Superheroes

By Keith Vanderzee, CEO

Every child deserves a real superhero and in the next week, they will be arriving at Camp Mason! They may come by bus, car or train, but make no mistake they are real superheroes.

My earliest and best memories of camp all revolve around the camp staff. I remember Kevin Roden, a real outdoorsman, who took our camp group on a “rattlesnake hunt.” Looking back I am sure it was probably just a nature hike because even in the early 70’s, it was probably not appropriate to take 10 year old boys looking for rattlesnakes! But at the time, and in my mind’s eye still, is the image of this young bearded man, standing 7 feet tall with a forked stick which he told us was to pin the rattlesnake’s head so it wouldn’t bite him. He strode through the woods with the confidence and stature of Paul Bunyan and we were in awe of him. And then there is Jergen, from Germany. I picture him as a caricature- a tall, blonde as can be man with ridiculously wide shoulders and bulging biceps. Jergen was a lifeguard and I distinctly remember him jumping off the bridge stanchions on the Esopus River into whirlpools and teaching us that the way to escape a whirlpool was to swim out the bottom where it got thinner. I picture him now popping out of the bottom of the water, all muscles and smiling- basically walking on water!

These are the types of memories and stories your children will come home and tell. Listen to them with wonder and awe because that is what they believe. When you hear the story of their counselors who wrestled a bear (or two!) or when you hear the story of the counselor who shot an arrow blindfolded across the camp only to hit the bulls-eye, remember that the stories may not be true, but they are real.

Superheroes really do live today. They live at Camp Mason and we can’t wait to introduce your children to them.