Summer Staff

April 21, 2017September 22, 2017 by Camp Mason

Annual Mason Olympics 2017!

The Mason Olympics is our Session 2 theme day. It is a two-day event filled with culture sharing, team work, and activities challenging the mind, body, and spirit. The entirety of camp is divided into ten teams, or countries, led by two coaches and an ambassador.

Day one of the Mason Olympics focuses on the togetherness and creativity of your country. At this time your country will create cheers, design banners, learn about their country and prepare an act for opening ceremony held that night. Also, each participant receives a Mason Olympic t-shirt designed with their country’s custom marking.

Day two kicks off with games and events and carries on into the afternoon. Countries battle it out in events such as the tug of war, the triathlon, culture trivia plus a whole lot of original games. In the evening we have closing ceremony which consists of a final act from each country followed by the awards.

The goal of this theme day is to win one of the coveted awards, the Hercules Award or the Spirit award. To obtain the Hercules Award a country must win as many events as possible with keeping in mind good sportsmanship and teamwork. To obtain the Spirit Award a country should demonstrate positive, enthusiastic energy, inclusiveness, and originality.

Join us for The Mason Olympics for an incredibly energetic and fun-filled two-day event! Session 2 runs from July 9^th – July 22^nd. You can register for this Session 2 at Camp Mason here.

September 23, 2016September 23, 2016 by Camp Mason

Basically, Camp Is Cooler Than School

By Sam Loop, Summer Camp Iroquois Counselor and Reluctant Student

I have a confession to make.

I totally lied on my college application.

My apologies to the Georgia Institute of Technology, may you find it in your hearts to forgive me.

The year was 2014, and it was actually the Common App essay, and the prompt was “Discuss an accomplishment or event, formal or informal, that marked your transition from childhood to adulthood within your culture, community, or family” (I still have the essay saved on my computer), and having just finished working at camp for the first time that summer and being able to think of nothing but camp, camp people, camp songs, etc. it seemed only natural that I would write about camp.

So, I conjured up a draft, tweaked and re-tweaked it about seventy times, had Dad, friends, and various high school faculty read it, and submitted it to five schools. Done and done!

The essay was good; I don’t think lying changed that. It detailed misgivings about myself as a counselor and whether I would be able to give back to kids what my counselors gave to me from 2007 on. I spoke of paranoia of being too strict and the simultaneous fear of being too easygoing and thus easily manipulated. I talked about how it was my first “real” job, and I was subsequently afraid of “messing up,” and the essay travels over the realization of how I was letting go of my true self, only to realize that my true self was the Sam hired in the first place, culminating in the conclusion that “I don’t think I was ever truly an adult until I embraced the child within me.”

(Actual sentence from my college essay. Kind of yuck, but they love stuff like that.)

This won’t sound humble, but I am going to say it: I never doubted myself as a counselor. I love working with people. I came from a great counselor-in-training program and most importantly, I had awesome staff members to look up to and learn from. This combination allowed me to jump into the job with energy, enthusiasm, and constant euphoria. The most doubt I ever encountered was probably around the same time I got whipped cream in my hair during Closing Campfire that turned sour. But overall, I knew I was working at the Coolest Place On Earth, and I think so long as you can remember that and channel it into your performance, you can be a child’s Favorite Counselor Ever.

I have another confession to make.

My essay was not all that dishonest as I may have chalked it up to be. There is a beautiful truth that I tried to convey in my essay, and that I will try to convey to you now.

While camp has changed in a plethora of ways over the 10 years I have been there, one thing remains constant: self-discovery. This is self-discovery in ways that cannot be translated directly onto paper;
that cannot be calculated as quantities and graphed; that cannot be given a scientific explanation and a research paper to boot. People have told me that I changed while at camp; that I’ve come back more carefree, more pensive, more considerate – I definitely have, but these aren’t necessarily due to changes within me. It’s because you go to camp, and you learn. You learn the tangible – how to start a fire, how to play gaga, how to wear the same shirt for three days without washing it so no one notices. And then you learn the intangible.

You learn that sometimes it’s better to just sit back and listen.

You learn that no one is documenting your every flaw and mistake.

You learn that sometimes it’s best to listen to your gut and leap where you would have otherwise backed away slowly.

Most of all, you learn to trust yourself. To find comfort in yourself. To recognize that you can be virtually unstoppable because you well and truly know everything that you are capable of, which includes overcoming any obstacle.

This is true power. Forget every other definition of it.

Camp is an escape, it is a second home, it is a vacation. It has been all these things and more for me. Despite being two weeks, or four or six or eight or nine, it is a life-long journey and adventure all rolled up into one. In particular, it has been an education like none other I have ever received.

I don’t know that 17-year-old me could find words to explain the Camp Sensation. 19-year-old me is still having trouble right at this moment.

Yet honestly? I think it wise that admissions folks don’t hear that what camp taught me is going to be far more special than anything their school has to offer.

June 9, 2016June 9, 2016 by Camp Mason

Summer Camp is Around the Corner!

By Salva Cossu, Assistant Camp Director for Summer Camp 2016

If you already know Camp Mason, you very probably know why everybody wants to come back, year after year, for Summer Camp. The energy, the happiness, the life that fills the Camp bubble is amazing. I came here for the first time in 2008 from France: I still don’t know where my parents actually found Camp Mason but there I was, for my first time in America. I loved it, went back to my country and thought that was it. 7 years later, last summer, I ended up applying to come back as a staff member, got hired, and spent the best summer of my life. Don’t ask me why I waited to do it until so long after my first experience, I still don’t know: Camp Mason drags you in. But what I can tell you is that I met friends for life, kids I taught things to and that taught me things in return.

Everybody here loves what they do each day, the staff members and the kids alike. That’s why everybody is so full of energy and so true. Back to nature, no cellphones, no computers, no virtual reality: your friends are here, with you, laughing, running, talking to each other, being their true selves. In a society where we all want to share every small bit of our lives, to show it, to capture it, Camp Mason is like an island where time stops.

So here I am again, like a lot of staff members and kids, ready for summer 2016 at Camp Mason, ready to have fun, to laugh, to run, to share, to care, to be honest and responsible. To live.

This will be Salva’s second summer as a staff member at Camp Mason and before that he was a camper too. He comes from France and brings passion, care and dedication to his role this summer. We’re excited to have him here busily preparing for Summer Camp!

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.