Summer camp

“ Oh! the sun, the renovating sun; the rain and the wind have gone, and the air is thrilled with sunshine, and the streets of our camp are full again. All who are able to get out of their beds, are at the doors, sitting in the light, catching the soft breeze which whispers of the summer. ”

“ The work camp is much the older, dating back to the building of railroads and the opening of lumber districts. In the past decade the recreation summer camps have become a potent factor in secondary-school life, making a complement of the school year's work by laying stress on the physical development of outdoor woodland and country experiences. Some of these camps, while primarily recreational, have had courses in manual training, college preparation, arts and crafts, and languages, yet so clearly is their play nature of chief importance that no one thinks of them as work camps. ”

“ One of the large parks has been handed over to the Army by the city authorities, and in it has been established a summer camp. Tents are pitched on the grass under the trees, and poor families are brought out here for a week at a time. In this way hundreds of families have experienced a little of summer vacation who otherwise would never have left their slum dwellings. ”

“ Oh, it's a girls' summer camp, Miss Eleanor. You know the sort. They're run for a lot of rich girls, whose parents want to get rid of them for the summer. They're supposed to do some studying, but all they, ever really do is to have a good time. I'd have gone to one this year if I hadn't joined the Camp Fire Girls instead. Gladys laughed at me in the city when she heard I was going to join. ”

“ It is a summer camp on a mountain stream not far from the Big Horn Mountains, about twenty miles south of Sheridan. The building is used for kitchen, dining room, rest room and general headquarters. Each family brings its own tent when using the camp. The purpose is to make it a place for tired people, and especially for those who have no cars or other means of taking an outing during some part of the hot weather. ”

“ CAMPS BOY SCOUTS INFLUENCE OF CAMP LIFE It is great fun to live in the glorious open air, fragrant with the smell of the woods and flowers; it is fun to swim and fish and hike it over the hills; it is fun to sit about the open fire and spin yarns, or watch in silence the glowing embers; but the greatest fun of all is to win the love and confidence of some boy who has been a trouble to himself and everybody else, and help him to become a man.—H. M. Burr.
The summer time is a period of moral deterioration with most boys. ”

“ To be sure, camping is simpler and easier in warm weather, and that is also the season when most folks can get vacations.
But summer camping is not the only seasonal camping. The fall season is one of the pleasantest times to camp. The nights may be cold and even frosty, but the sharp tang in the air will make the experience all the more delightful. ”

“ That’s why we like, girls and boys, to come down to our camp early in the season–if only at intervals–because we watch the summer coming and can study the wonderful lake life as at no other time,” remarked the Guardian again, and then 201 subsided into private life in the stern of the broad, red camp-skiff, scribbling something in verse form to be read at the White Birch celebration in the afternoon when land as well as lake was a-riot with young color, strewn with wild flowers for gay June to tread on. ”

“ The grand event of this fairyland comes in the summer, when the boys and girls from all of the schools go to the county seat for a summer camp, where, between attending classes and lectures, playing games and reveling in the joys of camp life, they come to have a very much broader view of the world and a more intense interest in one another. ”

“ We will consider separately the many ways in which a party can spend a summer vacation; and first we will start into wild and uninhabited regions, afoot, carrying on our backs blankets, a tent, frying-pan, food, and even a shot-gun and fishing-tackle. This is very hard work for a young man to follow daily for any length of time ”

“ To put a camp of this kind deep in the heart of the wilderness, and touch the wild life of the forest and lake with a most acceptable bit of civilisation in the form of grate fires, running water, bath-tubs, and inside toilet arrangements is decidedly a feat worthy to be spoken of when summer resorts are mentioned. To likewise supply a crowd of seventy-five guests with such an excellent table as we found provided for us, and to serve it so acceptably as to make one for a moment forget that he was beyond the bounds of civilisation, was likewise a feat of which the management should be proud. ”

“ The best time to camp is late in the summer. Boys when left to their own impulses build their camps in the fall, urged thereto by as blind an instinct as that which sets the birds to building nests in the spring. Late summer is as near the natural building-time as the school system of civilization permits us to get ”

“ This is a story which centers around the making and the enjoying of a mountain camp, spiced with the fun of a lively troop of Girl Scouts. The charm of living in the woods, of learning woodcraft of all sorts, of adventuring into the unknown, combine to make a busy and an exciting summer for the girls. ”

“ But there is plenty to do in the camp: guns to be cleaned, tackle to be put in order, clothes to be mended, a good story of adventure to be read, a belated letter to be written to some poor wretch in a summer hotel, a game of hearts or cribbage to be played, or a hunting-trip to be planned for the return of fair weather. The tent is perfectly dry. A little trench dug around it carries off the surplus water, and luckily it is pitched with the side to the lake, so that you get the pleasant heat of the fire without the unendurable smoke. Cooking in the rain has its disadvantages. ”

“ The fire is the main comfort of the camp, whether in summer or winter, and is about as ample at one season as at another. It is as well for cheerfulness as for warmth and dryness. ”

“ All boys are nature lovers. Nothing appeals to them more than a summer vacation in the woods where they can escape from the restraints of civilization and live a life of freedom. Now, it may appear to be a bit of presumption to attempt to advise the boy camper how to spend his time. Surely the novelty of outdoor life, the fascinating charm of his surroundings, will provide him plenty of entertainment.
But, after all, a camp generally affords but two major amusements, hunting and fishing. ”

“ We expected camp beds, at least.”
“They’re quite comfortable,” said Aunt Clara reassuringly, “when they’re filled with clean straw. Our blankets are in that big box and we’d better get our beds made the first thing, so we can roll into them as soon as we get tired.” She bustled around, smoothing out the straw in the bunks with a practised hand and showing the girls how to fold their blankets to the best advantage. “Be sure you have just as much under you as over you,” she advised them again and again. “Camping in winter is a very different proposition from sleeping out in summer.” ”

“ For eight weeks this past summer my family of two members camped with two servants. In addition we had the occasional services of a man who did all the heavy work. There was not enough for the servants to do in the cottage and log cabin of our establishment. They were discontented, faultfinding, and wholly out of the spirit of camp life. All of the day that their tone of voice reached was helplessly ruined. The only way to keep the camp joy and pleasure was to keep out of their way. ”

“ These are a few quotations taken from a variety of camp booklets:
"The object of the camp is healthful recreation without temptation."
"A camp where boys live close to nature, give themselves up to play, acquire skill in sports, eat plenty of wholesome food, and sleep long hours ... and are taught high ideals for their own lives."
"To give boys a delightful summer outing under favorable conditions, and to give them every opportunity to become familiar with camp life in all its phases. ”

“ We're used to camping out and eating in the open air, you know, and it isn't fair to leave a place so that the next people who camp out there have to do a lot of work to clean up after you before they can begin having a good time themselves. We wouldn't like it if we had to do it after others, so we try always to leave things just as we'd like to find them ourselves. And it wouldn't be good for the Camp Fire Girls if people thought we were careless and untidy. ”

“ This lively Camp Fire group and their Guardian go back to Nature in a camp in the wilds of Maine and pile up more adventures in one summer than they have had in all their previous vacations put together. ”

“ It must not be supposed that the camping season is past because the summer vacation is over. The real camping season begins in the Wild Rice Moon, that is, September. Even if school or business takes all our time during the week, we still have week-ends in which to camp. ”

“ The daytime hike gives the camper an opportunity to see something of the surrounding country, and to have the experience of following paths and trails, of climbing and coming into touch with the deep woods, and all of their beauties. Also the necessary routine and rules of an organized camp would prove unbearable to the all-summer hiker if she did not get away from them once in a while. ”

“ Make your minds work and you will never regret it’?”
“I’m going to have school and a little athletics during the year, and camp in the summer, with lots of it, if I can, after this.”
About ten o’clock the girls started for Boothbay. As this was a very popular picnic, held annually, nobody but a few councillors remained at home. The boats went down the river with the girls singing as usual, the weather propitious, young hearts gay.
“Shall we have a visit with Campbell, Hilary?” asked June, who had been quite taken with the young man. ”

“ CALMER than midnight's deepest hush
⁠Is the sun-bright summer nooning,
With its cloudy shadows seeking rest,
⁠That fall on the hill-side swooning.
Great Night with its solemn starry eyes,
⁠Over Day's gate asks us whither
We go—what our password is
⁠To the camp beyond the river. ”

“ The two months’ camp in the summer is based rather on custom than on experience or sound theory. Four short periods, during four different seasons, are far better than a single long stretch during one. ”

“ Never while anything is left of me shall this first camp be forgotten. It has fairly grown into me, not merely as memory pictures, but as part and parcel of mind and body alike. ”

“ We had put up a little tent, made out of our old wagon-tilt, to cover us; and the place we called by the name which is in use among the backwoods farmers—that is to say, a ‘sugar camp.’ We found this out-of-door life very exciting and agreeable, camping thus in the thick shady woods with the great majestic trees towering over and around us—listening at times to the light breeze, as it rustled their golden leaves—or lulled into a pleasing tranquillity by the songs of a thousand birds. ”

“ Camps for boys are springing up like mushrooms. Literally thousands of boys who have heretofore wasted the glorious summer time loafing on the city streets, or as disastrously at summer hotels or amusement places, are now living during the vacation time under nature's canopy of blue with only enough covering for protection from rain and wind, and absorbing through the pores of their body that vitality which only pure air, sunshine, long hours of sleep, wholesome food, and reasonable discipline can supply. ”

“ If it is dreadful to be overtaken in the forest by the punctual night of the tropics, while unprepared, without camp or comfort, yet, to the weary man, after a good bath and a good supper, and with a good bed awaiting him, the brief period of the departing day and the increasing camp-fire glow, the smell of wood smoke and the crackle of the burning log, are a delightful experience.
The camp is usually an open glade, where the night is not so sudden in its fall. The shadows grow longer in the evening light, and the gray twilight deepens till the stars shine through. ”

“ The last night in a boys' camp should be the best of all the nights. It is usually a night of reminiscence. Around the camp fire or log fire in the "Lodge," all the campers gather and rehearse the good times of the days that have passed all too quickly—those days of close intimacy of tent life, where boys of different tastes, temperaments and dispositions were thrown together, where life's great lessons of give and take were learned and where character was put to the test! ”

“ Lightly do we go into the woods, bent upon a holiday. There we kindle a fire over which we are to cook our camp supper. How good it all smells, the wood smoke, the odor of the frying bacon and fish and potatoes; how good in the crisp evening air the warmth of the camp fire feels; and above all, how beautiful everything is, the deep plumy branches on whose lower sides shadows from the firelight dance, the depth of darkness beyond the reach of the illuminating flame, the rich strange hue of the soft grass and moss on which we are sitting! ”

“ The matter got into the courts and I had myself named as receiver, so I could better look after my interest. Now I don't know just what I am going to do, except that I want some one up there to see to things. If I can get Ted Franklin and his wife I know it will be all right, and you girls will have a fine time with them.
"You can have a bungalow or a cabin or two to yourselves, if you like, and lay in enough provisions for all winter. It's on a branch of the Argono River," he went on, "and you can skate all the way to camp on the ice, if you like. ”

“ Rainy days break the monotony of continuous sunshiny days. There is nothing that is so fascinating to a boy in camp as listening to the patter of the rain drops upon the roof of his canvas house, especially at night, if he is snug and warm in his blankets and the tent is waterproof. A rainy day is the kind of a day when the chess and checker enthusiasts get together. Games are rescued from the bottom of the trunk or box. Ponchos and rubber boots are now in popular favor. Thunder and lightning but add to the boys' enjoyment. ”