Cabin Life Cabins, Cubies, and Counselors

Chapter 6
Cabin Life Cabins, Cubies, and Counselors
It’s the first night of camp. It has been raining since I
arrived, and the rain is falling now on the tin roof as I lie in my sagging
cot. I am amazed, that it is June again. As I live through all the other
seasons, I never think about how someday it will be June. And then it
arrives, and I find myself in a place where I have met this month, again
and again – in a small wooden cabin with rain on a tin roof. On the edge
of Long Lake, which welcomes us back every year.
I can’t imagine coming back to this camp and not feeling at home.
Brushing my teeth at Oz and looking up at my reflection in the same
mirror where I’ve seen myself brushing my teeth every year. This camp
is my childhood. It is all of my growing up years, is so much of my
learning how to be a person in this world. How to be a friend, a mother,
a healer. It is a small piece of land that still feels and smells the same
as it did when I was ten years old. The modest stretch of shoreline, the
sound of the H-dock knocking against itself in the water, the rivers that
form in the soggy mulch when it rains.
I remember now why I come here year after year. I remember about
drawing nigh to God, becoming a better person without even noticing it
is happening. I remember what it feels like to have seven shy, smiling
faces look up at me from their covers in the dark, and giving the first
awkward leaning-over-the-bed hugs that I remember receiving all my
summers at camp. I remember the feeling of getting them even as I give
them. I remember now a moonlit lake, the call of loons, and moments of
true inspiration. At the end of the day, being spent for something good.
— Molly Menschel, camper 1991-96, CIT 1997,
counselor & tripper 1999-2007
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100 YEARS AT CAMP NEWFOUND
Peaceful sleeping in the 1950s; BJ Strom, Peg Borchard, Rhoda Koch.
“I remember at bedtime, hearing the quiet
rise and fall of the breath of my cabin mates
— and later, my campers — after we’d all
tucked in, in happy exhaustion.”
— From Julie Casanave, camper 1981-85,
CIT 1986, counselor & staff 1987-96
LAST NIGHT I HEARD A LOON
Last night I heard a little lo-o-on
Laughing, laughing from afar,
It reminded me of Newfound
Whose memories no years can mar,
Then I heard an engine whistle,
the sound of car wheels going ‘round…
Oh! I’d so much rather, than this noise and clatter
Hear a loon at Camp Newfound!
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