Winning Strategies

July 1, 2025

Why take the junior campers off to Sugarloaf (see album of that name) when the trail up Mt. Mist starts just a mile or so up the road from camp?  We are tying to win boys over to the joys of hiking and the Sugarloafs are an easy first hike with glorious views of the Presidential Range, to include Mt. Washington, the tallest peak in the northeast. Tacking on a round of putt-putt golf maybe sealed the deal.

Why take seniors to the Franconia ridge when many have done this hike before?  You get a ton of bang for your buck on this one and who knows what the weather was like on previous endeavors? It surely was a sparkler yesterday.

Why take a group down to White Sands (see Sara’s June 30 album) at the southern end of Lake Tarleton when we have a marvelous sandy beach right here at camp?  Boys paddled or floated their way down to this very shallow part of the lake whose sandy bottom extends far from the shoreline. Sara acknowledged the taking of hundreds of photos to produce the culled dozen or so in her album. This takes tons of work but she is fulfilled when she can uncover a few photographic gems in the editing process.

The program guys would be the first to admit that the goal is to win over boys to the fun of camp. For newcomers especially, this does not necessarily come about in one day, nor nine days either. So, they just plug away every day, all day long, in the quest of that elusive moment when everyone is fully adjusted to life away from home, cell phones, and you! I’ll take 21 days in the over-under lottery. We are ahead of schedule, many have ascertained. More on this later.

Now go to Counselor Photos week  2. We had another council fire last evening. The added luster to this gathering was the knowledge that the overnight campers on Webster Cliff would signal camp with flashlights from that rocky perch just below the beautiful campsite on the summit. Starting from the fourth photo in that series, you can see the exchange for yourselves.

Beneath that you can see boys scaling the big rock that adorns the far end of Pines Field. Trick photography makes it seem like boys are scaling El Capitan in Yosemite Park. I once turned my camera sideways to make it seem that boys were hiking up a vertical cliff. Some parents, for sure, got their jollies out of that prank.

A few raindrops might be an annoyance this morning, but I can hear the clinics going on outside my office window. Teaching boys to learn to deal with a bit of adversity now and again is another plank in our winning strategies platform.

Added: Here is the list of boys who shined flashlights from Webster Cliff last night.