When the cars slowly came up the gravel driveway, windows down, the first thing you saw when you crested the Rockbrook hill was a mob of counselors who seemed to have completely lost their minds. They were jumping. They were waving both arms over their heads. They were clapping and whooping and calling out names. They were hauling trunks, stacking sleeping bags, and smiling wide-eyed in every direction. To a camper leaning out of the window after a long ride, it must have looked like the whole hillside was alive with enthusiasm and energy. Opening day at Rockbrook is a day of cheering, almost from the first minute to the last.

There’s something surprising here. You might think the excitement on opening day belongs to the campers. After all, they’re the ones arriving at the place they’ve been dreaming about for months. But the counselors up on that hill had been doing their own kind of dreaming. They’d made wood-chip name tags by hand. They’d sat with the directors learning who was coming, the shy ones, the dramatic ones, and the girls who might need a little something extra. They’d gone over health notes with the nurses. They’d studied the photos in each camper’s profile, learning names and faces. So by the time the cars started rolling in, the scene on that hill had been building for days. Finally, their anticipation and enthusiasm had somewhere to go. Watching it unfold, you’d be hard-pressed to say who was more excited, the girls arriving or the counselors who’d been waiting for them.

And once it started, the cheering kept on coming. It followed the day from one corner of camp to the next. At the assembly on the hill, each age group sang and clapped along to its line song. Down at the lake, where campers took turns swimming out and treading water for the “swim demos,” every leap off the dock got its own roar from the crowd on the shore. Later in the gym, the activity skits were basically cheering with costumes, whether a climbing demo, a weaving transformation, or a Wild West dance battle with hobby horses. As each activity presented its skit, it was one blast of cheering after another. Yay archery! Yay hiking! And so on. Even our dinner of po-boy sandwiches and cool watermelon ended up woven with cheers, peppered by songs with hand motions like “Yogi Bear,” and driven by calls from table to table. The sound of people being glad about each other, a kind of mutual excitement, marked each moment of the day.

Encountering this much cheering is odd compared to ordinary life outside of camp, but it’s something that makes me smile. It probably made you smile too. If all that jumping and shouting seemed like a bit much, it really wasn’t. It was our way of saying “welcome,” our way of letting you know, “we’re glad you’re here.” This is going to be fun. Let’s get started!

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The campfire caught slowly, and as we all gathered on Vesper Rock in our red and white camp uniforms, the way Rockbrook girls have for more than a hundred years, the woods around us grew darker, from green, to grey, to black, with nothing but firelight left. Sitting on rough log benches, cabin mates tucked tightly together, we began with singing. Soon we were arm in arm, swaying a bit, listening to campers and staff talk about their time at camp. Like so many things over these last few weeks, we were there together and that’s all that seemed to matter. And it occurred to me, hearing the speeches and seeing the emotion of it all, that what we were really doing at this Spirit Fire was recognizing a kind of love.

It’s hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t lived it, but something special grows in us after three weeks of being at Rockbrook. I’ve called it closeness before, and that’s certainly true, but it’s more than that. The campers themselves call it love, and by that they mean a deep, special friendship. It’s an affection between people who delight in each other’s company and want good things for one another. When a camper tells her cabinmate she loves her, she means it. She means “I like being with you, you matter to me, I feel safe and happy when we’re doing things at camp together.”

One of our CITs named Audrey stood up by the fire tonight and put it like this. She told us that her friends back home always ask why she would willingly spend three weeks without her phone, and that she never quite knew how to answer until now. “I came first for the activities,” she said, but “I came back to be with the people.” She described arriving worried on the first day, not sure the campers would like her, but soon was proven wrong. As she got to know the girls, they gave her silly nicknames and, in her words, taught her more than she could ever have taught them. “Even though I’m leaving tomorrow,” she said, “the one thing that I’ll never leave behind is my love for the people here.”

You don’t say a thing like that unless it comes from somewhere deep and true. And what makes it true is exactly what camp provides: the rare conditions that allow genuine connection to grow… extended time together, repeated kindness, relaxed laughter, and a stack of shared memories tall enough to lean on. Give children that much time, trust, and freedom in one another’s company, and affection becomes almost inevitable. Of course they love each other. We’ve watched it blossom all session.

I find myself enormously grateful, grateful in so many ways. To the campers who gave themselves so fully to it. To a staff of young people like Audrey who showed up, enthusiastically, caring from the start. And to you, the parents, who trusted us with your daughters and made all of it possible. We don’t take that trust lightly.

Now that the trunks are packed and the cabins are quiet, what I want most to stay with these camp girls is the discovery that this kind of friendship love is real and theirs to make. They experienced it here, but that same openheartedness can be planted other places too. Start with kindness and trust will follow. The more you care, the deeper you’ll connect. Rockbrook has proven… they can do it.

As the fire burned down and we stood around the lake singing the last of the songs, we all walked back up the hill in the dark by candlelight. There is always something a little aching about that walk. But I think it’s just the love turned around to face the leaving. It’s just part of the experience and I wouldn’t trade it. It’s the people that’ll bring us back.

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When “Beauty and a Beat” came on, the whole floor went up at once. At the top of the dining hall, the checkerboard panel still hung in shreds where Edie had just burst through it to win the race, and below it the room was a sea of people on their feet— campers, counselors, the youngest Juniors who’d been a little wide-eyed an hour before, every last one of them dancing with glorious abandon. Everyone jumping, spinning, waving, no matter what their moves. This was a Rockbrook banquet.

A blow-out party, what we call a “banquet,” has been the grand finale of Rockbrook sessions for longer than most of us have been alive. The whole thing is dreamed up and built by our CA campers, the ninth graders, who pick a secret theme early in the session and then spend weeks quietly scheming — painting panels, plotting skits, choreographing dances, talking the kitchen into special food. The rest of camp knows only that it’s coming. The dining hall windows go dark behind hung sheets for a full day while the CAs work, and the not-knowing is half the fun.

Racing Through Rockbrook

When the bell rings signaling its start and the doors finally open, you don’t so much walk in as emerge into something. The CAs and their counselors form a tunnel in costume, streamers of pink and purple and white overhead, and you come out the other side into a place that was an ordinary dining hall this morning and now is something fantastic. For this banquet it was a racetrack, and they called it, “Racing Through Rockbrook.” Painted panels turned the walls into packed stadiums and roaring crowds, race cars, trophies, and a few sponsor banners like ExxonMobil, Red Bull, and Wonder Bread. Every table was scattered with checkered flags, little cars, souvenir cups, a custom banquet sticker, glow sticks, and racing tattoos waiting to be slapped onto an arm.

The main event lined up six drivers: Mario in full costume with his kart, Athena in a toga riding a hobby horse, Race Car Barbie in head-to-toe pink, Lily as Lightning McQueen, Elena in an F1 jumpsuit, and Edie, the Rockbrook driver, in a red jumpsuit. Greta announced the whole thing in a sport coat, tie, and an elaborate mustache, while Winslow, playing a bald-capped Mr. Clean, advertised Magic Erasers. There were dances for the sponsors, the drivers, and the pit crew of counselors. For the grand finish, Edie tore through that checkerboard panel, taking first place and winning the Redbird Cup.

The food matched the night with classic favorites: chicken tenders, mozzarella sticks, tater tots, and fresh Rockbrookies, the kind of party spread that goes perfectly with skits and dancing. The music was pure pop— Natasha Bedingfield’s “Unwritten” and the rest— bright and loud and impossible for these girls to sit through.

My Favorite Part

Everyone loved the theme, wild, colorful and unique. My favorite part of every banquet is what happens when a roomful of really good friends celebrate like this together. After this much shared experience, and after growing this close, it’s an event that pulls everyone in. Nobody waits around to be cool first. Nobody needs an introduction or even a warm up. It’s a blast from the very first moment. Instant fun, for everyone— the shy ones, the show-offs, the grown-ups too— all of us completely immersed, smiling and happy. The CAs helped build that feeling for us tonight. “It’ll be a hard act to follow,” people said afterward, and they’re right. More than that though, this was a roomful of girls who already love each other, dancing like nothing matters more than being together right here and now. Banquet themes change every summer, and so do the costumes and the music. But that feeling never does.

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Robbie Francis of FrancisFilmworks is back with another highlights video for us this session. Once again, he has captured the upbeat action, sweet interactions, and everyday magic that fill our days at camp. The video gives a wonderful sense of Rockbrook’s mood— the friendships, the laughter, the energy, and the astonishing variety of fun happening all around us.

Take a look, and see camp in action!

Watch the Video Click the image to view this video on our website

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I came across the word “willowwacks” recently and immediately thought of Rockbrook. Pronounced “WILL-oh-wacks,” it’s a noun of uncertain origin meaning a wooded, uninhabited place, a remote and wild stretch of country. It’s separate from civilization, from human-made environments. A willowwacks is a place defined by the forces of nature, alive in fascinating ways.

I thought of Rockbrook because it is, deliberately, a willowwacks. When Nancy Carrier founded the camp more than 100 years ago, she knew its location was special. She wanted campers to fully experience these mountains of western North Carolina, to know them closely, personally. She thought it important for camp to be embedded in the forest, for the activities to grow out of it, for its many gifts to be a daily delight.

That’s why at Rockbrook, even these 100 years later, we all love the chill of the mountain water feeding our lake. That’s why we can hear pileated woodpeckers, spring peeper frogs, and rain chattering on the metal roof of our cabins. That’s the reason we’re surrounded by ancient trees, massive boulders and sparkling waterfalls. At camp we’re greeted by fog in the morning and glowing sunsets at twilight, by twisting roots and vines, pads of moss and clusters of ferns. Every breath fills us with a freshness you can sense immediately. Being this close to nature, face to face with a rich sample of its power and beauty, is at the core of our camp experience.

Of course, camp also includes modern conveniences and comfortable facilities we can name (for example, really nice bathrooms), but our aim over the years has been to keep the wild world close, unmanicured, and alive. We’re careful not to straighten every curve and remove every stone in the path. We prune the rhododendron bushes gently, and respect the many forest creatures we live among.

Living for a time in the willowwacks is important because it both takes away and gives back.

When a girl arrives at Rockbrook, one of the first things that happens is a kind of subtraction from her ordinary world. Here she finds a haven. No ambient hum of air conditioning, no social media feed hijacking her attention, no social pressures demanding a performance. At home we’re protected from nature, even completely removed from it most of the time in the name of convenience. At camp, we’re immersed in it. A manicured park might offer beauty, and Disneyland might promise wonder, but neither delivers the real thing. This is what we mean when we say camp provides a break. The willowwacks strips away the hectic pace of modern life, the algorithms curating our sense of reality, and the abstractions that stand between us and the richness of the world.

Just as quickly, the willowwacks fills this space with direct experience, unmediated, embodied encounters. It gives back. It continually inspires with breathtaking beauty, layer upon layer of fascinating detail, ancient things, living things. A quick glance in any direction at camp is sure to surprise you with something cool— an orange newt dashing through the leaf litter, a spider building a web, the morning dew on the hill, the rolling of thunder off in the distance, the warm sunshine on your face. The willowwacks brings you closer, connecting you to the real world around you, and to the people likewise enjoying its gifts. Living like this expands your awareness, proving that the world we know is merely a sample of what’s out there. We need merely pay more attention to discover it more fully.

Many children today grow up in spaces that have been carefully developed and maintained, built with pre-defined outcomes. There is nothing wrong with those spaces, but they do diminish access to the willowwacks and its gifts.

Camp thankfully preserves that access. It seems to me, we humans need the willowwacks, and perhaps always have. We need to spend time somewhere that’s immediate and real, not manufactured, somewhere that is simply there, alive, rich and mysterious.

Mostly I just feel grateful. Grateful that this place exists, that girls get to wander through it, and that something as old and unhurried as a forest can still stop them in their tracks with an “oh wow!” How lucky is that.

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Looking around this Wednesday afternoon, you would have had a hard time understanding what was happening. A cabin of Juniors in their finest Granny outfits was hosting a tea party, complete with bingo. Down by the barn, another Junior cabin had gone looking for fairies, with a stop at the fairy salon along the way. Past the lake you’d find mermaids getting their hair styled, pirates racing corcls and hunting tadpoles, and a cabin of grannies chasing escaped chickens. It was, in other words, a normal Cabin Day.

We’ve written about this Wednesday tradition plenty of times before, the way the camp sets aside its regular schedule for an afternoon, the bonding that happens when a whole cabin sticks together, and the surprises the counselors dream up and keep secret until the last minute. During the week the girls scatter to their own activities, following their own interests, but on Cabin Day they come back together and do one thing as a cabin group. What that one thing turns out to be is a fun surprise, and a nice change of pace during the week.

Juniors in Make-Believe

Among the Juniors, the themes ran toward make-believe. One cabin switched to full Granny mode— dressing up, sipping tea, and settling in for a round of “Granny Bingo” on the dining hall porch. Another went on a fairy scavenger hunt and built tiny fairy houses in the forest. Two Junior cabins loaded up and headed to the Further Up Farm to pick flowers and meet a few chickens, with a stop at Dolly’s capping the outing.

Middlers in Motion

The Middlers scattered in every direction at once. One cabin made a day at the beach right here in the mountains, with beach games and an octopus sprinkler and picture frames decorated in shells and pearl beads. Another spent the afternoon as mermaids at the lake. There were pirates decorating eye patches between corcl races, a party in the Middler Lodge with felt sleep masks and freshly painted nails, a hike up to Castle Rock that ended with a snack of Puppy Chow, and a tetherball tournament that started with a quick swim.

A Senior Sorting

The Senior Line went bigger, turning the whole afternoon into a camp-wide game of Harry Potter. Dumbledore and the Sorting Hat divided the seniors into Rockbrook houses— White Squirrel, Chocolate Chip, Owala, Tetris Tots, and the Cardinals— and sent them off on a counselor hunt. The houses searched and received a nice reward of Coke floats and an hour of lake-side fun.

Sliding Rock After Dinner

After dinner, we gathered all the Middler cabins together and took them to Sliding Rock. There’s nothing quite like the shriek of girls hitting that cold mountain water at the bottom of the slide, and then climbing right back up to do it again. We followed our sliding, naturally, with a stop at Dolly’s, everyone’s favorite spot for a sweet treat. It’s a classic camp combination: busloads of damp, happy Middlers working through their heaping cones of ice cream, chatting and eventually singing with more force than seems possible.

It might seem random and scattered all over camp… a tea party and tadpoles, grannies and Puppy Chow, an octopus sprinkler and a sorting hat, numerous chickens and plenty of rushing cold water. But Cabin Day is joyfully creative, the kind of silly Wednesday we love at Rockbrook.

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We were chatting the other day in the red rockers on the dining hall porch, a CIT and I, about how camp opens up a space for girls to try new things, and not only to try them, but to lean in to things that otherwise seem a little scary. New encounters and experiences that might feel uncomfortable, beyond what they think they can do, or even just plain “awkward.” Between us we could think of countless examples: girls who, despite being wary of something new, despite worrying they might not be “good” at it, despite all the uncertainty, find themselves meeting a challenge and surprising themselves in the process.

We decided that camp girls know how to lean in. Or better, that camp life teaches girls they can lean in. And better still, that being at camp proves something to all of us— that leaning in to an experience, rather than shrinking away from it, is rewarding, enriching, and fun. In fact, we thought, maybe having fun requires us to lean in. If fun means fully embracing the moment, immersing yourself in the game, the conversation, the feeling of it all, then guarding yourself against it is clearly un-fun. That’s why a sure way to ruin an experience is to stand outside it, distracted by thoughts of what might happen, or what “people might think,” or even what it all might “mean.”

Instead, at camp we sing as loud as we can no matter how it sounds. We put on silly costumes and dance wildly. We paint and weave even though we’re certain we’re not artistic. We climb onto a horse having never touched one before. We flip our kayaks upside down and learn to “wet exit” without panicking. We meet all sorts of new people, try strange new foods (Gumbo!), and take care of a hundred small things without our parents there to smooth out the bumps in the road.

Eventually we landed on a neat little phrase: “If you’re not leaning in, you’re not doing anything.” Hold back, and you’re certainly not getting all you can from an experience— you’re watering it down, skimming the surface, settling for a weak sample of something that could be wonderfully more full. To truly get it, to feel its impact, you have to go beyond what you already know. You have to venture out, to lean in to whatever lies past the edge of your “comfort zone.” And once you drop that “boulder from your shoulder,” you just might find— as Bruce reminded us long ago— that “that’s where the fun is.”

I should add that leaning in is not the same as jumping in. Jumping in throws all caution to the wind; leaning in understands potential risks and takes them into account. It isn’t reckless; it’s prepared and measured. That’s exactly why our adventure activities, like climbing the Alpine tower, depend for their thrill (and their fun) on specialized safety equipment and careful training. To climb without a solid belay would be terrifying, not fun. We should always consider risks and manage them as best we can. But since we can never fully erase the chance that something will feel awkward, or end in embarrassment or even failure, learning to lean in despite the uncertainty turns out to be essential to doing much of anything at all.

Fortunately, no camp girl has to find that courage by herself. Rockbrook is built to help everyone lean in— to notice the camper who’s shrinking back from something new, and to stand beside her until she’s ready to try. So much here is unfamiliar, and that’s just the point: a place where nearly everything is new is a place where leaning in becomes the ordinary thing to do. What makes that possible is the culture of kindness and non-judgment underneath it all, the quiet assurance that nobody is keeping score of who looked silly at dinner, struggled climbing the Alpine tower, or sang off-key at the campfire. Cheered on like that, a girl tends to discover she is stronger than she thinks, more capable than she knows, and braver every day. In ways large and small, Rockbrook en-courages courage.

One more thing I’ve been meaning to pass along: back in March, Rockbrook was selected by Cliffs Living Magazine as a featured camp in their article “Camp Summer.” The piece celebrates how, for more than a hundred years, the camps in this corner of North Carolina have prized “exploration, independence, and time outdoors.” It’s true— there really is a “formative power of place” that summer camps enjoy, and Rockbrook is a wonderful example of it.

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There’s a particular pleasure in a Sunday morning at Rockbrook, and it begins with the wake-up bell ringing a little later than usual. After a week this full of action— all the swimming, tennis, horseback riding, climbing and so forth— a slow start feels great. The girls drifted into breakfast still wearing their pajamas, another long Rockbrook tradition, and a nice nod to taking things easy once in a while. For breakfast, we added fresh Krispy Kreme donuts, also a regular Sunday morning treat at camp. PJs and donuts, a double treat. Afterwards, back at the cabins, everyone changed into their red and white uniforms for two more Sunday morning Rockbrook traditions, flag raising and Chapel.

Our Hi-Up campers, the seasoned tenth graders, serve as the color guard, and they led us in a flag raising ceremony, as the whole camp gathered in a wide circle around them. They raised the American flag and our own Rockbrook flag. We recited the Pledge of Allegiance and sang “In the Heart of a Wooded Mountain” together in the bright morning sun, all of us in red and white against the green grass. Then, quietly, in a single line, we made our way down into the woods to the amphitheater for Chapel.

Chapel on Being Yourself

“Chapel” at Rockbrook isn’t a religious service. It’s a weekly gathering where we slow down and reflect together on a shared idea or value. Over the years it’s grown into an acronym we’re fond of— a Celebration of Happiness, Adventure, Peace, Earth, and Love.

This week the theme was “Be Yourself.” The focal point was Sarah reading aloud from Daniel Pinkwater’s 1977 classic, The Big Orange Splot. It’s the story of a man whose plain house, identical to every other house on the street, gets splashed one day by a runaway can of orange paint, and who then decides, rather than cover it up, to paint it with even more colors, bringing his dreams to life. Initially, his neat-loving neighbors disapprove of his individuality, but one by one they paint their houses too, until the whole street is fantastically different. The girls seemed to really understand how being yourself, despite your differences, can take some courage, but leads to greater happiness. It turns out camp is a wonderful place to see that in action. An odd burst of rain forced us to relocate to the Lakeview Lodge, but that made songs like “Free to Be You and Me” and a few others sound even better.

Two Kinds of Jersey

After rest hour, it was time for an all-camp event: Jersey Day. The girls knew to pack a jersey, and the Landsports field filled up with bright team colors and numbers— a friendly festival of basketball, soccer, and football players in jerseys, foam fingers waving, temporary tattoos and face painting.

Of course we had music bumping, and a few decorations like a yellow giraffe sprinkler, helping the whole thing take on the loud, happy, slightly chaotic energy of a real game day. There was a sub-relay where you stepped through hoops and zigzagged the cones, a station for churning “Jersey-cow butter,” a giant Connect 4 game, a massive nine square in the air game, disc golf, a water balloon toss, and a whole row of inflatable targets for tossing a football or frisbee, kicking a soccer ball, or sinking a basket. Plenty of nachos to keep everyone going. The baseball toss turned out to be the afternoon’s great humbling— ball after ball sailed wide of the hole, and by the end only three girls, Scotty, Dylan, and Effie, could claim they’d actually made one. The rest of us just cheered louder.

And then there were our meals today, a showcase of Rick’s idea of “Jersey Day”. While the girls thought “team jerseys,” Rick thought New Jersey, and he turned the whole menu into a love letter to the Garden State. Lunch was the famous “fat sandwich” born at Rutgers— chicken fingers, mozzarella sticks, and french fries all tucked into one sub roll with honey mustard— alongside giant bowls of blueberries. Dinner took us to the Jersey shore: a fried fish sandwich with homemade tartar sauce, coleslaw, and hush puppies. And for dessert, of course, saltwater taffy, which New Jersey gave the world. Another Jersey to celebrate.

We capped this busy day with a showing of Zootopia 2 in the gym, a recent animated film that, among other things, shows how differences can be worked through with a little communication and empathy. With sleeping bags and crazy creek chairs spread across the floor, the girls settled in to sing and clap along to its songs, happily ready to relax from the day.

A day of jerseys— and proof again that being a little different can be part of what brings us together, and makes the day more fun.

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One of the quietest campers caught my attention last night. She’s a girl who tends to hang back a bit, who thinks about things before jumping right in. And yet there she was at our twilight event, a can of shaving cream in her fist, zooming across the landsports field and cackling as she fired her foam. A little later I saw her grinning as she sculpted a mohawk into her friend’s hair. Something about the whole ridiculous scene had swept her up completely. This was more than ordinary fun. This was exuberant fun, contagious, high-voltage joy spilling out everywhere.

If you’ve never seen one, the setup for a shaving cream fight is super simple. We ring the bell, the girls come pouring down to the landsports field in their swimsuits, and we hand out about a hundred and fifty cans of plain white foam. The music starts pumping. And then, with no instruction whatsoever, everyone knows exactly what to do. Spray it, smear it, plop a full handful right on top of someone’s head. Chase and be chased. Within five minutes there’s foam in everyone’s hair, on every back and shoulder, and the whole field is one big tangle of slippery, shrieking, laughing girls. It is loud, it is messy, and it is about as happy as a group of children can possibly be.

What makes a shaving cream fight so wonderful, though, is that it’s exuberance aimed outward. It’s not so much about covering yourself as it is about covering someone else. You sneak up behind a friend with a fat handful of foam, plant it squarely on her back, and tear off grinning, already bracing for the same in return. You spray, and get sprayed, and both halves are a delight. This is why a shaving cream fight requires other people. It requires pursuit and ambush, shrieks and retaliation, mischief mixed with generosity.

And when the whole group throws itself in at once, something special happens. The exuberance multiplies. Each girl’s silliness gives the next one a little more nerve, and the energy loops around the field, pulling in even the campers who arrived unsure. Nobody is keeping score, nobody is performing, nobody is left out. They are simply, completely, joyfully together. As a parent, this is exactly the kind of fun you hope your child gets to have— unguarded, generous, and shared with good friends.

It’s amazing what these girls can do together— even the quietest ones. All it took was one foamy evening at Rockbrook.

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