Introduction
It’s a farm road. I can’t remember if it’s paved or gravel or just dirt, but you know the kind … Trees line both sides: big old maples and oaks. In my memories of driving into camp , the trees are always green. That’s because most of my camp memories are from summer. But I’ve been there in all the other seasons too. Yes, I’ve been to camp in winter. The pond was frozen and we played pick-up hockey. We always passed a dairy on the way in, I seem to remember; but most of this is blurry until we see the sign “A sacred meeting place.” It’s like this space has been marked out as special for me. I know this camp is special—I just do. I know that this place has been set aside by something Greater. There is a reverence here. And the volume on my feelings was turned up. I feel just a little more connected here. Connected to what, I don’t entirely know … maybe nature? Maybe people? I guess it didn’t concern me much back then—I only started over-analysing later in my life—but I knew then as I know now, this place is sacred.And now the driveway, the very long driveway, climbs over the landscape and down into the main camp site. The driveway is gravel. It’s a steep hill down and up and down again. The pond is on the right, then the director’s house is on the left, which is followed by the field (where we played sponge wars), and then the little pool, and—oh! The freezing rush of early morning polar bear dips comes over me just thinking about that pool. On the right, as you come into the main area, is the camp office and dining hall; homemade macaroni and cheese is still my favourite.And that’s sort of where the driveway ends and the rest of the camp takes over. That funny little shack that’s inscribed with my cousin’s name and the woods … what was it called again? Something romantic, like Beech hollow or Oak valley. It’s where the kitchen staff used to eat lunch. Then staff quarters for those who didn’t have a cabin with kids. The toilet and shower block. Then “the horseshoe,” with little cabins nestled neatly at the edges of the forest. The craft shack and a set of swings sits in the middle. In my childhood, I believe, there was other play equipment in the middle too. Someone once told me that there was a bridge in the woods, behind the cabins somewhere; a kissing bridge they said it was, or was it a rock? I never ventured that far so I still don’t know if it exists.The whole site was filled with sound. Birds and insects? Yes, but the air was perforated with children laughing and yelling and having a great time. You could be noisy at camp. In fact, being noisy made you king! If you could sing loudly or shout with enthusiasm then you belonged to the musical and social fabric of this world. And songs … we sang all the time. We sang to wake and eat and wait and walk and play and sleep. The constellations of sounds that engulfed us at camp were heady and giddy at times, soothing and reassuring at others. Music set the rhythm and pace of the day.When I revel in these memories and indulge this nostalgia, I feel like summer camp opens up like a grand theatre curtain at the beginning of a much-anticipated performance. In fact, when I muse over this short narrative, I can almost imagine my summer camp experiences coming to life in wildly exaggerated animation, like the beginning of a Looney Tunes cartoon. There is something cheesy or canned about my recollections, yet I teeter toward not recognising this because I buy, and want to buy, so completely into this constructed fantasy. I want to believe the discourses about the happiness and innocence of camp that is so privileged in this particular leisure space. I want to be in this bubble world, even if only for a short while, so that I may enjoy the pleasures and invoke the dizziness, like falling in love, which it incites. I long to hang in the fictional hammock created for and by camp experiences. (Personal narrative)
This personal narrative recognises the specialness of my childhood camp or, at least, the specialness I attributed to it. The feeling of entering a space and time that was uniquely there for fun and friendship was constituted through discourses, some of them competing, and resulted in my belief that my camp was sacred. Perhaps it was the Iroquois name that translated to “a sacred meeting place” or my camp’s explicit faith-based association that set the tone of the spiritual element but there was a clearly acknowledged specialness among attendees. For this and other reasons, I often call camp “the bubble” and, it turns out, so did many of my interview participants. When asked about it, one interview participant replied, “We all call it that!” implying that this slang is obvious, common and normal parlance of camp folk. As my research progressed, it showed that this sense of specialness towards their camp was felt by most long-time camp participants (campers and staff). I knew that I wanted to pursue how this “specialness” was constituted for and by camp participants, particularly camp counsellors who spend all summer in and creating this specialness.
Reflecting now on my time as a camper, the fun and desire to belong to my camp’s community obscured my ability to critique those experiences. I saw camp community as an overwhelmingly positive experience. Even the language used to describe camp landmarks like Sunset Bridge, Vesper Point or Campfire Circle, worked to maintain the fantasy and my desire to stay and play. I mobilised dominant discourses of recreational fun and moral development as the purposes of camp experiences. It was not until I was a camp counsellor, positioned to govern my own and others’ camp experiences that I began to recognise the ruptures in these discursive formations about the truth of camp. For example, how was it that camp was all about having fun but there were times where paddling 3 days down a river felt like work? Foucault explains that this happens when discursive formations sustain a regime of truth (Foucault, 1980; Hall, 2001). We take for granted the discourses about a thing or a place, such as camp, unquestioningly, and reproduce this as the truth for others and ourselves. It is this “truth,” specifically the discourses that shape the truth of camp counsellor employment experiences, that this book sets out to explore.
Previous camp research has largely drawn upon post-positivist traditions that have focused on identifying the benefits and outcomes of camp experiences (Bolden, 2005; Dorian, 1994; Ewert & Yoshino, 2011; Garst, Browne, & Bialeschki, 2011; Gustafsson, Szczepanski, Nelson, & Gustafsson, 2012; Henderson, 1995, 2007; Henderson & Bialeschki, 1999; Henderson et al., 2006–2007; Henderson, Thurber, Schuler Whitaker, Bialeschki, & Scanlin, 2006; Holman & McAvoy, 2003, 2005; Povilaitis & Tamminen, 2018; Russell, 2000; Williams, 2013; Wilson, Akiva, Sibthorp, & Browne, 2019). This book aims to address a gap in the literature concerning the need for a more critical exploration of the complex socio-cultural processes shaping camp counsellor employment experiences. I draw upon a post-structuralist approach to engage in a deeper qualitative exploration of how everyday power relations shape the emotional well-being of camp counsellors. My research is concerned with rethinking the management of summer camps beyond a focus on recreation skills and moral development to incorporate a better understanding of how young camp counsellors experience the emotion work entailed in their employment. The findings of this research will contribute to the development of more reflexive management approaches that take into consideration the ethical responsibility camp managers have for the emotional well-being of employees and participants. Moreover, my research holds wider implications for how emotional work is acknowledged and managed in other leisure service provision roles and settings.
For those who have not experienced summer camp, the context of this study may be wholly alien. This chapter provides insights into how summer camps, specifically in North America, are defined and described. This includes an overview of governing bodies and the diversity of summer camps available to families. My personal motivation for this study stems from my own involvement in summer camps and outdoor education. This is explored briefly in this chapter and why I have chosen to explore the experiences of staff in this unusual context. I offer a brief overview of how the data was collected and analysed for the study that informs this book. Finally, this chapter closes with an outline for orienteering the following chapters.
What Is Summer Camp?
Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh! Here I am at Camp Granada. Camp is very entertaining and they say we’ll have some fun if it stops raining. (Sherman, 1963)
For the past 150 summers, children and youth (6–16 years) have been attending organised summer camps throughout North America. The foci of these camps are to enrich the lives of campers through educational, recreational, social and spiritual development opportunities (American Camp Association, 2008). According to the American Camp Association (ACA), camp is defined as “a sustained experience which provides creative, recreational and educational opportunity in group living in the outdoors” (American Camp Association, 1993, p. 14). This is provided through a variety of recreational activities and group living in the outdoors (Meier & Henderson, 2012). There are many forms of camp ranging from residential, day, expedition or travel, specialised, educational or school, conference or retreat camps across the globe and all seasons. This study’s focus is on organised summer camps. However, according to Meier and Henderson, the delivery of all camp experiences relies on “trained and well-qualified staff” (Meier & Henderson, 2012, p. 5); so, I argue, the findings presented here about camp counsellors can be considered in relation to outdoor leaders across a range of camp experiences and spaces.
Camps in a Global Context
Residential summer camps can be found in most developed and developing countries across the world. A recent report by the International Camping Fellowship (2018), the peak international professional body, reported membership (just under 5000) from 97 different countries. This report illustrates strong camping movements, according to membership numbers, in Australia, China, United States of America (USA), Canada, Russian Federation, Mexico, Japan, Malay...