Hi all,

Sorry for the lack of posting! The last three weekends have been crazy with family birthdays/Mother’s day celebrations, and I haven’t been able to take the time to sit down to write in much too long. Such is the case today as well, but I just wanted to share the Salutation of the Dawn with everyone.

Listen to the Salutation of the Dawn
Look to this day, for it is life.
The very life of life.
In its brief course lie all the verities and realities of our existence:
The bliss of growth.
The glory of action.
The splendour of beauty.
For yesterday is but a dream,
And tomorrow is only a vision.
But today, well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well therefore to this day.

Such is the Saluatation of the Dawn.

I am lucky enough to live in the most walkable city in the world, and in then morning as I walk to work, I like to do my salutation just like at camp. Do you continue to say your salutations in the morning? Let me know via email, and I’ll share where and when other people like to do their salutations!

Warning: unusually sentimental post

My name is Treble – although my real name is rarely a secret – and I started attending camp when I was eight and haven’t missed a year yet. That makes eight years as a camper, and soon to be six years on staff. Two thirds of my twenty one years have involved spending time at Kalalla.

It is a truly heartbreaking feeling to know that this year may be one of my last years of camp, at least for a while.

I always look forward to camp. I remember having countdowns that started as soon as the camp dates were posted on the website, which was incidentally my homepage for several years. I used to pack my suitcase as early as I could and would re-pack often to try and get it ‘just right’.

I enthusiastically talked to my camp friends throughout the year and always wrote more than one name under ‘is there a friend who you want to be in a cabin with?’ I would sit in school and imagine another year of laughing until we cried, and another game of dancing right on that line between being funny and actually getting in trouble. (If you are one of my campers or are my parents, ignore that. I was perfect. I never got in trouble for making mud slides, or singing loudly at night, or being too rowdy…)

Being staff has been even better. I love the feeling of curing homesickness and of making someone love Kalalla. I love sharing the traditions that I have yet to take for granted. I love teaching songs and inciting joy and enthusiasm. I love laughing in the staff cabin with my friends, always sacrificing the part of my staff eval where I am supposed to be sleeping and taking care of myself.

Mostly though , I love seeing my campers change from year to year. I am studying to be a teacher, and the more I learn about education, the surer that I am that camp is learning in its purest form. Every child has the opportunity to succeed because at camp, so many different parts of a person are valued. I am confident that each girl leaves camp feeling smarter, and more important than when they arrived. It is a true blessing to watch a child grow up at camp, as I did.

But the thing about growing up at camp, is that you are growing up outside of camp too. And eventually, learning to be a grownup starts to get in the way of learning at camp. Each year after high school and before having an actual job, it gets harder and harder to have time for camp, even though we all try to. No one who has been coming to camp leaves camp because the choice is easy. Growing up is hard.

But as comically cheesy as this sounds, camp will always be with me. I will always be impacted by the generations of women and girls that have shaped Kalalla to be the community that it is. I will always wince when I see elbows on table, and be weirdly good at signing quickly (if you ever want a career in rap, ‘I am a C’ and the fast verse in ‘I’ve got the joy’ would be great places to start). I will always be grateful for what Kalalla has given to me.

Hopefully I have a few summers left (my goal has always been 15 in a row) and hopefully I will return a few years after that when I am done grad school. Maybe I will have some daughters someday who will learn to love Kalalla as I do.

(Side note: there are too many Kalalla alumni having baby boys)

For now, I will keep attending camp in the same way that I always have, by cherishing each minute of it. And someday when I can’t be there on that first night, I will tell myself the same thing that I would be telling my homesick campers: “You’ll be home sooner than you know it”.

With love, Treble

One of the reasons that I am so happy to write this blog is that I am always looking for new ways to share Kalalla with my friends and family who don’t get to personally experience it.

It is so difficult to put into words the joy in the first round of “Ungawas”, the beauty of sunset on Vesper Hill or the contentedness of talking about life around a fire with a group of fantastic women. Of course it doesn’t help when I’m too busy dissolving into giggles to get out half the story.

The other day my boyfriend and I were sharing important places with each other using the wonders of Google maps. I typed in “Chemin du Camp Kalalla” and was able to point out to him all the best kayaking spots: the Lily Pond, the Tunnel and Spider Island. You can even see the swimming area and the boathouse.

I loved sharing these sights with him, as each one came with at least one story of a happy moments of my life.

So this begs the question, how do you share Kalalla with your loved ones? Have you ever introduced someone to the Camp Kalalla experience by bringing them as a camper or staff? I’d love to hear your stories. Just send them to blog@kalalla.com.

I am years, upon years, upon years of tradition, and history, and learning, and love.

Hey all,

Calypso here. For those of you who don’t know me, I am a third generation Kalalla girl. My grandmother, Gribbet was camp nurse for many years. My aunts Jellybean and Yogi were campers and then staff. My mom, Stitch, was a counselor and a craft resource person. My cousin Yoshi worked in the kitchen.

For me, Kalalla has always been a family affair. But I’m still surprised how after each session, my family has grown by so many amazing women that I didn’t know a week ago.

As your resident Vancouverite, Kalalla is unfortunately too far for me to make the trip each year, so I’m going to be contributing in a more virtual way – by running this fancy new blog. And by running, I don’t mean me writing each week. We want to share everyone’s Kalalla memories and thoughts. To submit something, just send me an email at blog@kalalla.com. Campers, please make sure to ask your parents before emailing in. Also, only first names or camp names will be used in all posts.

Even if you don’t want to write a whole blog post, I still want to hear from you. Tell me a funny anecdote from your camp adventures, or a hope for summer 2015, or even what camp song is stuck in your head (or parents – what song you wish your daughter would just stop singing already). As you send me these types of things, I’ll compile them into a larger post.

Also, for the record, the song that gets stuck in my head most often is “Our God is an Awesome God”, and I’m not even sure we sing it at camp anymore!