When You Fall in Love with a Place

For me, it was love at first sight when I first drove up the hill and arrived at Camp Glen Brook as a six-year-old. I had traveled all the way from New York in the back seat of our family station wagon to drop off my older siblings for summer camp. And even though in that moment I knew it wasn’t me who would be moving into a cabin and staying at this magical place for the next three weeks, I couldn’t help but feel that Glen Brook was a place meant for me. 

When I was old enough, I attended camp both as a camper and as a Waldorf student visiting each year on class trips. In high school, I became a CIT, a counselor, and even joined the seasonal staff for three years after college. Every time I returned to Glen Brook, I felt as if I were coming back home. I just loved being here.

Yet, it was always a mystery to me why I loved Glen Brook so much. It’s a beautiful campus, for sure – forests, fields, streams, a pond, and even a stunning view of Mount Monadnock. The people have always been great, too. But how did the camp just happen to attract such kind and caring counselors and fun and joyful campers? And the activities – meadow games, hiking, swimming, archery, art, farming, ropes course, camping trips – all so amazing. And the food! There was surely something deeper going on. 

Until I became a Waldorf teacher twelve years ago, I simply chalked it all up to the Glen Brook “magic,” a mysterious explanation that made my love of the place sort of make sense. After completing the Waldorf teacher training, I began to understand that Glen Brook is magical by design. Woven throughout all the elements of what makes this camp program what it is, there is an intentionality guided by a deep understanding of and respect for childhood. And this answered my question of why the campers were fun and joyful and why the counselors were caring and kind. The context, structure, and design of life at Glen Brook elicits the very best in each of us, and we can’t help falling in love with the place because of how it makes us feel.

What is “Waldorf” about summer camp at Glen Brook?

There are principles and concepts that guide Waldorf educators in how they work with children, whether in schools, camps, or in other settings. They help us to meet children where they are with interest and warmth. Who are you and what do you need from me to help you along your way? How can I be the person you need me to be for you to feel seen and accepted, to learn and grow, to have fun, to be joyful?

In our program, the elements of Waldorf education show up in different ways:

• How we structure the flow of our time together allows for rhythm and routine.
• The balance of the diverse activities allows the days and the weeks to breathe.
• Our programs are designed to meet the developmental stages of the campers. 
• We design a diversity of experiences in which campers can experience a wide range of moods or feelings: excitement, surprise, joy, wonder, anticipation, and reverence.
• Campers are led to engage their will, pushing through challenges and growing and stretching together and individually. This builds the camper’s self-esteem and confidence to do hard things in the future.
• We are a completely unplugged and screenfree camp. We prefer to spend our time playing, talking, working, and laughing with each other directly, face-to-face.
• We orchestrate archetypal experiences of childhood: playing tag in the meadow, catching tadpoles in the pond, sleeping outside under the stars, hiking a mountain, telling stories around the campfire, backpacking and canoeing for multi-day trips with guides and friends.
• We are child-centered. For our administrative staff and counselors, the campers and the quality of their experience are always at the center of the decisions we make. 
• In all that we do, we strive to be purposeful and intentional. We are just as intentional about making our beds and sweeping the cabin floors as we are about having fun singing our favorite camp songs or enjoying a delicious, homemade, chocolate chip cookie for dessert.

These Waldorf approaches to designing youth programs and working with children have a cumulative effect on a camper’s experience: it’s magic. 

When you fall in love with a place, it’s another way of saying that you feel like you belong. You feel accepted in the place where you are. To give that sense of belonging to a child is an incredible gift. And as staff, this is our work: to see everyone as belonging to the Glen Brook community and to receive them in such a way that this feeling of belonging becomes their lived experience of camp. When you have this feeling, you can be at ease, feel safe, connect with others, and gain self-understanding. You can work through challenges and conflicts, which are a part of every healthy human relationship. You can take risks that help you stretch and grow. You can laugh and have fun!

The wonderful thing about the word belonging, or be-longing, is that it captures the longing we all have for community and connection. When this deep longing is satisfied, it feels like we’ve arrived home. This can so clearly be tied to a specific place, and Glen Brook has been that for so many people over the past eighty years. 

May all children have the opportunity to fall in love with a place like Glen Brook. 

-Daniel Foster, Youth Program Director