There’s a Place for Us

"We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give."

~ Winston Churchill

I really love learning. I’m curious about how things work and why things do what they do. Also, I love people. Well, I don’t like mean people, but I generally love being with people – nice people, at least. Combine my love of learning and love of (nice) people with a love of the arts and one can see why I have loved teaching summer theater camp for the last couple of decades. Theater camp. In the summer. Seriously. It’s a thing.

For the last many years, I’ve taught theater this and that with some of the finest humans on the planet in the mountains just outside of Durango, Colorado and also in Ephraim, Utah, which is also in the mountains. Sounds super random, I know. It is, I suppose. I think all great things start out that way. Like, Cupertino, California was basically a fruit orchard before becoming better known as silicon valley. Marsh lands and a small U.S. military town once stood where Disney World with its nearly 30,000 acres of fun now resides. I think sometimes we think of places of importance as always having been what they are today. Wasn’t New York City always filled with skyscrapers and Broadway? Haven't movie-making and famous people always riddled southern California? Those four presidents' heads were always there in the mountains of Rushmore, right? Durango and Ephraim were once just small mountain towns to me, no different than any other small dot on a map; until they weren’t. Until they became where summer theater camp happened. To me. For me.

Prelude to each summer session begins with fresh bouts of inspiration as I plan classes while rummaging through show tunes to find just the right songs and scenes. I love and look forward to these months of anticipated organization. Going to camp has always been a family affair. All four of my daughters attended most of the six years they could – ages 12 through 18 – and my wife was camp nurse for several years. Even our son came one or two years; while he did not attend camp, he enjoyed time in the area with other friends and family. Some years, the drive was just eight hours or so across the state. After we moved to Chicago, it involved no less than a three-day drive each way, usually including a week or so visiting safe havens along the way. The investment in planning and attending in terms of time, money, and miles each year was not a small thing. The return, however, made the investment ever so worth it.

There may have been something in the water, dust, dirt, or bright sun in Durango and Ephraim that made camp special. Maybe. In reality, my camp experience has had more to do with the people involved. In all my years of involvement in the community, work, church, etc., I’ve never experienced the level of support and acceptance, the opportunity to overcome to and be brave, the sense of safety and togetherness as I did these years at theater camp. For one week, 60-80 campers, a dozen or so camp counselors, and a dozen or so instructors, directors, and other support staff, walk into a Brigadoon-like experience that doesn’t – can’t – exist the other 51 weeks of the year. It shows up for seven days each summer and disappears as quickly as it appeared, in a whisk of smoke and mist. For that one week, we sing, dance, act, dream, reach, stretch, and learn, all the while carrying each other, rooting and celebrating one another. We get to rest from the pressures of not being good enough for the rest of the world the rest of the year and, more importantly, from ourselves. We’re reminded, in that week, that wherever we’re at on the path of life, it’s a good place. An acceptable place. A perfectly fine place. In the process, we also learn a bunch of songs, new dances, and make a lot of new friends. It’s the greatest therapy on the planet, this thing. Taking a lot, it gives far more.

Last summer was my last summer teaching theater camp. I think. My girls have graduated out of the program, and it’s time for me to divest and return to invest time, money, and miles into something next. What that may be exactly isn’t yet defined. The winds of theater camp etched deep grooves into the hard rock of my soul. I have been deeply, forever changed. I remain in debt to the experience and the people who thrust and shared this experience on me these many years. God bless theater camp and the people who thanklessly, selflessly, and painfully serve it up to the universe. It is a bright light of healing, love, and wonder in an ever-increasing world of questionable and threatening uncertainness. It very likely saves lives every summer. It certainly changed mine. For the better.

Gratefully, my thirst for learning continues to animate in a healthy cycle of curiosity and resolve. And I still love spending time and getting to know people. Well, nice people. I look forward with anxious anticipation to what I might do these coming summers to fill the theater camp void. Nothing can replace it. It’s just time to find something new to add to my journey. I can’t wait.

In the spirit of theater camp, I pledge to find ways to sing, dance, love, learn, and accept those paths I cross along the way of my journey. It may not be Brigadoon, but I believe that “Somewhere” is here. Now. Every day. There’s a place for us, and I’m still building it; one chasse, smile, and song at a time.