Dani S was writing in blog class today about how time seems to go by very differently at camp to when she’s at home. To quote, “At Camp Starlight, the days are long but if you blink, you’ll miss a week,” and she couldn’t have put it more precisely. Visiting Day is upon us already and it seems like only yesterday since the campers first got off the buses. So, for those people who are no longer able to come to Camp Starlight, the memories are so vivid it seems like only yesterday since you were here, yet in the same way it seems like such a long time ago.
As Camp Starlight celebrates its 65th anniversary, we look around and see while campers and staff may come and go, they all leave their mark. At the start of this summer there were 2,652 bunk plaques hung on the rafters in the dining hall. From the ten bunks who started it all in 1947, to the 50 bunks we have today, every camper who has ever spent the season with us is literally ingrained into the fabric of the building. Every time you look up you see a plaque you never noticed before, read new names and wonder who they were and what their time was like at camp.
This morning, David pointed out two stars which had been buried in the ground by the flagpole forty years ago to celebrate 25 years at Camp Starlight. These were only discovered a couple of years ago and had been hidden in the flowerbed for safe-keeping. They are now proudly on show for all to see and remind us of summers past. This year we are collecting various pieces of camp memorabilia to go into the 65th anniversary time capsule for future generations to find. Live for the present, remember the past and look for the future and you can be guaranteed that the best memento of camp life is the memories which will never die.