a day ago
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- New York Times
A Fresh Appreciation for Nature
When Amani Davidson, 26 years old, was in grade school, she begged her mother to send her to camp. Ms. Davidson had loved nature for as long as she could remember. She and her best friend liked to say, 'Pretty girls love dirt,' and they spent hours outside near their homes in Brooklyn. 'We liked digging up worms and literally playing in the dirt,' she said. She had also been inspired by movies about summer camp, like 'The Parent Trap,' and she pictured camp as involving long walks in the woods and a chance to make new friends.
She was 11 when her mother enrolled her at Camp Anita Bliss Coler, a girls' camp in Fishkill, N.Y., run by the Fresh Air Fund, a nonprofit organization supported by The New York Times. She returned summer after summer, first as a camper and later as a counselor. Eventually, she became a camp leader at Camp Anita and the fund's winter weekend camping programs. This summer, she was the associate director at Camp Tommy, another of the fund's six overnight camps, in Fishkill's Sharpe Reservation.
The word that has epitomized Ms. Davidson's years at summer camp is 'ubuntu,' an African concept that roughly means, 'I am because we are.' The philosophy fostered Ms. Davidson's sense of belonging in her camp community.
To help create the curriculum for Camp Tommy, Ms. Davidson looked back on her own time as a camper. Workshops were fulfilling and instructive, but they did not feel onerous because the heart of her camp experience was swimming, hiking and bonding with friends. It was important to her that Camp Tommy balanced skills development with unadulterated time outdoors.
'I can look at any lesson plan to be like, it is missing things. It needs structure, it needs a frame. It needs this, it needs some fun,' said Ms. Davidson, pointing to her summers as a leader planning the day's activities. She also credits the camp environment with nurturing her ability to find solutions and execute them with confidence.
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