Campfire Tales | Counselors They’ll Remember (8/1/25)

By Aaron Selkow, Owner/Director

There’s a very particular kind of magic in the air at Chestnut Lake right now. Week 5 is a moment of beautiful tension — a balance of beginnings and endings, of fresh starts and deep roots. On one hand, we welcomed a brand-new wave of Second Session campers just four days ago — wide-eyed, eager, and ready to dive into everything. On the other hand, we have an amazing group of Full Summer campers who are now already five weeks into their journey — seasoned, confident, and now serving as bunk leaders, torch-bearers of tradition, and quiet mentors for the newer kids.

This week also marked the start (and conclusion later today) of Discovery Camp, a special five-day experience designed for younger campers to dip their toes into the Chestnut Lake experience. These sixty kids packed a full summer’s worth of excitement into less than a week — and now head home with paint on their arms, songs in their heads, new friendships formed, and hopefully, the start of a long camp story that’s just beginning. All of these experiences — the firsts, the middles, and even the goodbyes — are different. But they are all rooted in the same core truth:

Camp is about connection. And that connection is so often made real through one person: a counselor.

I’ve told this story before, but it feels especially important right now.

It was 1982. I was twelve years old. It was another summer at my camp, and what I wanted more than anything in the world was a pair of high-top Converse Weapon basketball sneakers — not just any pair, but the exact pair that my counselor Todd wore. Looking back, I didn’t really want the sneakers. I just wanted to be like him.

Todd was from Maryland, and he would someday become an attorney — a world away from my home in Philadelphia, where my future career plans had me playing point guard alongside Andrew Toney for the Sixers. He was charismatic and brilliant, a tennis player who somehow knew everything about music, politics, and the world. He told stories that made you sit up straighter. He played Grateful Dead tapes and talked about Israel and Europe like someone who had been places. He went to Emory, and he had a girlfriend.

He wasn’t perfect. But Todd had a kind of gravity to him. When he spoke, you listened. When he asked you how you were doing, he seemed to actually mean it. He didn’t talk down to us. He didn’t perform. He showed up — again and again, every single day — and made us feel like we mattered. He was the first person outside my family who made me feel truly seen.

Fast-forward to now — July 2025, Week 5 at Chestnut Lake. This week, I watched a first-time camper cry on the first night — missing home, overwhelmed, unsure. One of our counselors sat beside him for almost an hour, gently coaxing out a smile. That same camper led the cheers the next morning at Flag Football when his team scored the tying touchdown. I saw a Discovery Camper nervously eyeing the Aqua Park (Wibit), uncertain she could make it even off of the dock. Her counselor — all encouragement, no pressure — offered a quiet “you’ve got this.” That camper made it to the top of “Number 4” and jumped off into the water without a care in the world.

And I saw a few Full Summer campers who now are the Todds — sitting at picnic tables at Chestnut Commons with some old and new campers, laughing, explaining the difference between Varsity-1 and Varsity-2 (I heard some true things and some that were not…I opted to let it slide because they were having fun), and modeling the kind of connection that campers who have been at Chestnut for at least a few summer understand and value.

And then there are the counselors.

The job of a counselor is, in some ways, impossible to explain and impossible to overstate. They are substitute parents, older siblings, life coaches, cheerleaders, conflict mediators, teachers, and buddies— often all in the same day. They stay up late and get up early. They deal with bug spray and homesickness, group dynamics and lost water bottles. They lead chants and tie shoes, teach life lessons and wipe away tears.

And while they may not realize it yet, they are shaping memories that your children will carry with them for decades. There are kids here at Chestnut Lake this summer — right now — who have already decided that they want to come back someday not just as campers, but as counselors. And not because it looks easy. Not because it’s always fun. But because they see the impact being made on them, and they want to pass that forward. That’s the counselor effect. That’s what Todd gave me. That’s what I see happening here every day.

I’ll never forget the day that summer ended in 1982.

The session ended, as it always does, too soon. Most of us filed out with high-fives and half-smiles, not sure how to say what we were feeling. I was the last to leave my bunk, dragging my feet, holding back tears. Todd saw me. He walked over, hugged me (maybe the first real hug I ever got from a male role model who wasn’t family), and told me he was proud of me. He reminded me of what I’d done that summer — what I’d learned — and then he disappeared into the sea of counselors and trunks.

Many hours later, when I unpacked at home, I found his red and white Converse sneakers in the bottom of my bag. He had left them there. No note. No fanfare. Just a life-altering gesture. That summer — and that counselor — never left me. They’re part of the reason I do what I do now.

And so when I look around Chestnut Lake in Week 5, I know exactly what I’m seeing. I’m seeing lives being changed. I’m seeing futures being shaped. I’m seeing kids who, someday, will talk about this summer. About this camp. And about these counselors.

Here’s to a great last couple of weeks!