Getting Staired At

Yes, the title will eventually make sense.

As I’ve written here in the past, I spent many summers at Camp Nebagamon in Lake Nebagamon, Wisconsin, situated in the upper northwester corner of the state about a half-hour drive from Duluth/Superior.  I began at the camp as a five-year-old at Family Camp after the season ended, then through years in two-week stints as the son of the camp doctor, then a camper and finally counselor.  Nebagamon is entering its impressively 93rd year, having began in 1929 by Muggs and Janet Lorber and has many illustrious alumni in that near-century, among them Broadway legend John Kander, Oscar-winning screenwriter brothers William and James Goldman, former Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kander (yes, great-nephew of the above) and a great many more, including one I most-recently found out about (and wrote about here), TV host Andy Cohen. 

I also wrote here about the intriguing history of the camp’s song, “Thanks for the Pines” written by legendary songwriters Gus and Grace Kahn, who were friends of the camp’s founders Muggs and Janet Lorber, and whose son Donald went to Nebagamon. 

By the way, I mean truly legendary, no hyperbole.  Gus Kahn wrote the lyrics to some of the most classic songs in American music history, including "It Had to Be You," "Dream a Little Dream of Me," "Carolina in the Morning," "Makin' Whoopee," "Yes Sir! That's My Baby," "Toot Toot Tootsie," "San Francisco" ("Open your Golden Gate..."), "Ain't We Got Fun," "I'll See You in My Dreams," and so many more.  They wrote the camp song after going up to visit one summer.  In fact, because they were so famous (I mean, again, no hyperbole – in 1951, a Hollywood movie biography was made about their life, “I’ll See You in My Dreams” starring Danny Thomas and Doris Day!)  I had reason to luckily meet Grace Kahn late in her life.  I tell the story in the article I link to above, but I’ve always loved that when I told her I’d gone to Nebagamon and loved the camp song.  She said, “You know, between the two of us, we wrote some of the greatest songs ever written, and I’ve had more people come up to me to tell me about that camp song than any of them.”

(I have a friend who went to another summer camp in Wisconsin and always is going on about great it was, in part because he’s friends with the guy who started the camp, but also sort of in a competitive way with me, knowing that Nebagamon was a “rival” to his camp.  I generally bite my tongue rather than regularly respond, “You’re aware, right?, that your friend actually went to Camp Nebagamon and patterned his camp on it.”  Generally, I bite my tongue about that.  Thought not always.)

This is all background, and not directly to the point here.  Though it’s also to explain why I stay in touch with the camp – not to many of the former campers over the years – including its off-season newsletter, “The Arrowhead” and alumni newsletter, “The Keylog.”

Nebagamon is currently on its fourth set of owners, a couple Adam Kaplan (who spent 18 summers at the camp as a camper, counselor and village administrator, so he’s truly continuing the legacy (or in Nebagamon’s motto, to “Keep the Fires Burning”) and Stephanie Hanson, who has a Masters degree in business from Northwestern.  (Yes, I know that’s sort of a non sequitur here, but as you're aware by now I like to mention the beloved Northwestern whenever the opportunity appropriately allows itself.)

Anyway, Adam always writes a commentary for “The Arrowhead,” and they’re often quite nicely done, but I thought this months was especially terrific.  Not only very well-written (and amusing and self-effacing), but very insightful.  Ostensibly, it about the value of summer camp – and he makes some excellent points about it – but to get there he writes about matters that I think are critical and often overlooked a lot in society in general.

The theme comes from an episode of the HGTV series he admits to watching religiously, House Hunters.  And it concerns a family looking for a new house, but one of their conditions is that it can’t have stairs.  (See!  I told you I'd get to it!) Their reason is out of concern that their new baby Hannah could get hurt on them. Adam writes –

“Now, of course, on the surface, this is not a problem. Of course we should protect those that we love from danger. But, what we sometimes lose sight of is the fact that in our efforts to protect them from these dangers, we also inhibit their growth. Sure, the best way to ensure that Hannah never falls down the stairs is to create a world in which there are no stairs to fall down. But, the reality is, that world doesn’t exist. There ARE stairs in the world, and Hannah is going to have to learn to climb them eventually, and the only way to learn that skill is for her to practice ON STAIRS. It is just completely unrealistic to remove the stairs from her life. Life has stairs.”

He takes this them and build on the metaphor for how it applies throughout life.  And that blends into his later point about summer camp.  Like how the kids have to solve countless problems – physical and social – without having a parent around to guide them.  Again, he writes –

“At home, we never hand a sharp knife to our 9 year old and ask them to whittle a spoon. At home, we never offer a handful of strike-anywhere-matches to our 10 year olds and ask them to build and light a fire. At home, if we happened to take our family canoeing (a rare thing for sure!) most of us would insist that the kids ride in the duff, while we parents ensured everyone’s safety by paddling….And, intentionally flipping the canoe??!? Never…..not a chance…..too dangerous…..never on our watch….no modern parent in their right mind would ever! At camp, our children learn all of these skills. They learn the knife, fire, and canoe skills that, with best intentions, we modern parents would be unlikely to allow them to learn on our watch.”

As long as these excerpts are, they’re only a part of the longer piece.  Which as I said, is extremely good.  If you want to read the whole thing, you can find it here