“I think, therefore I affect.”

Lynne McTaggart

Life, like a cosmic Easter Egg hunt, is an on-going search for pearls of wisdom. These pearls are in the climax of every book, the punch line of every joke and the sound bite of every masterful speech. When you find “good” ones, you know you will use them later, so you pick them up and carry them with you. Sometimes you look really hard and keep as many as you can, and other times you hardly notice the search, and yet somehow stumble on pure genius hidden in plain sight. All that you gather is treasure, crafted into your pathway on a quest for excellence.

The trouble is, pearls are all very hard to keep track of! Maybe it would be easier if you kept them all in the basket, but for some reason you don’t. Some go on the window sill and some above your work station; some you carry in your backpack and some only get found when you empty your pockets for the wash. Some you may even store away somewhere, and forget you even had! Every so often when you’re in a pickle, you may realize you left too many of them on the floor and hastily trip. Imagine that! So much wisdom all around you that you have to watch your step!

“I have only these hands. They are the hands of a builder. One day they may yet build an empire.”

Romulus

Coming to you now in my 7^th great year at Augusta, I wonder what craziness could be next?! I’ve seen a summer as a Counselor, a summer as a HERO, two summers watching over the Challenge Course, two winters as Registrar and now I enter my third summer as Pine Village Leader. Camp Augusta is a part of life in the same way as family. I have known six years of best friends, cherished loved ones and tearful goodbyes. I have watched hopeful campers grow up through the CIRCLE program to become counselors. I have seen lives change entire directions to brand new career pathways, and I have thrown in my voice on decisions that have affected hundreds of people in my community. I have written a life story’s worth of philosophy and KM.

I see reflections of the forest of the backs of my eyes, and reflections of all the people and campers and friends on the walls of my heart. It is my favorite place I know anywhere in the world, and the only place I have stayed at continuously for more than a year and a half in all of my adult life. When I sleep, I dream about my friends from Camp Augusta, and when the campers return each spring to fill the empty space with laughter and vitality, I know a joy unlike any other in this world.

“I suppose I do have one unembarrassed passion. I want to know how it feels to care about something passionately.”

Susan Orlean

What does it mean to give birth to an idea? To chase a vision to the very ends of possibility, temper it through forge and fire, track down its every needed supportive molecule from the edges of reason, and finally place its shinning product upon a mantle… It is majesty. It is passion, resolve and audacity. It is the ability to see something not for what it is, but for what it can be. With the awe and wonder of all that is around me, how could I not be inspired?

When I was five years old, I can remember telling everyone around me that I wanted to be an astronaut when I grew up. When I told my dad, he told me to tell everyone that I wanted to be an astrophysicist instead. Years later he admitted that it was just because he found it funny that I couldn’t pronounce the word “physicist” properly at the time. When I was ten, I was pretty sure I wanted to be a skydiving instructor. I had seen a special about them on TV, and literally could not think of a job that seemed cooler in the entire universe. By the time I got to college, I was convinced of an ability for ninja mind reading skills, and I declared my major in psychology under the mission statement of going into therapy and counseling. By the time four more years had gone by, I was pretty sure that I would actually go into journalism and become an author…

“THESE are the times that try men's souls.”

Thomas Paine

Today, graduation is five years behind me, and where am I? I am one year into a Master’s Degree in Camp Administration! Five years from now I may be writing to you all from the director’s chair of my very own summer camp of Augustan offspring. You know what the crazy thing is though? All those many passions for career paths envisioned long ago are still there. I’ve never lost my passion for writing or counseling! I would still love to be a skydiver and an astronaut (don’t worry, I’d find a suit that worked for both ;-)!

The wildest thing about summer camp, is that you can do and be almost anything you want while you are here. I tell all my friends that I work for a summer camp, but they don’t always know that means I am also a fire spinner, a spear thrower, a tree climber and an aerial bungeeist. They may never guess that I’m even a challenge course facilitator, Evening Embers leader, weekly meeting guru or night time ninja expeditionist! Who in their right mind would ever guess that my hands have touched things as inanely enthralling as financing, recruitment, budgets, data tracking, target niche marketing or inter-organizational networking!? All the days that I am here, I run and play and throw water on people and jump off of things; that is, when I’m not engineering explosions, setting fire to things or smashing things at high speeds with other things…

So one day I looked in the mirror and realized: Holy Moly! I already AM a skydiving astronaut!!

“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”

E.B. White

I have camp to thank for many things in my life. It is through camp that I have discovered umpteen passions of hobby and interest. It is through camp that I met the woman who would become my wife and dozens of dearly loved friends whom I could now visit all over the world. It is through camp that I have been scaffolded, challenged, honored, and professionally trusted. It is through camp that I have networked to countless other quality organizations like MKP, ACA, Touro University, Naka-Ima, Synergo, and the ACCT, whom I have each to thank for many other valuable discoveries.

And so the search for pearls will always continue, in pieces and places all delightfully unexpected. For a time there is a destination on the horizon, but if the pearls I have already found have ever taught me anything, it is that there is no such thing. The journey will always go on. So, raise your glass and tip your hat---something tells me that 2011 can’t be anything else but what all the others have ever been: the best one yet!

“Come on in, the water is fine. He who hesitates is lost. He who chooses life is found.

Why wait any longer? Jump and the world will begin.”

Paul Williams