Growing up, I knew what summer camp was supposed to look like.
I’d seen the TV shows and movies. Kids got shipped off somewhere in the woods for a few weeks where there were cabins, campfires, swimming, canoeing, questionable cafeteria food, and all sorts of adventures away from their parents.
Summer camp.
The important word there being summer.
That particular childhood experience apparently wasn’t in the books for me.
Instead, the schools in my hometown decided it would be a fantastic idea to take a bunch of city kids, load us onto buses, drive us out to Camp Fitch along Lake Erie, and let us experience the great outdoors for a long weekend.
In the winter.
Not spring, when the trees were budding and temperatures were comfortable.
Not fall, when you could enjoy changing leaves and sit around a campfire without questioning every decision that had brought you to that moment.
And definitely not summer like every camp experience I’d seen on television.
Winter.
Apparently someone looked at a bunch of kids accustomed to sidewalks, streetlights, heated buildings, and reasonably predictable indoor plumbing and thought:
You know what these kids need? Snow, cabins, and character development.
And apparently once wasn’t enough.
I Actually Went Twice
If my memory is correct, my first Camp Fitch adventure came in third grade.
At that age, being sent away to camp for a few days felt like a major expedition. You’re still young enough that a long bus ride feels like you’re traveling halfway across the country. Sleeping somewhere other than home is a significant event, and spending several days in cabins with your classmates feels like you’ve temporarily been given independence.
Then, several years later, I went back again in eighth grade.
Same basic idea.
Different age.
Still winter.
By eighth grade, you’re old enough to understand a little more about what’s happening, but you’re also a teenager surrounded by other teenagers, which introduces an entirely different type of chaos.
So Camp Fitch became one of those rare childhood experiences I got to see from two perspectives: once as a little kid experiencing something completely unfamiliar and again several years later when I was older, slightly wiser, and probably significantly more sarcastic.
Some things apparently haven’t changed.
Welcome to Winter Camp, City Kids
Camp Fitch sat along Lake Erie, which meant we weren’t simply going somewhere cold.
We were going somewhere Lake Erie cold.
There is regular winter, and then there is standing near one of the Great Lakes while the wind attempts to remove your soul from your body.
And somehow, this was educational.
We would arrive bundled in coats, hats, gloves, boots, and whatever other winter clothing our parents could convince us not to lose during the trip. Then we’d settle into cabins and begin several days of outdoor activities designed to introduce us to nature, teamwork, independence, and probably mild hypothermia.
For a city kid, though, it really was an adventure.
Camp felt completely removed from normal life. There weren’t city blocks surrounding us. There weren’t stores around the corner. School suddenly wasn’t desks, chalkboards, bells, and hallways.
We were outside.
Actually outside.
And despite all my sarcasm about the temperature, that’s probably part of why I remember Camp Fitch decades later.
Summer Camp…Just in Winter
The funny thing is, Camp Fitch actually delivered almost everything I thought camp was supposed to be based on the movies and TV shows I’d watched growing up.
We slept in cabins.
We rode horses.
We ran an obstacle course.
We made candles.
We went hiking.
We did archery.
We ate together in the cafeteria.
Basically, take every stereotypical summer-camp activity I’d seen on television, put a checkmark next to it, and we probably did some version of it.
There was just one fairly significant difference.
It was cold as can be.
This was the summer-camp experience without the actual summer.
Of course, one major activity was missing:
Swimming in the lake.
For obvious reasons, nobody was putting on a swimsuit and jumping into Lake Erie in the middle of winter. Even in the 1990s, apparently there were some limits to what adults were willing to let children do.
So instead of swimming in Lake Erie, we got a perfectly reasonable winter alternative.
We walked on it.
Yes.
Frozen Lake Erie.
A bunch of schoolchildren.
Walking around on top of it.
At the time, I don’t remember thinking much about it. The lake was frozen, the adults said we could walk out there, and therefore we walked out there.
That’s how being a kid works.
As an adult looking back on it?
WHY WERE WE ALLOWED TO DO THAT?!
Somebody apparently looked at a group of third-graders or eighth-graders standing beside a frozen Great Lake and said, Yeah, let’s take them out there.
Then again, it was the ’90s.
It was a different time.
This was an era when kids disappeared outside for hours, nobody had a cell phone, and your parents generally assumed you’d eventually wander back home when you got hungry.
So maybe letting a bunch of kids walk onto frozen Lake Erie wasn’t considered particularly unusual.
And to be fair, I’m sure the camp knew the ice conditions and had safety procedures that my childhood brain knew absolutely nothing about.
But that’s considerably less funny than imagining a counselor looking at the frozen lake, shrugging, and saying:
Looks solid enough.
Looking back, walking on frozen Lake Erie might actually be one of the coolest parts of the entire experience.
Most people who went to summer camp could say they swam in a lake.
We walked on one.
That’s a pretty good consolation prize.
The Strange Magic of Winter Camp
There really is something different about being outdoors in winter.
Everything gets quieter.
Snow absorbs some of the normal sounds of the world. Bare trees stretch across the landscape. Your breath hangs in the air. Boots crunch through snow and frozen ground.
And somewhere among all of that are dozens of school kids loudly destroying any possibility of peaceful contemplation.
We weren’t exactly wilderness survival experts.
We were city kids.
Some of us probably considered walking several blocks to a friend’s house an outdoor expedition.
Now we were hiking around in the woods, riding horses, shooting arrows, tackling obstacle courses, and discovering that snow is considerably more enjoyable when you’re looking at it through a window than when it has somehow gotten inside your boots.
Still, there was something exciting about it.
You’re away from home.
You’re staying in a cabin.
You’re surrounded by classmates instead of family.
You’re doing things that don’t resemble a normal school day.
And because you’re a kid, you don’t fully appreciate how unusual the experience is.
It’s simply an adventure.
Apparently, Camp Fitch Has Other Seasons
The funniest part looking back is realizing that Camp Fitch wasn’t exclusively a winter destination.
Apparently people went there when it was warm.
There were green trees.
There was sunshine.
There were probably people walking around without three layers of clothing.
They might have even gotten into the lake instead of standing on top of it.
I wouldn’t know.
I went there twice and somehow managed to experience winter both times.
As far as my childhood memories are concerned, Camp Fitch exists permanently covered in snow.
My hometown schools apparently had a standing philosophy:
If these children are going to experience nature, they’re going to earn it.
Other kids might remember summer camp as swimming, sunshine, shorts, and evenings around a campfire.
My version involves coats, gloves, snow, frozen ground, and the constant realization that Lake Erie produces wind with absolutely no respect for human life.
And yet…
I wouldn’t change it.
Maybe That’s Where Some of This Started
Looking back now, I sometimes wonder if experiences like Camp Fitch planted a few seeds that wouldn’t really grow until much later.
I didn’t come home from either trip transformed into some hardcore outdoorsman. I wasn’t immediately planning camping trips or dreaming about exploring the world.
But those trips showed me something important without me realizing it at the time:
There was a much bigger world outside the environment I knew.
Sometimes you had to leave what was familiar to experience it.
That’s basically how I travel today.
Put me somewhere I’ve never been.
Give me something new to explore.
Let me wander around, take some pictures, eat something I’ve never tried, and occasionally question the decisions that got me there.
Apparently I’ve been practicing this lifestyle longer than I realized.
The destinations have just gotten farther away.
From City Kid to Willingly Going Outside
There’s also some irony in the fact that the kid who had to be transported by school bus into nature now willingly spends weekends camping in the mountains, wandering through forests, floating rivers, standing beside oceans, riding boats, and generally finding excuses to get outside.
These days I’ll voluntarily pack camping equipment into my vehicle and drive into the mountains.
Voluntarily.
Nobody needs to send home a permission slip.
Nobody needs to put me on a school bus.
I’ve somehow become the adult who thinks:
You know what sounds relaxing? Sleeping outside.
Character development apparently works.
It just takes a few decades.
Eventually, I Did Get Summer Camp
For the record, I eventually got something resembling the summer-camp experience I’d seen in all those movies and television shows.
I just had to wait until college.
And naturally, because my life rarely takes the straightforward route, it wasn’t simply summer camp.
It was Bug Camp.
Yes.
Bug Camp.
But that’s an entirely different story, and one I’ll save for another day.
Decades Later, It Still Stuck With Me
While writing this post, I found myself getting a little nostalgic.
What started as me laughing about the fact that my hometown schools apparently thought sending a bunch of city kids to camp in the dead of winter was a fantastic idea turned into remembering just how much fun those trips actually were.
The cabins.
The horses.
The obstacle course.
Archery.
Making candles.
Hiking through the woods.
Eating together in the cafeteria.
And, of course, walking around on a frozen Lake Erie because apparently that was a perfectly reasonable activity for children in the ’90s.
Decades later, I still remember it.
That’s probably the best endorsement I can give the experience.
As I’ve written about on my Giving Back page, I’ve reached a point in life where I like finding opportunities to help someone else have experiences they might otherwise miss. Sometimes those experiences that seem relatively small at the time become memories that stick with you for the rest of your life.
Camp Fitch was one of those experiences for me.
So while writing this post and wandering farther and farther down memory lane, I decided to make a donation to Camp Fitch.
Hopefully, that donation helps some kid get the real-deal summer-camp experience someday.
Sunshine.
Cabins.
Horses.
Archery.
Hiking.
Campfires.
And maybe even actually swimming in the lake instead of walking on top of it.
You know…
Summer camp.
Apparently I’m still a little bitter about that part.
But jokes aside, I wouldn’t trade my Winter Camp experiences.
I went twice, at two very different ages, and both trips became part of that collection of childhood memories that somehow survives while countless ordinary days have disappeared completely.
Maybe those weekends even planted a tiny seed for the person I eventually became—the guy who now willingly travels to unfamiliar places, wanders around outdoors, sleeps in tents, hikes through forests, gets on boats, and regularly thinks that leaving home for a few days sounds like a perfectly good idea.
So here’s to Camp Fitch.
Thanks for giving a city kid a little taste of camp, adventure, independence, and the outdoors.
Even if you did make us do it in the freezing cold.
And hopefully, thanks to a little giving back, another kid gets to make some Camp Fitch memories of their own.
Preferably in the summer.
