I start a three-day class out at YMCA Camp Seymour this morning, one that I do every year at about this time. I take this year’s kayak trip leaders out on the water for a few days, get them comfortable with the kayaks as well as the route they’ll be guiding on this summer. Some of them show up with good kayaking skills, others not so much. But I haven’t had a year yet that wasn’t fun and I’m looking forward to this year too.

I didn’t go to a lot of summer camps when I was a kid and the few that I did attend centered more around Bible verses than paddling trips. I came late to the understanding of how wilderness worked and why it is a necessity, not a luxury (and becoming more necessary every year). What Camp Seymour does is to put kids into nature and in so doing, gets nature into kids and I see camps like this one being the means by which a new generation of environmental understanding is born every summer. I’m happy to be a small part of that process.