​Our Last First Day | Sitka National Historical Park, Alaska

Today was our last first day of STEAM in the PARK for the summer, and I am not quite sure I was ready for that sentence. Since May, we have packed and unpacked, welcomed new groups, learned new places, hugged people goodbye, and then started all over again. Twelve camps sounded enormous when we began. Somehow, here we are in Sitka, Alaska, opening the doors on Camp #12.

Our campers arrived this afternoon at Sitka Fine Arts Camp, slowly finding their rooms in North Pacific Hall and finding one another along the way. There was that familiar first-day mixture of excitement and uncertainty, people trying to remember names, figuring out where everything is, and wondering exactly what they signed up for. I have watched that happen eleven other times this summer, and I still love it. By dinner, the room already felt different than it had just a few hours earlier.

We started simply. We spent some time getting to know each other and talking about this place we get to call home for the next few days. Then we headed outside to explore and notice Sitka before we fill our heads with everything we are going to learn. Cameras came out. People slowed down. We looked at the mountains, the water, the trees, the moss, the salmon, and all the tiny things that are easy to walk right past when you are trying to get somewhere.

There is so much ahead of us this week. We are going to learn about salmon and the incredible journey happening in these waters right now. We are going to explore Sitka National Historical Park, create, wonder, get wet and probably dirty, make things, notice things, and spend time together in one of the most beautiful places we could have imagined for the ending of this summer.

Tonight, though, I keep coming back to the fact that this was the last time this summer we will say, “Welcome to STEAM in the PARK.” There will be a last morning meeting later this week, a last field experience, a last ReWilding session, a last CCC Connections, and eventually a last goodbye. I am trying not to rush toward any of those yet.

For now, I am going to be where my feet are. And tonight, my feet are in Sitka, Alaska, surrounded by our final group of campers, beginning one more adventure together.

Camp #12 has officially begun.