Here's your chance to find out whatever happened to your camper and staff friends at Camp St. Croix. As the Alumni Association continues to grow, we are creating opportunities to give back to your camp roots and to get involved with what's happening at "dear ol' Camp St. Croix". We have a growing email list which we use to notify our Alumni of upcoming events.
Please email us and let us know where you're at and what you've been doing.
By chance, a group of Camp St. Croix alumni have made their homes within blocks of each other. As they rekindled their relationships, they acknowledged a mutually strong feeling of indebtedness to camp and an equally strong desire to reconnect with it. Uniting with other local alumni, they decided to make an effort to build an active and strong Alumni Association.
As they were discussing how to get reconnected to camp, they began to realize that a powerful element of the camp experience was that it served as a type of “rites of passage” for them. They also realized that the summer camp experience is one of the few remaining ‘rites of passage’ in our American culture.
At St. Croix they were able to begin the often turbulent transition from childhood to adulthood under the watchful eyes of the excellent staff members. These staff members may not have known that the traditions and rituals, ceremonies and celebrations that they wove into the camp experience closely resembled coming of age experiences from ancient times, but the campers benefited from the experience nonetheless. They were able to leave behind the familiar to face the unknown. In each progressing year they were able to push themselves farther than they had before. The rites of passage they experienced at St. Croix definitely shaped them into the people they are today.
As members of camp’s staff they experienced the ultimate transition from teen to adulthood when camp entrusted them with the precious lives of children. They were asked to keep them safe, to build their confidence, to show them love and to lead them by example- in short, to begin the coming of age ritual for a new generation of campers. It was an awesome responsibility—one they accepted with pride and joy.
They have come to believe that their role in Camp St. Croix’s ongoing ‘initiation’ of youth into the adult world is not finished. It is time for alumni to step up as ‘village elders’. Our new role requires us to pass on traditions, to take part in “rituals”, to participate in ceremonies and, most importantly, to act as mentors. To this end, we are reconnecting with Camp and fulfilling our obligation.
