The View From the Office Porch

As ever, winter is an opportunity for reflection, sorely needed after the energy and urgency of each summer passes. Camp is a constant cycle, moving from season to season, year to year, generation to generation. While every year it presents itself to campers, staff, and family campers as familiar as ever, subtle changes come with each trip around the sun.

Charcoal Ceremony marks the start and end of each summer and is a vivid reminder of Kabeyun’s constant evolution. We build a new fire every year, blending remnants of the past brought back by returning campers and staff with the fresh fuel brought by new members of the community. We are, at once, a unique moment in time and part of an expanding history.

These transitions are subtle, and for those who think of Kabeyun as an anchor in their lives, that mix of consistency and steady evolution is an important aspect of camp’s strength. A central tenet of our philosophy is giving boys the opportunity to discover and develop the best possible version of themselves. So, too, is that Kabeyun’s aspiration.

Striking a balance between preserving something that feels precious and acknowledging those spaces where we can and should seek to do better is an extraordinary challenge. The objective is always shifting – what might have been a best practice or an example of excellence in the past changes as we evolve. If we are dedicated to attaining a perfect version of ourselves, and of camp, we are bound to recognize that we can never reach that. It will always be on the horizon, just out of reach.

How we respond to that idea is, to me, the measure of our character. Confronting a quest that expands in perpetuity may be intimidating, yet there are intrinsic rewards that come from continuing the pursuit, sustaining the effort, and celebrating incremental advances.

Kabeyun cannot teach everything one needs to know to be the best sailor, the perfect photographer, an Olympic-level archer. Likewise, we will never reach a place where we say, “This place is perfect, now and forever.” We owe it to those who came before and those who will follow to always aspire towards a better version of this place that we know and love.

We know there are elements of Kabeyun that are sacred – our objectives of developing integrity, character, and responsibility, encouraging the values of curiosity, appreciation, and humility, and learning to live in harmony with an ever-changing natural world, will not change. Our commitment to sustaining John Porter’s vision, carried on for a century, remains steadfast. Likewise, a devotion to self-examination and self-evaluation is paramount, if we are to continue that work for the century to come.

Ken Robbins
Director