Towering Pines Blog

When you are kind to others, it not only changes you, it changes the world. -Harold Kushner

With the holiday season upon us, it seems like a perfect time to reinforce the importance of choosing “kindness” as a way to help bring peace and harmony to our world. Supported by the American Camp Association (ACA), camps across the country participate in #CampKindnessDay every year in July.  The ACA shared the purpose of #CampKindnessDay, “This is an opportunity to raise awareness of the great work that camps are doing to teach kindness in engaging, simple, repeatable, and high impact ways that live on in the daily lives of campers and staff members when they return home.” (American Camp Association)

Our core values at camp support these intentions to encourage kindness, specifically the value of Respect.  We encourage staff and campers to respect everyone and everything.  This lends itself to spreading kindness throughout our camp community by showing empathy and appreciating differences. At Towering Pines we intentionally focus our programming around kindness in every aspect of what we teach and do.  Acts of kindness occur every day at camp, and the best part is that campers take this spirit of kindness with them out into the world and pass it on to others.

Kindness in the camp community is visible in every smile, every word of appreciation, and in countless acts of empathy and friendship. It happens every day, but just as we take time on that particular summer day, we also would like to remind our camp community of the amazing impact kindness can have TODAY.  We hope to fuel a positive cultural shift to more fully incorporate the practice of intentional kindness and care into every aspect of our society.

Cabin 6 Pirate Day — the treasure!

This summer one of our vesper’s themes revolved around empathy. In order to be truly kind to another person, one must be able to empathize in order to try to understand what they are experiencing and feeling. Taking a look back Cabin 6 shared their reflections with us on empathy from this past summer. Their main message is that empathy is “truly trying to walk in someone else’s shoes.”  One of the counselors summarized empathy in a simple yet powerful way, “caring for other people’s feelings and others caring for your feelings.”  We hope that these lessons will encourage our entire camp to live the message of spreading kindness while we are at camp and taking it with us into the world wherever we go. (*Names are listed for those who included it.*)

Empathy is a crucial aspect of camp.  To be able to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and truly understand what they’re going through, is such an important and underrepresented step in connecting with others. For example, at activities like archery and riflery, to be able to truly understand how frustrating it feels to be stuck at a certain rank or position allows you to relate to and to help your peers by giving them space and also by motivating them to keep going.  In other ways, empathizing allows you to help others, especially if you’ve been through that struggle yourself.  Without empathy, camp wouldn’t be able to function. –Julian H.S.

Empathy is an important part of camp.  Without it we wouldn’t be able to celebrate people’s achievements because we wouldn’t feel for them.  Getting your “expert” wouldn’t be nearly as exciting.  Also, camp needs empathy in order for people to make friends.  Empathy is needed for camp to run well and be fun.

Empathy is a very important part of camp, not just for humans, but for animals too.  For example, in skindiving and fishing, if we had no empathy for the fish, there would be no reason to release them, and a ton of fish would die.  And there would be less fish in the lake, and that would make the activities not be able to function.  Another example of this is in zoo.  If we had no empathy for the animals, we wouldn’t release them which would make zoo not fun because if you couldn’t catch new animals, there would be no point in the activity. — Warner M.

Without empathy camp wouldn’t work.  For example, if someone is feeling sad, no one would know this, and they would feel worse.  They might not want to come back year after year without knowing others were trying to understand their sadness. — James B.

Empathy is very important at camp, without empathy, we couldn’t know how to help someone in activities.  Without it camp would no longer function.

Empathy is defined as the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.  The reason why people, including me, come back to camp every year is because of the wonderful and empathetic people that are found at TP.  Here, everyone is able to understand the feelings of another which fosters an amazing community of people who care for and help each other.  Without empathy, camp would be an entirely different place.  Whether someone is feeling homesick, sad, or excited to shoot riflery, empathy allows us to be connected and respond to each other with kindness, and patience, creating a place where everyone can truly be themselves. — Will S.

Will mentioned that ” . . . empathy fosters an amazing community of people who care for and help each other.”  His thoughts enforce the reason for another one of our core values which is Community. At TP our camp community is encouraged to invite others into their conversations, games and activities so that no feels left out or isolated.  We build each other up by supporting one another through great challenges and amazing accomplishments.  In addition, our goal is to teach and guide campers and staff to work through conflict by empathizing what the other person is going through and respecting their perspective although it may be much different from our own.

The TP Challenge today and everyday is for our campers, counselors, staff, and camp families to continue to spread KINDNESS in your corner of the world.  Even the smallest act of kindness can have a HUGE impact that causes a “ripple effect” which is exponential.  We look forward to another summer of spreading kindness throughout our camp community in Summer of ’26!

#KindnessEvolution.

A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees. -Amelia Earhart

Cabin 6 — Cheyenne

Angie Wenzl

• Camp Mom at TP
• Leadership Staff at TP/Office Manager
• Marketing TP/Woodland
• Leadership Team TP/Woodland
• Assistant Waterfront Director at Woodland
• Counselor at Woodland
• “Building in our hearts fond memories, Towering Pines for you.”

(Thank you to the American Camping Association)