Yappoi

Every Friday night during the summer, we close the camp session with a campfire.  After dinner, all of camp gathers by the flagpole, and forms a giant chain of people, holding hands.  Our staff start everyone off in a song that begins "yappoi a tai tai aei a..." and the line snakes its way down the hill towards the lake, where we have our closing campfire.  I don't know that anyone knows exactly what the song means, or where it came from.  When I was a camper, I was told that it was an old Indian song, and when I became a counselor, I passed that down to my campers;  but like many camp legends, the truth of that is questionable.  

Regardless of my lack of knowledge of the origins of "yappoi" or the true meaning of it, every Friday night when I hear 250+ campers and counselors join together in singing as they make their way to campfire, I am reminded of just what camp means to me.  In my summers at camp, I have learned a multitude of things.  As a camper, I learned independence, how to interact with and live with people I barely knew, and had the ability to try all kinds of new activities.  As a counselor, I learned about responsibility, creativity and thinking on my feet, and how to deal with discipline and homesickness.  As a head counselor, I learned about supervising staff, dealing with difficult campers and parents, and working on a team.  In all of my years at camp, regardless of my role, two constant themes have been building friendships and personal growth.

My experiences at camp have had an incredible amount of influence on my life, on the person I am today, and on what is important to me.  When I hear "yappoi" it always makes me take a minute to stop and think about how camp has molded my life, and how grateful I am to be a part of a camp community.  For some, camp is just a week or two of summer, but for me camp is a way of life, and that little song of questionable origin always reminds me why camp is such an integral part of my life.