Assistant Camp Director 2012-21, Offsite Director 2010 & 11, Counselor 2009.
Lake Wenatchee YMCA Camp represents something the world is quietly losing, the sacred art of being present.
It’s where generation after generation learned that caring is more than a word on a banner. It’s a hand on your shoulder, a counselor sitting beside you when you’re homesick, a friend who waits at the finish line. It’s where honesty happens around a campfire, respect grows in the work you do for others, and responsibility takes root the moment you realize you belong to something greater.
For more than a decade, I watched it happen, the same story told in a hundred small ways. Kids arriving guarded, uncertain, weighed down by the noise of the world.
And after just six days, they’d leave lighter, steadier, somehow more themselves.
Because here, belonging isn’t earned. It’s offered.
That’s why places like this are worth preserving.
They’re more than just memories. They’re living classrooms for empathy, courage, and connection. They exist to be one of those rare places that slow our pulse enough to hear our own hearts again.
This place has always been more than a camp. It’s a reminder. It’s living, breathing proof that presence changes people.
That being seen heals.
That what we do for each other still matters.
That’s why it must endure. Because when the world forgets how to slow down, this is where it remembers.
And for me, it’s where I learned what I now try to live every day:
that presence is the greatest legacy we can leave.