A Legacy OF Storytelling at Camp Treetops

BY JIM PUGH (CTT 62–64, STAFF 77)

AS CAMP TREETOPS CELEBRATES the 100th year of its founding, memories and stories about the major facets of the CTT experience will be shared among us: Cliffords, council, dining room, garden, tripping, waterfront, and the like.

I would like to reminisce about one of the understated, yet valuable, things that Treetops has always done right. This is the bedtime storytelling and reading to tent groups by the counselors on duty.

Practically speaking, storytelling is an effective transition from raucous evening activities to slumber land. On a deeper level, it enables us to boost our imaginations and connect with our truest selves. It helps everyone, particularly children, to make meaning of themselves and the world around them. And it is a nice communal activity.

As an 11-year old in the Pine Bunk, I remember Dick Wilde’s stories. He would skim a short story during some free minutes in the afternoon, and tell the story that evening to the campers. Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Pit and the Pendulum” was an especially memorable tale—though I am not sure we terrified campers got to sleep right away.

As a counselor I had a group of favorite stories to read or tell—sometimes on short notice. One I could pull from my memory bank was the plot of Giacomo Puccini’s raucous comic opera Gianni Schicchi. This tells the story of fractious relatives trying to thwart the will of their recently deceased family scion, Buoso Donati, who left his entire fortune to the local monastery. The relatives appear to succeed in overturning the will, and then in turn are swindled by the clever outsider, Gianni Schicchi.

If I was filling in for another counselor and the Hanging House was in the middle of Watership Down or The Hobbit, I went with the flow and read the next chapter. Sometimes it was the norm for campers to do the reading.

One of my favorite sources of reading to campers was the collection of animal stories in Ernest Thompson Seton’s Wild Animals I Have Known. The stories “Lobo the King of Currumpaw” and “Raggylug, the Story of a Cottontail Rabbit” are particularly good. The latter never fails to bring me to tears, and likely affected some of the campers as well.

For a two-night reading session, my favorite was Stephen Vincent Benet’s short story “The Devil and Daniel Webster.” The writing is so rich, and the voice of

Daniel Webster so booming, that reading from the text is just as effective as telling the story.

For reading an entire book to my tent group, my preference was J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan. This familiar story is written at an incredibly literate adult level. The vocabulary is wonderful. Each chapter is about 10 pages long, perfect for one night’s reading session.

One summer a 12-year old gave me a hard time when I tried to introduce Peter Pan: “Aw, that’s a baby story.” I was not prepared for this, but realized I had a useful tool at my disposal. I replied to the camper and his bunkmates: “You are right, this is a children’s story. If I show you something that shows that someone really important approves of this book, will you let me read it?”

“Well, let’s see,” the camper said.

“Look at the inside cover of this book.” I handed him the book. He looked at the scrawled signature. Suddenly he recognized whose it was, and blurted out: “LET HIM READ IT!” Then he passed the book around to the other campers. It was the autograph of Muhammad Ali, obtained at the Pennsylvania Railway Station in Philadelphia when I had nothing else on my person for the great boxer to sign. The boys proceeded to enjoy the wonderful language of J.M. Barrie over many evenings.

There are so many ways in which the “little things” make Treetops such a rich experience for children. Storytelling and reading at bedtime is one of them.