Every year, the Central Choir dedicates a weekend of the school year to a retreat at an out-of-the-way place called Camp Tapawingo, a children's camp that is used as a chance to not only spend more than an hour and 20 minutes every couple of days on music but also as a great way to bond within your section (Tenors, Altos, etc.) along with the entire choir. While the choir made plenty of progress with our Christmas and competition sets. The point of the trip at its core, has always been about creating new friendships and strengthening existing ones.
Camp Tapawingo might not seem like a lot when you first look at it. A couple of cabins, a chapel, and a gymnasium in the middle of the woods with no service. But it's when you look deeper that you start to see how for years, the camp has been considered a haven for the choir, another home to come back to. Each cabin has names of current and past campers who had stayed there before, a very old playground merry-go-round (aptly named "the spinny thing") that can withstand 25 kids packed next to and on top of each other, a single firepit that has witnessed late nights singing to playlists created by kids who have long since graduated, and a small carpeted chappel where traditions are started and continued.
Traditions have ultimately been the backbone of every trip. Spending your breakfast, lunches, and dinners (wonderful home cooked meals from the camp kitchen staff) sitting with new people each time, staying up late talking with the rest of your cabin in the silence of the night, spending an hour parodying a song about your section and then performing it in an hour (shoutout to the Altos and Sopranos who both chose "A Whole New World" without realizing till they were on stage), individualized notes sent between everyone in the choir that get read on the bus ride home. The notifications all buzz at once to remind us that we're back in the real world.
On the days when being in choir feels a lot less magical. When the stakes rise or the pathway to festivals and state become harsher, i'll remember the smell of smoke, a clear night sky full of stars, a 6:00 AM sunrise, and the promises and commitments we all made to each other.
Photo taken by Noah Meyer.