Diabetes at Camp Bearskin: The Epilogue

Bearskin Meadow is not the best. We are a good camp. Certainly even a great camp. I would even hazard a guess to say that we are one of the best. I know we are the only diabetes camp that runs this many family camps. I know we serve more participants throughout the summer than any other diabetes camp out there. I know we are one of the oldest. We have been doing diabetes camp for 70 summers and have staff that have been with us for almost as long.

In the past seven decades we have become adept at growing with the times, the diabetes technology and all of life's changes. Yet much of the camp remains the same; the open air decks, the dirt paths, the "buffer" or sugar free drinks, the Folk Dances, the insulin line, the passionate staff and volunteers, the amazing participants, and the philosophy that kids, teens and families with diabetes can do anything.

The community that our two female physician founders started 70 years ago when they decided to take 19 children with diabetes into the woods to camp, is still going strong. But we are not the best.

Every diabetes camp has an element or elements of greatness. From the camps that are all volunteer-run for one week of the summer, to the few like Bearskin that operate all summer long serving upwards of 900 participants, every camp is unique and every camp has the ability to impact lives.

Having worked at many camps, I know that every diabetes camp is filled with emotion, struggle, ups, downs, learning, changing and growing. For that is what diabetes thrusts upon us. It forces us to change, sometimes for the better and sometimes the worse, and deals us a hand that we never expected or asked for. It turns our lives upside down, and forces us to ask tough questions about ourselves, our bodies and our existence.

But no matter what there is always a place where people don't have to feel alone in their diabetes, where people inherently know, where struggles, diabetes or not, are OK to share, and where people just get it. There is a place of belonging, support, laughter, and community. A place that helps us through the year until next summer when we meet again in friendship and understanding. That place is camp.

For information on Camp Bearskin, click here.