Owen Schneider Sermon
Good Morning,
My name is Owen Schneider, and it is my 11th summer at camp, and 3rd as a counselor. When trying to tell my friends why I am coming back to camp as a 19 year old it is super difficult, because the answer would be the traditions but that isn’t really an answer I could give. When I think about traditions, or “Kawaga’s Heritage” it can sometimes be overwhelming. To think about a place that has run continuously for 109 camping summers is sometimes intimidating. Many wars including two world wars and of course the recent pandemic would have ended many camps, at least for a summer, but not here. How this happens is almost unfathomable. I was rotting at home from March 10 up until the first day of camp on June 28 in 2020. That’s 110 days of life being on hold. Still being able to come up here and weather the storm was truly an indescribable experience. Yet, this feeling couldn’t be captured into words and brought out of here. Noting I could tell others would do this place justice.
When looking back at my time at camp, it is hard to not start at the beginning. July 13, 2014 was my first day as a camper, and while a lot has changed, many things have been untouched. My older brother, Gray, was an eight week camper so I came for the Sunday morning of visitors. I was so excited I jumped out of the car, hardly giving my mom any attention as I ran up the hill. After putting my bags down in Chip 4, I aimlessly wandered around. I was so excited after hearing Gray talk about this place but now I was lost. I didn’t know anyone except for Gray and his two school friends, but they were doing their own thing so I was alone. Or so I thought. Eli Schrayer welcomed me into a game of pros vs joes football catch on diamond 1 and those feelings of being lost vanished.
Soon after, I received my big brother, Eric Gandelman. This is a great tradition we do here and I feel super fortunate the way it worked out for me. As he noted in his own sermon, when he was driving me to the airport early my CIT year to get back to school, I told him “You started and ended my camp career”. Ric was my counselor for four summers after he had been my big brother. When I came to camp as a wide eyed little fellow, he was the one who showed me what this place was all about. He was even the head of CIT excursions nine summers after he was my big brother.
It would be impossible to think about this place’s traditions without our ideal. The most important part of camp is our ideal and living it. I have carried around the same card in my wallet for years. The words are faded, but I have long memorized them. I don’t remember too much from my second year, but one vivid memory I have is standing at the ideal board next to the counsel ring learning it every day for a week. I would precede to make sachem the night after saying it. When I was learning the ideal, it was simply a sachem requirement to check off. It took a little longer before I truly began to appreciate what the ideal meant.
Ironically, this is now the question that I ask campers when they say the ideal going for sachem. Anyone who has said the ideal to me for sachem when I was at the books knows I ask the same question, I pick a line from the ideal and say what that line means along with why it is important enough to be in our ideal. Campers may not realize when I ask them, but I am asking them what the ideal means to them. In asking why said line is in our ideal, they must understand the meaning of the ideal. Being the head of the books gives me another reason to feel that the ideal is important. Not only is it the sachem requirement that I mentioned, but it is tremendously important to campers going for mawanda. There are plenty of campers who feel they have achieved the 150 points necessary, but the non athletic requirement seems to stump many hopeful mawandas. Given that those who go for mawanda are newer campers, it may seem daunting to try to learn something as long as the ideal. It is definitely worth it, however. I have made how I feel about the ideal clear, but even if you don’t feel the same way that I do, it is a great way to achieve mawanda and be one step closer to earning your sachem name.
Another underappreciated tradition we have here is trips. As a camper, it was part of the tradition to complain about trips. To me, trips have always been fun, at least as I got older. I know there are various reasons as to why people do not like trips, but getting myself out of my comfort zone has always been rewarding. As I write this sermon, I am sitting next to a fire on a trip as everyone else sleeps. I am listening to the playlist I would often play last year in the cabin, teaching the kids to love country music like I do. Five of the kids on this trip were my campers last year, and three of them have mentioned that they now primarily listen to my favorite songs. All of them made it in passing, thinking little of it. It was, however, a pretty cool moment for me. As mentioned, Eric Gandelman was my counselor for a majority of my mohawk and Oneida years. I was never anybody’s Eric. I have never had the same camper twice. I am with the age of the campers I had two summers ago, but with no cabin overlap. I have learned to appreciate this as time goes on.
There is no doubt that being with kids while they grow up is cool. As a camper, this was something that was always pretty awesome to me. Almost knowing who my counselor was year in and year out was comforting, and there truly were few people I was closer with for two months out of every year. On the other hand, I feel honored to have a total of 18 different campers. All of whom were at camp this summer. I hope that each of these 18 campers appreciate all I tried to do for them, because I appreciate all they have done for me. Outside of some kids from my age group, my campers were and still are the people that I talk to the most.
With that being said, it is impossible to overstate how important my age group has been to me. The first real friend I had at this place was James. Me and him were the two chip 8 weakers in 2015, so we each had many “gos” off of the high dive. Something as goofy and inconsequential as repeating this line over and over while jumping in brought us closer than I could’ve ever predicted at the time. James of course is a massive player, but far from the only one. Every Friday night I rock with Logan in the meetings. Sunday shaves with Huxley for the past few years. Sr. Ball with Delman, Simon, and Lapins. Neighbors with Jono at school and for first session here. I golfed with Chance and Dyner. I sit at a table with Fenster. All of these little things that combine to make up the 2018 Mohawk A’s who are still at camp. I haven’t forgotten my friends who haven’t come back to camp this year. From staying with Eric Slavin every year the night before camp, to playing catch with Marco once a week without missing a week for all of my Oneida years, and many more. All of these little things, these traditions, are truly special. They make this place what they are. At the end of the day, I came back for these. I love the competitions; Menominee, Ojibwa, Spectacular, and Blue Gold, but that’s not why I am here. You can’t come back for a few days out of the year and enjoy the entire summer. It just won’t work. The summer is too long and monotonous if you come back just for the big events. You need to enjoy the little things and our traditions if you want the full experience.
With all of that being said, the worst tradition we have here is staff growing up and aging out of camp. As I stand here, I cannot guarantee to myself or to anyone else what next year holds. The past two summers were no guarantee for me coming back, but this is the first time in my life where I have started to think about what next summer can hold that is beyond this place. Two summers ago, if I went to a certain college, I wouldn’t have been able to come back. While I like to think that deciding where I go to college should be a bigger priority than coming back to camp, I knew if I attended Georgia Tech the dates wouldn’t have lined up for me to make it. I happened to end up at Wisconsin. This summer I was likely back, but until hearing I was head of the books, I wasn’t convinced I was. Now, I can begin to feel manhood calling me away. This is not me saying I’m not coming back, more that I have to appreciate these final 19 days. It’s a weird feeling that I don’t really know how to process. It is, however, something I need to use in the right way.
When feeling these strong emotions its easy to have a bad response. There was about a week stretch where I was super unhappy here. I felt that I wasn’t being used to my full capabilities, and just general feelings of being checked out. I got into habits of laziness and doing what I needed to do just to get by. Then I thought back on something that Sean said, about how doing things that you enjoy often give you more energy than resting. So, during an evening open area that I wasn’t setting up an EP, I played world cup on D1. It was primarily a Chip and Sioux game, and tapping back into that youthful fun was great for me. The feelings that I had were so negative. As I found out, running around and sweating a little almost solved all of it, just like that. These tricks won’t work with everyone, but it is a great way for me to find what brought me here and kept me coming back. Everyone has their own reasons, but to everyone who finds intermittent periods of hardships here, know that being here is a privilege, and time always moves faster than you think it will.
I will end this sermon with a final emphasis on tradition. There is no way to ever tell someone who isn’t here what this place is about. For my whole life I have wanted to get some home friends up here. When trying to sell them, however, I was never able to articulate to them the WHY. I could explain fun stories, but trying to tap into the American Indian traditions we have here is impossible. I could never articulate the weight that our pow wows, honorary tribes, and taps have. It was never worth trying because there is no way to experience Kawaga without being here. Words could never do this place justice. As I reflect on my time here, it is harder than ever to imagine me spending a summer away, despite knowing that if its not next year, it is likely the year after. I will conclude this in the way my own chief speech does, as its words become more true to me with each passing year. “For at the heart of the brave is Kawaga, and at the heart of Kawaga is the brave”.
Thank you.