Weekly Update: June 15th, 2025

by Ariella Rogge on June 15

Tonight, it is very quiet around camp. Many of our older campers, including the JCs and Outbackers, will be leaving for multi-day trips in the morning–so the Friday and Saturday night dance parties on the ridges have been replaced with the low rustle of the night breeze, the occasional slam of a cabin door or the canvas scrape of a tent flap. You could hear some whispering and the random laugh as we walked the ridges at Big Spring and you heard counselors having staff round up on their porches after the girls were in bed at High Trails. But, for the most part tonight, all you could–and can–hear is silence.

Silence is one of the many gifts of camp. High Trails and Big Spring are absolutely incredible, fun, boisterous places full of energy, adventure and possibility–and they are also places where there is room to just breathe, relax and let our minds rest and enjoy the stillness. Camp is a place where kids sit in hammocks and read books, or play wiffle ball outside of their unit before breakfast, or just lean back in a camp chair and watch the horses eat for a while.

This evening, campers and staff at both camps hiked to high points on property and participated in our first outdoor community Sunday Rocks–or non-denominational Vespers–of the summer. We sang songs: some loudly, some badly but all of them with a focused outcome of creating community and connection. Campers and staff read quotes about friendship, perseverance, love and the power of nature. We shared the sunset as a larger community…with Big Spring looking to the west and High Trails looking to the east…and all of us looking forward to the week ahead.

This is one of the biggest trip weeks of the summer in many ways. All of our campers will be heading out for two day or all day trips this week. They will be climbing mountains, riding horses, climbing rocks, going tubing, going canoeing, learning survival skills, cooking up gourmet backcountry meals, making wands on the Harry Potter overnight, catching more fish than they can keep on the Fishing two day, and finding ways to express themselves creatively on the Artsy Craftsy overnight. They will hike at the Crags, eat lumberjack pancakes at Pancake Rocks, explore the property by bike and by horse, travel back 35 million years in time at the Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument and discover their inner naturalist at Mueller State Park. And that doesn’t even include our SOLE (Sanborn Outdoor Leadership Experience) or CORE (Community OutReach Experience) trips.

These coed service learning trips are often the highlight of many of our older campers’ summer experience. Campers will work with CFI, CUSP and COEC to provide over 650 hours of trailwork over the next five days. They will take on “leader of the day” responsibilities and deepen their outdoor competence as they take on many of the trip leading skills needed to have a successful trip in the backcountry including cooking, navigation, campsite selection and LNT practices. They will also work on developing strong “expeditionary behavior” skills, including good communication, encouragement, support, flexibility and humility. Plus they will laugh a lot and make lifelong friendships with other boys and girls their age–authentic relationships between genders that remind campers we will always continue to have more in common than not.

And the quiet we hear in the waning hours of a Sunday is the gentle prelude to the 5am chirping of the bluebirds and robins, the quiet, nervous chatter of the campers leaving early for SOLE trips, the peal of the 7:30 Able and Mabel waiter bells, the hum of the mostly full lodges at our 8am breakfast and then the ongoing, busy noise of hundreds of people gearing up to head out for a week of myriad adventures and countless memorable experiences. It is music to our ears, to our minds and to our hearts.

It is the song of summer.

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Ariella Rogge
About Ariella Rogge

Ariella started her career at Sanborn when she was twelve. After five years of camper and five years of Sanborn staff experience, she continued her work with kids in the high school classroom. Ariella and her family returned to Sanborn in 2001 to take on the Program Director role which she held til 2012. She and Elizabeth Marable became co-directors of High Trails in 2013 and then Ariella became the High Trails Director in 2020. In the fall of 2022 she became the Director of Sanborn Western Camps, overseeing the director teams of both Big Spring and High Trails. She lists mountain golf, Gymkhana, climbing mountains and making Pad Thai in the backcountry as some of her favorite activities at camp. Ariella received a B.A. in English from Colorado College and is a certified secondary English educator,an ACCT Level 2 Ropes Course Technician, an ARC lifeguard and NREMT and WEMT. She lives in Florissant in the summer and in Green Mountain Falls during the school year so she can stay involved with the busy lives of her husband, Matt, and two sons, Lairden and Karsten.