Anyone who knows me will learn pretty quickly what my favorite place is.

In the course of any conversation, I always seem to recall a memory or tell an anecdote from a place where I’ve spent more time and made more memories than just about anywhere else.

For 13 years of my life, a summer camp in Goochland, Virginia, has harbored some of the strongest and most vivid experiences in my life, tracing my journey from childhood to young adulthood.

As a rather shy 10-year-old with an affinity for Goosebumps books, who had never left my home for more than a day or two, my parents dropped me off at Westview on the James, a United Methodist overnight summer camp.

I had no idea what that week would entail. When my parents returned five days later, their eager first question was “Did you miss us?”

“I didn’t even think of anything from home,” I responded.

The truth was, my week at camp had been such a whirlwind of new faces, activities and experiences, my life outside of camp had ceased to exist. Camp had inserted me into an ephemeral world where any preoccupations outside of the seven hundred acres of the woods had ceased to matter.

Somehow, in less than a week, Westview had become my home away from home. For the next four summers when I showed up to camp with my duffel bag of poorly-assembled items, I knew I was in for an adventure.

I got my first taste of mountain biking, zip lining, disc golf, swimming and rock climbing. Some of those activities remain passionate hobbies of mine to this day.

And despite the fun of a water trampoline or a new high ropes course, it was never the activities that brought be back to camp so much as the people. The environment that my counselors, late high school and college-aged youth, were able to inculcate in such a fleeting amount of time was so powerful. A group of 15 children, strangers before the week, now had a week of inseparable memories and friendships. The last afternoon of camp before departure was always so difficult.

When I aged out of camp at the age of 15, I knew I wasn’t done. I immediately applied for a job as a junior counselor.

Over the course of the next seven years, my employment at Westview far exceeded my time as a camper. Instead of one week at camp, I worked two, then four, then ten weeks at camp, rising through the ranks to become head counselor. Westview is where I met some of my best friends, including my girlfriend of 2 and a half years, Liana.

There were entire summers of my high school and college life, stretching from May to August, where I may have only spent a night or two at home. My parents and friends all knew; during the summer, I was at camp.

When I graduated college in 2020, I planned on working one final summer at Westview before seeking “a real job.” When camp was cancelled due to COVID-19, it crushed me.

Throughout all of my time at camp, my constant companion was my twin brother, Mitchell. We don’t just look the same, we do just about everything together.

My post-college plans landed me at the Daily Journal in January of 2021. Mitchell, who has a 100% identical journalism resume as me, instead received a fulltime position at Westview as the assistant program director that same month.

It’s been hard for me not to be at camp, although I know under the direction of my brother as he leads a staff of around 50 counselors, Westview will be in good hands. Part of the beauty of the summer camp is that as people come and go, campers and counselors alike, the spirit of a summer camp cannot be so easily changed.

This week, the first group of campers will arrive at Westview for the summer of 2022. Over 1,300 youth have signed up for a week at camp. I can only hope that their time at camp is as special as mine.

For any parents in Richmond County who probably have the same reservations that my parents did about dropping their child off at camp, I can think of nothing more beneficial. My experience at summer camp bolstered my development, encouraged me to push myself, and made me into the person that I am today.

“Camp times are the best of times,” was the colloquialism of Westview’s longtime camp director John Edwards. It’s when I’m hundreds of miles away from the place that I love most that those words seem to ring more true.