NOVEMBER 2017
NOVEMBER 2017 | | RAGE monthly
monthly
43
How many who are reading this, didn’t have a great camping experience when they were a kid? Being gay for many of was already like being lost in a proverbial forest of the straight and narrow, so it stands to reason, that being queer and camping in the woods might not have always been a joyful experience. Stories of unhappy childhood camping experiences were just one of
the many surprising things about the Camp No Counselors weekend getaway I attended recently, one of many that the organization does over the course of the year. To be specific, they hold as many camp weekends as possible in 16 different locations across the U.S. and Canada, sometimes with multiple running simultaneously. Though inclusive of all, Camp Hughes this past October,was their first specifi- cally targeted to the LGBTQ community, though, as they are quick to point out, not exclusive to...titling it the “LGBTQ and Friends” weekend. As to how the larger organization got its start, the story goes that founder, CEO and “head camper,” Adam Tichauer was searching for an opportunity to disconnect from his job and reconnect with his friends. He decided to rent out a summer camp over Labor Day Weekend and invited all of his closest friends to join. Those friends invited more friends and it eventually turned into 90 career-driven adults letting loose, being silly and disconnecting from the stressors in their everyday lives. After that initial amazing weekend, Tichauer knew he was onto something special, seeing not only the business opportunity, but also how important it was for people to get away from “adulting.” A weekend where they get to go back to being a kid and make new friends and not based on what they do for a living... from this, that Camp No Counselors was born. That and a later appearance on ABC’s Shark Tank in 2016 cemented the idea, even though in the end no “deal” was reached with the show’s panel. Jacob Lawrence, CNC’s program director, was on hand for the inaugural LGBTQ weekend and had this to say about the timing of this particular iteration of Camp No Counselors. “We believe in the magic of camp and its ability to bring people together. Camp No Counselors is an inclusive, open and safe environment for people to explore who they truly are. It’s encouraged to be silly and unique and it’s a place to just be you. We have
conducted around 70 camps as a business and we have had hundreds of people in the LGBTQ community come to our camps and always tell us ‘You HAVE to do a camp for the LGBTQ community!’” “We spent months talking with a number of our past LBGTQ campers to find out what they loved about their experience at CNC, how we should approach this camp differently and what camp as a kid meant to them,” said Lawrence. Echoing the aforementioned not-so-happy experiences, he went on to say, “We found out that many of our LGBTQ campers actually didn’t have much fun at camp as a kid, but then had the time of their lives at camp as an adult. So ultimately, we wanted to empower those people who had a negative experience as a kid to reclaim that memory as a positive one. On top of all this, we also thought that it would be really fun! Camp is LOVE.” He detailed his observations about the weekend and
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