The summer of 2023 at Chestnut Lake Camp was amazing on so many levels. We had a camp filled with kids enjoying great traditions, building new friendships, and feeling the unique spirit of our “Bring It Out” vibe in Beach Lake, PA. And 2024 at camp will be even better! We know that we are on track for an exceptional season because of the experiences and feedback we enjoyed in 2023. As a camp run by leaders who are constantly setting high standards and believe that listening is key to meeting them, we can point to countless improvements made each year that have helped our camp to grow. As we co ..read more

By Aaron Selkow Apollo joined our family in 2017. We had previously rescued two other dogs, and both had been special. But Apollo’s impact on our family was incomparable. He was born in South Carolina, horribly abused, and thankfully saved by a rescue organization in Pennsylvania. Ann looked into those soulful eyes in a photograph and somehow knew that he needed us. And as we mourn his loss, we cannot express just how much we needed him. Helping Apollo took work. He was not just skittish because of the treatment he received in the years before we adopted him, he was deeply afraid. The traini ..read more

[Did you see the Second Session/Week 3 video yet? Click here to watch it!] By Aaron Selkow, Owner/Director One summer about 30 years ago, a close friend of mine from camp told me about his summer job. We had moved on from the summers we spent together as counselors and before he started medical school, he had taken a gig working with a trucking company. He described the job as lugging trunks and duffel bags all over the East Coast in the summer heat. The company was called, “Camp Trucking.” My friend went on to become a prominent physician and the Associate Dean of Admissions at a terrific M ..read more

By Aaron Selkow, Owner/Director This post is adapted from a piece by Aaron oringally published in Camping Magazine For 30 years, I have been a camp professional. Most of that time, I owned, directed, led, or supported summer camps. For the few years in between my three camp directing positions, my jobs shifted to more global roles with a couple of very large nonprofit youth-serving organizations. But I have always kept my head and heart in the camp world. I have in some way — whether directly or indirectly — impacted the experiences of more than 300,000 campers and staff members during my su ..read more

[Did you see the Second Session/Week 2 video yet? Click here to watch it!] By Aaron Selkow, Owner/Director & J.R. Havlan, Communications Director While we’re at camp, we mostly tune out the real world. But a few days ago, Aaron stumbled onto a story in the Wall Street Journal that was of particular interest to us. The title immediately caught his eye: “Obsessed Parents Overanalyze Photos of Their Kids at Camp.” If you read the article, you may find (like we did) that elements of the content simply do not speak to the wonderful parents that we have at Chestnut Lake Camp. This was confir ..read more

[Did you see the Week 4 video yet? Click here to watch it!] By Aaron Selkow, Owner/Director The final week of a camp session always makes me feel sad. I think about the time spent and how wonderful all of the great moments have been, but I also get stuck on some of the things I wish were different. I can dwell on some pretty ridiculous things. Let’s take the weather, for instance. Last summer we made it through seven weeks of camp without so much as one “Rainy Day.” This year? Over the last four weeks, we did not have more than 3 days in a row without rainfall. Our terrific program/experienc ..read more

[Did you see the Week 3 video yet? Click here to watch it!] By Aaron Selkow, Owner/Director We’re still a relatively young camp. In only our 15th year, this fact does not occur very much to our campers. The camp is older than almost all of them, so as far as they know, Chestnut feels like a place that’s been around forever. But there are a few things at Chestnut that are evidence of this relative youth, and one of them is the trajectory of our experiences for teens. A camp of this quality, and one into at least its second generation, almost always has a teen leadership continuum that over ma ..read more

[Did you see the Week 2 video yet? Click here to watch it!] By Aaron Selkow, Owner/Director The halfway point of a great session at camp always makes me feel two contradictory things at the same time: (1) “It feels like we just got here,” and (2) “It feels like we’ve been here forever.” The first feeling is due to the pace of camp and the amount of programming and experiences our campers and staff have enjoyed in just 14 days. There have been so many activities (new ones, traditional ones) and even with the spotty weather, the feeling of time flying by is a great sign of deep engagement. At ..read more

[Did you see the Week 1 video yet? Click here to watch it!] By Aaron Selkow, Owner/Director When the summer of 2022 ended, Ann and I felt great relief. After two years of hard work during the unique transition into being new camp leaders guiding a young camp through a global pandemic, we were so relieved that the kids had the summer that they deserved. After a season lost in 2020 followed by another that still had us working out some kinks, we just wanted a more normal, fun, and meaningful summer for our community. It happened. Our staff leaders made sure of it. And after we all took some de ..read more

The summer of 2022 at Chestnut Lake Camp was amazing on so many levels. We had a camp filled with kids that enjoyed great traditions, built new friendships, and felt the unique spirit of our “Bring It Out” vibe in Beach Lake, PA. But what made 2022 extra awesome was the growth for our 15-year-old camp (established in 2008 by the owners of our neighboring camp, Trail’s End) in the form of enhanced facilities, expanded programs, and the deepening of connections for our families and staff to Chestnut. How do we know this is happening? Naturally, we ask. Surveys are just one of the tools that we h ..read more