Camp staff in yellow life jackets floated in the cool water of the Youghiogheny River below, the sunlight glinting off their helmets as some friends of mine shouted my name, encouraging me to stop thinking about falling from the rock and the possibilities of breaking a leg or losing my shirt, and just do it. I glanced behind me at the two pieces of wood that allowed me to cross from the steep hill onto the slippery rock and thought that there was no freaking way I was crossing back over those things. Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes, held my nose and leaped into the air.Jumping off a rock while on a staff whitewater rafting trip navigating class three and four rapids probably is not something I would have done had I not joined the camp staff at Heritage Reservation, a Boy Scout summer camp located in the mountains of Farmington, Pa. The place has nurtured a confidence in myself that was faint before I picked up my first bow and arrow and taught my first class of kids in June 2009. This past summer was my second year on staff, and I spent it working as the archery range master and assistant field sports director at Camp Independence, the themed Cub Scouts and Webelo camp at Heritage. (To see more on how Heritage’s three base camps and high adventure program works, click here. I participated in 2009’s Knights of the Round Table event and dressed as a cowboy this summer as Camp Independence was transformed into the Wild West, all while teaching small children to not shoot each other and how to hit a target instead. I have witnessed the miracle cure of blue juice given to homesick Scouts, danced my heart out to Cotton Eyed Joe during meals, participated in flag ceremonies, got to catch things on fire, and referenced Into the Wild and Dracula while teaching basic first aid to 11-year-olds, all with the enthusiasm and energy of a college student who has not been up since 7 a.m. any morning all summer. I love it and would not spend the summer months any other way.Heritage has become more of a lifestyle than a job, a sentiment not only expressed by me but by many other staff members as well. Some have spent upwards of a decade at the 2,000 acre camp, working their off-season jobs while anticipating the start of the camping season and are pulled back to this woodland escape despite the long work days, dorky uniforms and latrine cleaning. The staff returns every summer because of one another. We are here because we love the program or because this is the only place we feel at ease, or because we are more ourselves outdoors than we ever were cooped up inside a building. We are here because everything at camp is so much more than we are. That when we sit on a boat in the middle of the vast waters of Lake Courage during a sunset while listening to the laughter and voices of staff and campers float across the lake. It all makes us realize we are so small in this grand, impermanent life and yet we still manage to have a place within it. That place is in the work that we do, in the roads and electrical lines that were paved and wired with the patient and hard working hands of the rangers and charter staff that built Heritage in the late 1970s and early 1980s. They worked from sun-up to sun-down and bathed in the lake because there were not any shower houses yet. It is in the tents that we pitch for the campers, the friendships that are formed, the kids that remember us and most of all, in the stories that are made. I had a nasty case of writer’s block for a good five years or so until one rainy, quiet evening near the end of camp last year, when I sat eating dinner with a group of staff who were sad that camp was coming to a close. There was an instructor named Todd, the mop of hair on his head getting in the way of his food and Derek, who was excited for his last year in high school. It occurred to me then how short a single summer was to know someone during the course of a lifetime and I realized the importance of capturing the time we spend here at camp, so I started a blog detailing some of my summer misadventures spent as a Boy Scout. It was a way to keep the summer going for myself and other staff, to remember us how we were from one season of long summer days to the next. I knew that Todd would eventually grow out of the hippie hair stage and Derek would go off to college, and that’s what happened. People change but our memories and stories remain the same, as if time had no affect on people.Summers spent at Heritage gave me the confidence and the work ethic required to do just about anything. Now whenever someone tells me I have to work on something difficult, I just smile and say, “That’s okay. I’m a Boy Scout.”And it is totally dorky but that’s all right with me.