As a fond observer of the people around me, I often find it poignant to see people who have gotten to know each other well over the course of a few days depart from each other–hopefully in some cases at least with some contact information–and head back to their normal lives having made new friends and spent worthwhile time together. The process of leaving a camp can be somewhat hectic and there are several ways that one can go about it. Knowing that I was hobbled a bit and wanting to limit my walking, I chose to pack up my belongings rather early in the morning after waking up and showering, so that my car was ready to go and in a convenient place well before breakfast. Some others I know were even earlier, having done that last night with just the last few things to be packed in the morning, so that they could talk and play gagaball and so on before camp closed. Still others chose to play first and leave the packing behind until the absolute last minute, their cabins in a state of chaos.

What also struck me as I watched and listened was the logistics of getting people out of camp. It can be a complicated process to undertake, the reverse of registering people. When one is registering people, the staff tends to come first and then staff and their kids form the nucleus around which the later arriving campers join in, until the dorms are complete and people can start to bond as a group. When this has taken place for a bit and people have had lunch and started getting to know each other or renew their friendships, one can begin camp properly, and get people where they need to be. Eventually, we need to take scattered people who are coming at different times and turn them into organized groups of campers and staff, and when that process can be done in a way where the ordering process appears as seamless as possible and the people being organized and arranged are not even conscious or aware of the process, all the better.

The same sort of process needs to be done in reverse, and here it can be a bit trickier. This year, something was decided upon that I think worked out pretty well, as far as it goes, but which depends as it always does on those who are coming to pick up their little ones. Staff who do not have any children that they are responsible for–or people traveling a long way–leave early, and get on their way. I could have left at this point, very early, but I was responsible for bringing two staff kids home, and so I checked out early but waited until the end. Then kids who have parents coming to pick them up go, and enough of them were supposed to go until only the staff kids remained, and then it would be time for all of them to go. What made this process work out interesting is that there was a bit of a cascading experience where a lot of dorms were waiting on just one or two people to come before all of them could go, and it was not until the very end when we all could go, trying to work out where to stop for lunch in the areas not too far from camp, given the hour.

Regardless of the structure that one uses to aggregate or disaggregate people, there are always going to be factors that make the process more or less difficult. Chief among them is the arrival of parents who are picking up kids who are not at camp themselves. This is largely on account of the greater distance that separates them from camp than is the case for those parents or responsible adults who are on camp already and simply need to pack up, sign out, and go. When one has a tight window of trying to leave within a period of about an hour, it can be hard for those who are far away to meet that kind of timing. Looking at it as a graph, on can see how it is that the arrival of a few parents allow many other people to leave, and that no matter what system one designs, someone has to be accountable for watching over those who are waiting for people to come to pick them up.