Texas heat can make it seem like our seasons are not plural but rather a singular summer. Yet even here, there tend to be seasons that the natural world follows.
As you walk our trails, you will notice the exciting new life of spring, a bright, beautiful and busy summer, a colorful fall, and a slower, calmer winter.
As a Nature Center, we follow programmatic seasons as well. Spring and fall are focused on field trips, homeschool sessions, Trailblazers, and more, while our winter is full of reflection, planning and evaluation. However, no time of year is more exciting than our summer season.
If you visit The Cibolo on a summer day, you would have quite a sight to behold. Maybe you joined us for our “Unplug with Bugs” week of camp, where you could see the perfectly camouflaged Texas Walking Stick climb the prairie grass, while smiling campers ran through the prairie on an insect survey.
Or you might attend our “It’s a Bird, it’s a Plane, it’s a Bird!” camp week, looking through binoculars at the almost impossible bright male Painted Buntings, whose blue, green and red plumage would look like something out of a coloring book.
You could use miniature microscopes or examine trail camera footage while attending “Greenman hears a...” camp in order to discover a world at The Cibolo hidden from most.
But no matter which week of camp you decided to attend, you would undoubtedly see the smiles of campers having fun, a herd of water bottle unicorns as counselors ensure everyone is staying safe and hydrated, and the name of every single camper printed on our end-of-week awards, acknowledging the growth and progress made by each camper during their chosen week.
As much as we rely on sight, the sounds of summer are equally spectacular.
At the beginning of each day, you would undoubtedly be serenaded with lyrical brilliance such as “Have you ever seen a penguin dancing,” “Old McDonald had an armadillo,” or “Have you ever seen a whale with a polka dot tail,” as campers all participated in our opening repeat-after-me, do-as-I-do songs.
After listening to a recitation of our daily camp rule, you would be off to one of many activities. At your activity, you might hear the ‘thunk’ of a tomahawk sticking into the wooden target, or the swoosh of a bullseye-bound arrow headed toward the target, followed by the cheer of fellow campers as it hit. You might hear campers figuring out how to move giant wooden skis together, or the screams of joy as they flew through the air on our Zip Chair. In all the varied sounds and sights that make up our summer camp experience, you would observe what it really means for a camp to help campers develop into the best versions of themselves. A camp experience where learning doesn’t stop during the summer but is enhanced by it.
As we move to an increasingly digitized world, campers have the chance to unplug at The Cibolo. Here, it doesn’t matter if you’re from Boerne, visiting, or new to the area, since everyone has the opportunity to make friends. In addition to successes, campers face challenges or even failures that they learn from by participating in “risky play.”
Ultimately, our campers learn to be more empathetic toward each other and the natural world around them. If you’re asking me, it’s the type of camp we all wish we could’ve experienced as kids.
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