Niclas Hammontree

Hemfjällstangen: translated as a home in the mountains. It doesn’t have a listing in Webster’s or even a listed population. It’s a cabin community in rural Sweden, and it’s a 7-hour drive to the nearest city with a population even near that of Atlanta. It is also the most extraordinary place that I’ve ever been to. It’s the site of a month-long annual summer camp hosted by a Swedish youth organization. My mother grew up in Sweden and attended the summer camp herself when she was my age. I had been to church camps before, but usually, they entailed going to Daytona with hundreds of kids and listening to evening sermons in the makeshift auditorium of a hotel ballroom. This was completely different in every possible sense. This was in nowheresville, with forty complete strangers, where all communication was done in my second language. Although it is just as much of a shibboleth as it sounds, being so outside the ordinary suburban schedule even for just a month completely reconstructed my outlook on everything.

Two years later, I made a very clear decision to return as a camp counselor. This experience was inexplicably better than the first. I was able to be a part of someone else’s transformative experience in the same way my camp counselors had done for me. It was a new role for me, with new responsibilities along with unknown joys. I will always remember when one of the campers told me that I had made the camp feel like home for everyone. The mere notion that I could have a lasting impact on another person continues to both baffle me, humble me, and encourage me to recognize the importance of my words and actions.