Vega staff member and guest blogger, Scott Burgess, shares a glimpse of his experience and decision to return to Camp Vega this summer. He was the music department head in 2018 before receiving a bachelors degree, and running a successful business in England. Thanks, Scott – we’re excited to welcome you back to your summer home!

The outside world had quickly faded away into a distant memory; we were part of something bigger than ourselves.

Only a few hours after arriving for my first summer at Vega in 2017, somewhere amongst a whirlwind of learning about gaga, s’mores, and Sunset Circle, I remember feeling incredibly lucky. I clearly envisioned myself returning to Maine every summer for at least the next decade. Everyone was beyond welcoming and the infectious Vega energy rubbed off on me immediately. The outside world had quickly faded away into a distant memory; we were part of something bigger than ourselves.

I didn’t quite achieve a decade. Since my second summer in 2018 coincided with graduating from university, I decided – with a very heavy heart – to hang up my staff hoodie and pursue a far more “mature” challenge back in the UK of founding a business making and selling ice cream.

In the summers that followed, the lessons I’d picked up as a Counselor at Vega applied surprisingly often running an ice cream brand – in particular relying upon reserves of energy to manage late nights and early rises, and being required to get creative on rainy days. But it became clear pretty quickly that while I was living a new adventure learning how to run a quickly-growing business with some of my best friends, something was definitely missing.

Maybe it was the fact that nobody sung to me asking that I “skip around the room” at breakfast, or perhaps the lack of an unbelievably vast and beautiful lake to paddleboard out on at 5am to watch the sunrise… probably a combination of the two and more. Either way, it’s impossible to describe to friends back home exactly why life at Camp is so great. So after three long summers away and almost 4 years, I’ve decided to stop trying to explain it and come back to what I so quickly considered my second home to join everyone for another memory-making summer on Echo Lake!

What am I looking forward to most? Aside from seeing everyone and meeting new friends, the 4th of July egg toss, and taking on a new challenge joining the Waterski team this year, I’m also excited to go back to being a Bunkle again. I am going to have to relearn how to build a fire, but throwing surprise bunk bashes, organizing cook-outs and on the rare occasion greeting very excitable campers and counselors with doughnuts for breakfast, is just about the best way I can imagine spending Summer 2022.

So I am still counting down the days, and can’t wait to see and meet everyone very soon!

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