“Unique” is a highly overused word. But the spirit of this word doesn’t deal with shades that are slightly distinguishable from those around it.
So we’ll be precise. There are roughly 12,000 camps in America. Below are the things about Camp Augusta that are genuinely the only one of their kind — not polished versions of what every camp does, but things that, as far as we’ve ever found, exist nowhere else in summer camping. A few are rare even among human communities at large.
Most camps ask for a résumé and a 30-minute call. We receive 2,500+ interest forms and 350–450 written applications a year — applications in the form of thousand of words of earnest writing (often over 15 pages) — followed by 3–4 hours of interviews, one of which is with our PhD director. To say our selection and hiring process is extensive is an understatement.
By the time a new staff member sets foot on the property, the hiring team knows them better than many of their own friends do. → How We Hire
Most camps train for about six days. Ours runs three-plus weeks of residential training (~300 hours) on top of 70 hours of pre-camp work. It’s the longest staff training we know of at any summer camp in the U.S. — and it’s less orientation than transformation. Both before and after they arrive to camp, our staff complete training that goes way, WAY beyond what you would expect from any summer camp. → Pre-Camp Training — Residential Training
Before a counselor meets a single camper, they read two staff manuals totaling more than a quarter-million words — longer, combined, than three average novels. And they’re nothing like dry handbooks. One manual is structured as “The Anatomy of Augusta,” and contains decades of written knowledge on camp operation and logistics. The other manual deep-dives into the many philosophies that guide our community and how we mentor youth. Before in-person practice, staff are already well-versed in Nonviolent Communication, 100% Responsibility, relationship science, the Four Agreements, Buddhist philosophy, even Kipling and Frost — a synthesis you simply won’t find handed to camp counselors anywhere else. → Models & Core Philosophies — The Augusta Difference
Our counselors average is 21 (a year or two higher than the industry average) and our full staff average around 25 (versus 20–21 industry-wide), and many are in their late 20s and 30s — older than at nearly any camp of our size. We are full of youth and vitality, and also highly value wisdom and maturity. Our staff aren’t just kids looking for a ‘fun’ summer job.
Our staff are genuine, exceptional people. Seasonal jobs are easy to get, especially at another of the thousands of camps out there. The folks who carry out and pass our application, and make it through all of onboarding and training, are a very different kettle of fish: people who want to truly live community, leading with their values to transform for themselves and campers, for a better world.
And they don’t disappear after one summer. Many return for 5, 10, 15+ years; others stay woven in from afar — handling small tasks, talking through changes, keeping relationships alive. (The person who built this website was a counselor in 2010 and still comes back every year — and is far from the only one.) → Who Our Staff Are — Staff as Community Members
This is the part that reaches way beyond running a camp. Augusta is an intentional community: capped at 100 campers (honoring Dunbar’s number), governed by sociocracy rather than top-down hierarchy, with shared agreements and a common language — Nonviolent Communication, Success Counseling, 100% Responsibility — that staff and campers actually live by. All staff can not only define, but tell you how they apply these philosophies, to themselves and with campers. Even conflict is treated as community practice, not punishment. And all staff are themselves mentored in their own personal growth by other staff who dig in deep to their strengths, challenges, opportunities, and goals, taking time and space in their lives to be involved in one another’s.
Augustan staff have a sense of buy-in to each others’ lives, but also a shared ownership over camp, writing “intention documents” for nearly every element (music, food, skits, conflict, wakeups, etc.). This sense of ownership radiates to the campers, and is actively practiced in the form of tidying camp, washing their own dishes, and caring for their cabin. → Nested Belonging — Participatory Culture — Conflict as Practice
Roughly 60 staff for 100 campers (not including kitchen, maintenance, and janitorial) — about 1 staff member for every 1.67 campers overall, and 1:5 inside every cabin. ALL of these staff teach a clinic and get involved, directly, in camp programs DAILY. We could enroll far more kids. We choose not to. → Ratios That Matter
At Augusta, expression is woven through the entire day — and every piece of it is invented by Augustans. From the moment a camper is woken up to the moment they drift off, they’re inside something a staff member dreamed up just for them.
Taken one at a time, each is unusual. Taken together — every single day — they exist nowhere else in camping:
No kits. No screens. No assembly required — just blank slates and staff who love to fill them. → Creativity & Expression — A Day at Camp
Every camper goes home with a Wookie — a hand-painted “wood cookie” (a slice of a branch), made just for them and presented by firelight at closing campfire with a spoken tribute. But the rare part isn’t the craft — it’s the seeing. We don’t honor “good archer” or “sweet ceramicist”; we honor the enduring qualities a child actually lives by, in words meant to still ring true years later. (When our director visits former campers’ homes, the Wookies are almost always still hanging on the wall.) Outside of a wedding toast or a eulogy, Western culture has almost no ritual for being seen this deeply — Augusta builds one into every session.
It continues nightly at Evening Embers, where each cabin of just five campers and one counselor gathers for a guided deep-dive into what actually matters. Other camps do “cabin chats,” but ten or twelve kids can’t reach the places five can. Vulnerability is rare in our culture, so we train staff for it — through deep personal sharing in hiring, RRV, and NVC — long before campers arrive. → What Is a Wookie? — Rituals That Bind — Residential Training
Things you’ll be hard-pressed to find anywhere else, all under one camp:
Want to size up a camp in five seconds? Look at the director’s shoes. Polished loafers usually mean someone who runs camp from behind a desk. Our leadership staff wear beat-up sneakers — because they’re in it. They teach at least 1 clinic per day, offer story experiences, and often help with wakeups and embers and play in the evening programs. Dr. Randall Grayson—a PhD psychologist with 35+ years in camping—and other directors sleep in a cabin with counselors for two weeks of staff training, play run-around games, teach activities, and invent story experiences. At Augusta, the person who designs the philosophy is the same person in the dirt with your kids. → Meet the Director — Our Developmental Approach
We don’t set out to hire good camp counselors. We set out to develop Life Changers — people who help a child redefine what they believe is possible for themselves. That ambition is why the training is so long, the manuals so deep, and the community so intentional.
Full every summer since 2009. Families return for years; so do staff; alumni send their own children. That’s not an accident — it’s intentional design, top to bottom.
