Sometimes what a person learns in three weeks at camp is more than can be learned in a lifetime.

Why am I thinking about camp in the beginning of winter? Because as the mornings get colder the blanket calls louder.

That’s when the voice of the counselor comes in. Every morning she’d sing “Rise and shine / and give Hashem your glory glory!”

We usually moaned and turned over but that never deterred our counselors. They knew we had a day ahead. A day to play games — and sometimes to win to clean the bunk write letters home. Because they were convinced that important things lay ahead they had no problem clapping banging on the trunks pulling the covers off. Even sometimes splashing some icy morning mountain water.

For many years when my alarm went off I’d press Snooze. The load I had to wake up to usually felt too overwhelmingly heavy to handle. Maybe the bed would comfort?

But as I got older and started to sleep more often than not through the nights I began to look forward to the day. And I learned to move some of those scary distracters out of the way.

I came to a very different role. No longer “the camper” I was now “the counselor” — needing to have the faith to understand why I was waking everyone else up: because a day awaited them.

And sometimes many times almost every day I couldn’t focus on all the obstacles that awaited my children: The girl who would poke fun. The rebbe who would over-punish. The long hours in class with not enough break-time for active people. The white shirt still on hot cycle in the washing machine that accidentally got turned off. The bread that after twenty years I still forgot is needed in the morning. The note to write — in broken Hebrew.

For years or days within those years I couldn’t muster up that enthusiastic counselor clapping. I would sometimes be overly drawn to focusing on the obstacles. I’d have to convince and re-convince myself at 6:15 a.m. that seder shel yom a daily schedule is one of the real keys to a good full life.

So is attitude.

Even if girls poke fun teachers over-punish and time stands still in geometry class. We have to learn to develop methods for living with people and situations that may be far different from anything we imagined in our wildest dreams.

I’ll call the principal I tell myself. First thing. But difficulties are everywhere in every class office bus and train.

Teach skills yes. Call the principal maybe.

Daven.

Find ways to stay in “camp rhythm.”

Hashem puts little ideas in the head that help: Send a small game for recess — and find one friend to play Concentration. This already sets one on the way gives a little hope.

There were many years when waking up seemed so hard — because I was focusing on the obstacles on what could and almost guaranteed would go wrong.

True there will always be things that “go wrong.” Once when I’d have to take care of some crazy bills or misunderstanding or get some paperwork done in Hebrew requiring trips to three offices I tried to avoid it.

But then I learned to make a kind of game of it.

It’s a day an adventure. Take along food and drink and wear running shoes.

Once I had to find a certain secretary of a certain doctor in a certain hospital: I start at the information desk. They send me to the fourth floor. The secretary sends me to the third floor where the secretary finishes her danish and sends me to the seventh floor where the floor nurse asks a woman sitting at the desk if she knows where Miri’s office is.

She points to a long corridor with about twenty door options. I head in that direction and ask a student nurse if she knows where Miri’s office is. She starts to point. She knows English. I ask “Could you would you mind walking me there?”

As we walk down the eighth-mile of corridor I say “A person needs to be healthy to come to the hospital.”

She takes me to almost the end of the lane and points: “Go right then left and a quick right.”

And there’s Miri — in a tiny cubicle in the back of a room behind a computer screen.

I think I’d still be looking for her if that nice girl hadn’t practically taken me by the hand and led me there.

Years ago I’d have burst into tears. But you know what? It was fun. Because I was ready for it. I knew already that it would be an adventure. It always is each day.

Camp was hard work. Sports swimming hiking tennis arts and crafts.

But it was fun.

Some things in life are easier if you know Hashem is there to untangle them. Like when we went down the foaming rapids in rubber boats. We were scared to death — but at the same time we knew we had life preservers and that the camp director had planned this and wouldn’t put his campers in jeopardy. Or canoeing in the simulated lake getting stuck among the lily pads — but you knew eventually the life guard would come help you to shore.

Life can also be fun. We just have to know it’s an adventure and to be ready for that — and we’ll rise and shine.