Camp Hi-Hill was a decades-long tradition in Long Beach that sent fifth graders to camp in the mountains for five days, with schools from different neighborhoods mixed so that local kids got a chance to make new friends from around the city. Like a lot of people who grew up here, I have fond memories of Camp Hi-Hill, as does my wife \u2014 we both have our Memory Sticks rattling around in the garage.<\/p>\n
For a lot of my friends, Hi-Hill was the first (or only) trip into nature that childhood offered, and it was a beloved horizons-expanding experience for generations of Long Beach kids.<\/p>\n
More than a decade ago, state budget cuts and wildfire regulations shuttered the camp. For a lot of us who grew up here and are raising kids here, it felt like another major piece of evidence that things might not be as sunny in Long Beach for the next generation as they were for ours.<\/p>\n
The return of Hi-Hill \u2014 now run at the YMCA\u2019s Camp Oakes \u2014 was celebrated on all corners of local social media, and since our son Vinny is a fifth grader, we were thrilled that he\u2019d get to be one of the first groups of kids to restart the Hi-Hill legacy. His school was scheduled to go with the second group to make the trip this year, but just days before they left, the camp had to close for a week because of a bed bug infestation.<\/p>\n
I pushed the nagging negativity in the back of my mind even further and had faith that the school district would do right by our kids, which they did. Vinny and his classmates got a rescheduled date and went to Hi-Hill last week, spending the week before Christmas in the cold air making memories and new friends, doing some school learning but also a lot of life learning.<\/p>\n
He and his friends came home a day early to beat the snowstorm that put travel restrictions on the roads to and from camp, and we were happy to see them all as they lumbered off the bus bundled up in their cold weather gear. Our school\u2019s fabulous principal and counselor waited until 6 p.m. to make sure all the kids got picked up, and as I stood there looking at all the smiling faces on the school\u2019s lawn, it felt like a little miracle.<\/p>\n So many people worked so hard to bring the camp experience back, and my son and his friends came home raving about how much fun they had. And while we had to huff diesel fumes in the yellow school bus back in the 1990s, the kids even got to ride up the mountain and back in a nice charter bus.<\/p>\n Maybe things are getting better, after all.<\/p>\n I was proud to represent The562<\/a> at a Thanksgiving food giveaway for the hungry in Long Beach at King Park, organized and hosted by The Six<\/a>. There are a lot of people who like to talk about supporting our community, but I\u2019ve been around long enough to know how much easier talk is than action. The good folks at The Six put a call out for local organizations to sign up to bring a specific food item, and more than 60 stepped up. That meant that people who came for food didn\u2019t just get something handed to them \u2014 they got to walk around and \u201cshop,\u201d picking out ingredients and staples so that they could cook the kind of dinner they wanted. It was a beautiful example of the Long Beach community pulling together, and I look forward to signing up again in 2024.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/img.lbpost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2023\/12\/26094821\/Hi-hill-2-image_67509761-836x1024.jpg\")
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