Through the eyes of Gaby Laurent — author, Camp WAO alum, and leader of the August 2025 camp.
The first thing you will do is wake up to the sound of crashing waves. Slip out of your sleeping bag, shuffle in your sandals to the bathroom. Rub the sleep from your eyes as you greet one of your new friends in the shared bathroom.
Change into your comfiest shorts, camp shirt, and hat, and walk down to breakfast at the dining hall. The coffee will be ready, so you might stop there first. You go through the breakfast buffet, with plenty of savory items, sweets, and a yogurt and fruit bar. You find a table full of friends out on the porch and settle in.
You yap and eat until it’s time for a morning meeting, where you get all the info you need for the day.
After breakfast, you and half of the campers head over to the archery range, where you develop a new skill set, just in case you had dreams of being Katniss Everdeen. After archery, you switch places with the other group of campers and visit the on-site marine science center aquarium. Here you learn about the local fish and wildlife of the island, and you even touch a few specimens in the touch tank!
Now it’s time for lunch, and you are ready for it! A full buffet of fresh fish, veggies, and rice. And the yummiest almond cookies in the world. You know you have to fuel up for the next adventure.
After lunch, you grab snorkel gear and walk over to Doctor’s Cove. This is where you slowly enter the rocky shoreline and immerse yourself in the water. You pull down your goggles and snorkel and begin your underwater exploration. You see many fish, but nothing as bright as the Garibaldi! As you snorkel, you realize this is a core memory —one that you will carry with you forever.
After a long snorkel sesh, you lie on the warm pebbled beach with your new friends, learning about their similar yet different experiences with cancer. The waves are the soundtrack to this scene.
Eventually you take a shower and get dressed, meeting up with a few friends at the covered porch outside of the dinning hall. There are people playing yard games, tie-dying, and making friendship bracelets. You sit and watch the merriment, the respit that has been given to so many, this week away from cancer.
A bell rings and its time for dinner. Hop in line and make a plate full of fajita tacos with all the fixings, most importantly Culture Hot Sauce. Everyone shares their favorites parts of the day as they eat. Ater dinner everyone mianders over to the beach where a fire is already burning. Its time for everyone to share why they came to camp. You feel nervous to speak outloud in front of the group, but as people describe all the feelings you know to well, you realize the most important thing about camp: you are not alone. Now you have a new group of friends to walk through life with.
And as you snuggle down into your sleeping bag that night, you smile as you imagine the next adventure to come.
