boys at a summer camp

Want to reopen schools? Summer camps show how complicated it’ll be.

Many camps across the U.S. have fended off the coronavirus. Schools can learn from their successes—and failures.

Many of the camp organizers National Geographic interviewed said that they had no known cases of COVID-19, yet not all child-care facilities have made it through the summer unscathed.

Photograph by Pete Muller, Nat Geo Image Collection

Georgia Zengerle was on her way. The nine-year-old’s dad wound their car through the hazy green mountains of western North Carolina in mid-July, driving four hours toward the town of Brevard—and the hope for some semblance of normalcy.

Their destination was the all-girls Keystone Camp, a 104-year-old sleep-away establishment that stayed open during the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic—and decided to brave COVID-19 this summer. In a normal year, campers ride horses around the 120-acre grounds, canoe along the Green or Tuckasegee rivers, or zipline through the pine trees of the Blue Ridge Mountains. But this summer, camp came with pandemic precautions.

Georgia wore a mask most times when she was outside of her cabin, and she participated in all her activities

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