JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
From heat waves to heavy rain and even clouds of smoke, this summer has seen no shortage of extreme weather and wildfires. As NPR's Ava Berger reports, all of this is hitting a bedrock of childhood - the whimsy of summer vacation.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: (Screaming).
(SOUNDBITE OF WATER SPLASHING)
AVA BERGER, BYLINE: This is what summer is all about. On a beautiful July day at Beauvoir Summer Camp in D.C., kids are jumping into a blue, refreshing pool.
DANE: Do you want to watch how I go underwater? Want to watch?
(SOUNDBITE OF WATER SPLASHING)
BERGER: That's Dane (ph). He's wearing goggles that cover most of his face.
DANE: That's how I go underwater.
BERGER: Nearby, best friends, Penelope (ph) and Sam (ph), both 7 years old, say their favorite part of camp is pool time. NPR is only using their first names because they're minors. Here's Penelope.
PENELOPE: I like playing a mermaid, or, like, I'm a mermaid. Or, like, I'm a human, and then I turn into a mermaid. And, like, I use one of the pool noodles as a dolphin. And I play with my friends.
BERGER: Last week looked a little different at Beauvoir. The kids played inside one day due to hazardous air quality from wildfire smoke. Some days were so hot this summer, their outdoor time was also cut down. Research shows that heat waves, droughts, hurricanes and floods have become more intense and more frequent due to human-caused climate change. Penelope and Sam both know the term climate change.
PENELOPE: Climate change means, like, the areas around you are just, like, changing all around you all the time.
BERGER: Yeah. Do you feel like it's changed your summer this summer?
PENELOPE: Yeah. It's changed my summer a lot. Because at Girl Scouts camp, the theme was Teddy Bear Tea, and I couldn't even do the theme. So that means I couldn't have...
BERGER: She said it was too hot to have tea outdoors with her friends. Drew Mackay, the camp's executive director, said over the past few years, they've had more extreme weather events, so now they're better prepared for indoor fun.
DREW MACKAY: For example, we'll have a space that has Hot Wheel cars and ramps.
BERGER: For kids, summer is a sanctuary - three months of freedom from schoolwork. For many parents, summer is more of a scramble to get their kids outside one way or another. Lauren Smith (ph) said for her kids in Pennsylvania this summer, it's been extreme heat, then wildfire smoke, then thunderstorms.
LAUREN SMITH: The summer is kind of like a waiting game - just waiting to do some stuff outside. It's been a challenge.
BERGER: A 2024 Gallup survey found that 55% of American parents reported their school-age kids attend at least one structured summer program. Henry DeHart is the CEO of the American Camp Association, which gives accreditation and guidance to hundreds of camps across the country. A few decades ago, he says...
HENRY DEHART: A camp might have had three or four or five days with the heat index over 105. Now they may have eight or 10.
BERGER: That's why camps are more prepared for indoor activities. But for some camps this year, that wasn't possible.
BEN HOFFMAN: We made a decision for early evacuation of our entire camp.
BERGER: Ben Hoffman is the executive director of Camp Widjiwagan in Ely, Minnesota. The program hosts over 700 kids each summer. Their base camp was right in the path of the smoke. It meant 17-year-old Eleanor Pitts (ph) had to leave camp early.
ELEANOR PITTS: And you're like, wait, so this is our last night? And we all just started crying.
BERGER: Saying goodbye was tough.
PITTS: We'd become the closest group of people. They were genuinely my family by then. But going forward, trips are just going to be different just because of this climate change situation.
BERGER: Back in D.C., Beauvoir camp director Drew Mackay said being ready to adapt to extreme weather is now part of the summer camp job.
MACKAY: For us it's a new reality and - but it's not just the heat. It's other types of weather patterns and factors.
BERGER: The kids, on the other hand, are more focused on their free-swim time.
Ava Berger, NPR News, Washington.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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