Mission Imm-Possible: From Camper to Marine to Staff Man

By Kier Malloy

When Noah Imm stepped onto Deer Island for the first time in 2009, he didn’t know anyone. Arriving at the main dock, the lanky 12-year-old from Columbus, Ohio was greeted by a flurry of handshakes and words of welcome, then hustled off to his cabin in the Junior Camp for the evening.

As the night wore on, Noah didn’t say much. He observed, listened and took in his new surroundings. He didn’t know what the next four weeks would bring, but he quickly realized he was in a place unlike any he had previously encountered.

Noah departs on a Prep trip in 2019. (Kate Downey)

One of his first memories was meeting Ben Woods, a counselor in the Junior Camp. “To be honest, I remember being scared of the guy at first. He’s so tall and kind of stern,” Noah recalls, “It didn’t take long, though, before he started to grow on me, and I realized he was a funny guy.”

That summer, Noah went on his first canoe trip, the Sanford-Turtle. He describes his first few days on the water as “a real kick in the teeth.” “You get broken down and then you build yourself back up,” he says, “Going back is not an option. When you’ve got your back against a wall, all you can do is push forward.”

Noah returned to camp the following year as an Intermediate and paddled the infamous Bloodvein River. After his second summer, however, he was forced to take a hiatus from Kooch-i-ching due to changing family and financial circumstances. “I knew that I didn’t want to be just a ‘two and out’ type of guy,” he says, “I knew I would go back eventually—I just wasn’t sure when.”

After graduating from high school in Chicago, Noah enlisted in the US Marine Corps and was soon shipped off to boot camp and basic training in San Diego. “The Marine Corps allows you to go backwards,” he explains. “You can show up at boot camp and say you want to go home on Day 1 and you’ll be gone. For me, those cards were just never on the table.”

Noah helps a camper load a Duluth Pack. (Kate Downey)

“I took a lot of the lessons I learned at camp with me to boot camp,” he adds. “When we are out on trips and the bus leaves, there’s no turning back. You have to go forward. That was the mentality I carried with me all through the Marine Corps.”

After boot camp, Noah attended the School of Infantry—West at Camp Pendleton in California, where he was trained in various weapons and techniques. Later, he was stationed in Kanoehe Bay, Hawaii as an infantry assault man with 1/3 Alpha Company. Upon leaving the Marines in 2018 at the age of 22, Noah enrolled in Moraine Community College in the southern suburbs of Chicago, where he began pursuing a degree in chemical engineering. With his summers free again, he knew it was time to get back to Deer Island. “I messaged JR over Facebook and honestly I think he was pretty surprised to hear from me,” he says.

Noah returned to Kooch-i-ching in 2019 as a Prep counselor and riflery instructor. “It was a bit jarring coming back and seeing camp from the other side, as a counselor,” he says, “I mean, when I was a camper, I never even knew the staff cabin existed. I always just figured they were off doing something else when I couldn’t find them.”

Noah hugs his brother Antonio. (Kate Downey)

Noah’s Kooch-i-ching experience came full circle that summer when he led a trip down the Sanford-Turtle with Ryan McClain. “We renamed it the MAN-ford-Turtle because the trip was so hard and we didn’t let up on those kids one bit,” he says, adding, “The kids had a blast.”

And unlike his first summer at camp, Noah didn’t come alone. His younger brother Antonio—one of 11 brothers—was an eight-week Intermediate. “When I first came up, I remember thinking how cool it would be if I had one of my brothers up here,” he says. “When it actually happened, I was so excited because it was one of the dreams I’ve had since I was a camper.”

Today, Noah is still studying chemical engineering, now at the University of Colorado Boulder. He plans to take his time finishing his degree so that he can continue coming up to camp, with the hope of bringing up some of his other brothers.

“I’ve been talking with a lot of my close friends about where I should go from here, and the consensus has pretty much been to just take my time,” he says. “You don’t have to be in a rush. It’s life. Enjoy it. Do things that make you happy.”

This article was originally published in the Spring 2021 issue of the Kooch-i-ching Tumpline.