Archive for July, 2010

My Friends, camp is moving unbelievably fast. The campers have already been here for nearly a week, and that means they only have two weeks left! Fair is on Saturday, August 14th this summer and we’re really looking forward to having lots of guests. As usual we’ve made some small changes in order to try to make it an even better event, so check out the main page of the website for more information. In terms of FC and our place at Fair all I have to say is this: Beef Jerky, Flaming Tipi Hot Sauce and FC BBQ Sauce. It’s going to be a delicious day, and I hope you can make it!

In more recent events, we just wrapped up a day of local-area hikes and today the campers are out on Sacred Order Wanders. The “sacred order” of survival is shelter, water, fire and food, and we take at least one day from each session to focus fully on techniques for meeting those needs in a survival situation. During second half that involves a day-long wander in the lush forest around FC, building a shelter, starting a fire, collecting and cooking lunch and learning about purifying water. By the time the groups get back they should be well hydrated and full, but just in case we’re making an extra-large serving of fried rice for dinner tonight!

As always, if you have any questions please write, email or call and I’ll be happy to help. Of course you’re already doing this I’m sure, but don’t forget to check out the “parents only” section of the website for photos from the current summer. There are some real beauties up there. Your boys are amazing!

Flying Cloud is fundamentally about two things:

1. connecting with nature and
2. connecting with each other

That means playing in the forest, and making new friends.
It means learning local plants and animals, and learning how to listen and share.
It means recognizing the hazards in nature, and recognizing how we can each grow in our relationships.
Connection to nature brings us inner peace and connection to each other gives our lives meaning.

Today I want to share with you a golden nugget of counseling wisdom that we’ve been working with this summer at Flying Cloud. There’s an organization called the Arbinger Institute that does work around Peacemaking and helping people and organizations enhance their self-awareness. Central to their work is an idea about how we each are in the world. They call this our “way of being” and argue that, we can only have a heart that is “at peace” with others (and nature) or “at war”. This breaks down to a question of whether, in our relationships we’re seeing the other parties as people or as objects, and how we treat them based on that choice.

I’m writing about this today because this is a challenge that everyone faces. It’s human. We all have days where we can’t see another person’s humanity, but instead get caught up in just seeing them as a problem, or as something less then ourselves. The work we’ve been doing this summer is around trying to see when that happens to us as counselors and work to address it. The result is that we try to focus more and more of our energy on building strong relationships with campers. We try to get to know them as deeply as we can, and to know their friends and the other relationships that they value. We work hard to listen to their stories and to learn from them. When we teach, we try to explain why we’re teaching as we are, and why we think it’s worth learning, and on the occasion where we have to correct a behavior, we try to do it while constantly maintaining an awareness of the other person’s struggles, dreams, fears, hopes, passions and emotions.

We’re not perfect, and of course we stumble in this process. Who hasn’t answered a question a bit more shortly than they wished they had? Who hasn’t said something they regretted later? The point isn’t to be perfect, but to be trying, and to continually push towards seeing everyone as human and therefore just as important as we are. In our efforts to achieve this, a book called the Anatomy of Peace has been profoundly helpful, and I want to strongly encourage each of you to get a copy. If reading an entire book is too much, I totally understand. At a minimum I ask that you take twenty minutes to read through this short article focused on parenting called “The Parenting Pyramid”. I believe that you’ll find it useful and I hope that you’ll be able to apply it with your son and with others in your life.

If you do read the book and it touches you as much as it’s affected many of us, we would love to hear from you about your experience. It’s proven challenging to try to live this way, but it’s also been really amazing, and I personally can see it touching many of my relationships with the FC staff and campers this summer.

What a journey we’ve had! The first half of the summer is coming to a close as I write this, and it’s a big deal. Since I last wrote, we’ve had a Naming Ceremony, deepened our connections with nature and had an opportunity to share about how this place has touched each of us.

At the second Naming Ceremony of the summer we honored seven campers and a counselor by bestowing upon them Flying Cloud names. Please join me in holding the following young men in the light:
Rhythm Root
Travels the Song
North Born
Smoke Tracker
Magpie Waterfall
Summer Lights the Sky
Earth Roll Laughter and our counselor Vince, now known as
Redwood.
Receiving their Flying Cloud names is a difficult process involving a full day and night of fasting and sitting in the woods in reflection, after which the campers build a huge fire and we dance the night away. To put their experience in perspective I told a story about a father/son team overcoming amazing challenges through their love for one another. If you haven’t heard of Team Hoyt, I encourage you to read up on their truly inspiring journey. Thinking of them helps me be a better director and I would love to know how it affects you as a parent.

Last night we had another very important ceremony that I want to share with you. At the beginning and end of each session we hold a Friendship Fire. At the end of the session the camper leader known as the Speaker asks “who speaks for Flying Cloud” at which point campers and staff speak out about how this place has touched them. Here are just a few of the heartfelt and deeply touching things campers said:

“This place is like something out of a movie, except that I get to be one of the characters and it’s even more awesome!”

“This place is like a second home to me.”

“Flying Cloud feels like home, and you are all my family.”

“Yesterday I realized that after being at Flying Cloud I could run and not even think about it.” (A statement met with cheers for his newfound strength.)

“Flying Cloud names give us something to live up to, and I can’t wait to see what we’ll each grow into.”

I know I’ll see many of you tomorrow for pickup and visiting day, and if you have any questions or concerns, don’t hesitate to reach out to me. This summer has been one of joyful connections with parents for me and I’m so thankful for all of your openness and the trust you’ve put in me and the Flying Cloud staff to help raise your boy into a wonderful young man.

Hello there friends and family!

We had our first Naming Ceremony at camp this week, and it was a blast! While the staff planned for the coming week, the campers spent all day building a big fire under the leadership and guidance of our four Camper Leaders. After a hard day’s work, we wrapped up with a great big party with guests from Indian Brook, Timberlake and the Barn Day Camp!
Please join me now in honoring our newly named Flying Cloud Brothers:
Oak Heart
Orchid Path
Moon Song Chickadee
Winter Spring
Elk Shapes the Hearth
Red Buck Runs

As I write, campers are out on the last full day of their trips. We have a group tracking animals on the Montague Sand Plains in Massachusetts, a group hiking on the Long Trail, and a team testing their survival skills in the Arthur Davis Wildlife Management Area just across the valley. The last group canoed across Flagstaff Lake and is now hiking a section of the Appalachian Trail. I expect to hear a ton of great stories when we welcome them back into camp tomorrow night!

Hi all!
I hope you’re checking in here often. In case some of you are new here, I wanted to let you know that you can expect a new blog post every week, usually on Wednesday evenings. These posts are usually a little story from the week, and a nice photo or two. The articles here will usually be by me, but some might also be by Forest Flame since he’s warming up his directorial fingers this summer on the blog. As always, let either of us know if you want more or less of something, and feel free to pass along the link to this page!

Also, if you want more photos, you can log into the “parents only” section of the site, which you’ll learn about in an email soon if you haven’t already.

Now, on to news of the week!
We’ve been diving right into camp for sure. After the orientation days, we moved into “Sacred Order” activities, which are the activities where we practice some of the core skills for someone learning to survive in the wilderness. My hope is that in addition to being able to chant the sacred order (“Shelter! Water! Fire! Food!”) the boys will come away from the summer with a basic understanding of how to build or find shelter, how to find and purify water, how to make a safe, sustainable fire and, of course,  how to get food from the land. We had a great time building a couple of shelters as a big group, and we’ll have people sleeping out in them soon. The nice thing about the ,shelter building projects is that the guys get a sense of just how much work it is, but they also get to have some fun. I think the results are pretty great, but we’ll see how they do once people are sleeping in them!

Since then, one of the most fun parts of the week (for me at least) was our Day Trips. We sent a group in each direction out of camp: One went north on the Catamount/Moosetrack trail to the top of Round Top; another bushwhacked West to the top of Saltash Mountain; a third went East down our stream towards Sliding Rocks (a cool natural water-slide nearby) and the fourth headed South towards Lake Ninevah and a pretty phenomenal Swamp Romp! I was lucky enough to tag along for the swamp romp, and I can tell you one thing: we got right into it! In addition to all the mud, we found places where deer had rested, moose tracks, cattails we could eat and a beautiful beaver lodge. Oh, yeah, and a bunch of leeches… but we dealt with them.
One of the real values from a day trip like this, in addition to having fun and building connection with each other and the land, is that we can push our edges a little bit. Usually, we’re not supposed to go into the deepest mud we can find and splash around. Usually, going waist-deep into cold water is a bad thing. For us, it’s not just okay, we actively encourage it! The goal is to help campers realize how much cool stuff is happening in nature, just off the beaten path. Sometimes that means you have to get a bit wet or dirty, but it’s always worth if for the amazing discoveries you can make!

I hope you’re all having a great summer, too, and for all of you out there praying that we get great weather, thanks! You’ve done a great job so far!