Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Greetings Blog Readers!

Yet again sorry for the delay in posting. I think this might mean it is time for me to shed my commitment about always posting on Sunday evenings. I wanted to wait until we had all our new Flying Cloud names to make the post, which meant I wasn’t able to get back to my computer until now.

Let’s jump right in- our August Session is off to a spectacular start. We brought in two new counselors and 17 new campers (we had 21 campers stay for the full summer!) Almost half of our community is new to Flying Cloud, so we’ve been really getting into the vibe of orientation. There is always an interesting shift to close out the July Session community and then immediately jump into forming a new community only days later. This year, the full season campers have been particularly great and welcoming and integrating the new Flying Clouders. We went through much of the same orientation we did at the beginning of the summer (how to build safe fires, use blades properly, how to do chores, etc.), but this time we had our full season campers taking on more leadership roles. Along with helping the new campers learn how to live at Flying Cloud, many of them have really been stepping up and are even teaching activities like leather pouch making and stone arrow crafting. This is truly an expression of the cyclical model of ’student becomes teacher’; only we also learn from those we teach as well!

If you’ve been following the blog, you know that a list of new names should be in here somewhere if we just had a naming. You’re absolutely right. So please join me in welcoming and recognizing nine of our brothers with their new Flying Cloud names (if you don’t know much about Flying Cloud names, take a look back to this post from earlier in the summer: http://www.farmandwilderness.org/fcblog/2011/07/10/well-under-way/).

Weaving Forest

Sky Otter’s Embrace

Osprey Dive

Heron Spring

Questing Crow

Yearling’s Bliss

Summer Dog

Constellation Gives

Watching Mountain Brings

I am so proud of all these young men for the journey they have traveled to reach their new names. While it takes a little while for the weight of a name to settle, I know with so much certainty that these names will settle well on the shoulders of these Flying Clouders.

Nine new names given, and we jump right into trips! Today the whole was split into the groups they will be with for the next four days and three nights for their overnight trips. During this half of the summer, we have a pretty incredible line up of options for the boys. In the hiking department,we have an expedition leaving right out of camp and hiking some of the biggest peaks in our area called S.K.i.P. Trip (Shrewsbury, Killington, an “i” for the sake of making a word, Pico). Our other hiking trip currently is to the Breadloaf Wilderness Area, which is a couple hours north of us in the Green Mountains. For those interested in a little time on the water we our offering a Raquette River Canoe trip in the Adirondack Mountains in New York. Beyond hiking and canoeing we have two other trips as well. First, we have our standard Wilderness Survival Trip. We take the campers and staff trip leaders for this trip to a hidden location where they can practice all their different survival skills from debris shelter building to friction fire to wild edibles collection. Then, (drumroll please), we have our capstone trip experience for the older campers which we call Uber Scout! This is a trip designed around testing our abilities of camouflage and silent movement. This trip is a pretty epic adventure that the campers always walk away from proud to have been a part of.

So, first thing tomorrow morning, we will see all the trip groups off. They will return to us on Saturday evening just in time for the last week of camp. The summer comes and goes so fast, but there is still so much that will happen in the next week and a half.

If you haven’t thought about it yet, I suggest you consider coming to join us for the Farm & Wilderness Fair on August 13th. All of the F&W camps are involved in a great time and we love to have as many guests as we can find! You can find out more at http://www.farmandwilderness.org/events-and-retreats/alumni-bbq.

Hope to see y’all there and if not please don’t hesitate to contact me at Zach@farmandwilderness.org with any questions, concerns, hopes, or joys you might have!

Be well,
~FF~

Hey everyone, for those who aren’t in Vermont, I wanted to let you know about a great couple of articles about Farm and Wilderness and Flying Cloud in particular that came out this week. Both were published in Seven Days, the local independent newspaper, and I’d love for you to check them out and share them with friends.

The first is a printed article on their website: http://www.7dvt.com/2009nature-and-nurture.

The second article is actually an audio piece specifically about Flying Cloud and our history. Sarah, who created the piece from interviews with directors over the last two decades, is an F&W alum and I think she did a great job. You can listen to it here: http://www.7dvt.com/2009evolution-flying-cloud and if you listen all the way through you can hear me singing “Sim Boyo”– the closing song for our Naming Ceremonies.

Well, I’m sad to say it, but camp’s over. We sure had a great summer, didn’t we?

There was truly a whirlwind of activity to wrap things up at camp this summer. Since I last wrote we had Banquet, Friendship Fire, Fair, Fire Quest and lots of work during post-camp. Some of it is hard to convey in print, but I’ll do my best. In particular, I just want to highlight two big events: Fair and Fire Quest.

Fair was a whole new experience this year. At Flying Cloud we held on to a lot of the best elements of Fair that we’ve always had and loved, and we also had some new elements. If you have thoughts about the changes, I’d love to hear them. We made beef jerky this year, like always, and we also made more of our Flaming Tipi Hot Sauce, which has become increasingly popular as we fine tune the recipe. For next year I think we’ll make even more of both, since as usual they sold out fast! This year we decided to give away our fried grasshoppers, and I was surprised to see that people ate them right up! I guess if you fry something in oil and put enough chili powder on it, it’s pretty yummy.

The new version of the closing of Fair was very pretty, though a big hot fire in the middle of the day was a bit too warm for most! For next year I’m sure we’ll keep the piece about each camp singing a song, which I thought was gorgeous, but we’ll have to find a new way to have fire be a part of Fair. Right now I’m dreaming of something more sculptural…. Again, if you have great ideas I’d love to hear them.

The other big event that was part of the closing experience for the summer was the addition of Fire Quest. In this ceremony older campers who chose to were invited to go out into the woods around Flying Cloud, build a fire, and tend it overnight until they were called back in to camp by the sound of our ceremony drum. On the surface this sounds like a pretty simple task, but there’s something about sitting alone, in the dark with a pile of wood and a little fire all night that seems to bring out a lot of personal reflection. Our hope in holding this ceremony was for our campers to have a chance to reflect on their summer and to prepare themselves for the coming year. Life as a teenage boy can be stressful and confusing, and often times taking the time to sit and think while under the protection of a loving community can make all the difference. We hope it does for our boys….

I’ve been meaning to post an article on the sort of gear you might want to have at camp, and I’ve finally done it! Take a look over to the left, in the “Pages” section, and you’ll see one entitled “Gear for Camp”. That has the standard gear list, plus a few of my comments on what we suggest and why.

Be sure to check at the end where I offer a few tips about how to think about gear. As you’ll note, less is more, and simple is beautiful. See you soon, and as always, feel free to get in touch if you have any questions!

Becka Warren, our Communications Editor, has asked me to see if there’s anyone in the FC community interested in contributing to the Interim. The Interim is the newsletter about camp that keeps us all connected in the interim between summers. If you’d like to contribute, here’s how:

Create a piece of artwork, or write down a memory from one of your summers, or tell us about how Farm & Wilderness has affected you, and then get your creation to Becka in the office. In particular, I’d love to have some FC campers write about some of the unique traditions of the Cloud, like circling up, Naming Ceremonies or Cook Crew, as well as why they’re important.

You can email your creation to Becka at Becka@farmandwilderness.org or you can call her up to talk about the best way to submit something at (802) 422-3761. You should aim to get these in by the end of February.

Looking forward to seeing some of you at Ice Cutting!