Well, the end is here I’m afraid. We’ve had a truly wonderful summer at the Cloud this year, and I’m sorry to see it come to an end. Tomorrow is Fair day though, which is exciting for everyone involved! I hope you can come join us at the main campus anytime between noon and sunset for great food, lots of friends, dancing and a fire.

Earlier this week we had the final Naming Ceremony of 2010 and my final one as Flying Cloud director. Looking back, I think I’ve been to thirty-eight of them over the years! I was still deeply touched by the way the campers speak for one another and the way our community chooses to honor its members. After fifteen years that just goes to show how important this event can be. Please join me now in welcoming eight new members into our community:

Ursus Rides the Wind
Nebula Flare
Tinder Holds the Spark
Sparrow Scout
Watchfire
Sun Shower Hawk
Moss Arrow
and the counselor formerly known as Rafe,
Walking With

The last little jewel I want to share with you today is from our appreciation circle at the end of the day yesterday. One of our older campers, a Camper Leader, said

“I want to appreciate Flying Cloud for being the best place on earth and for providing an experience that no other camp could provide.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Hello Friends and Family!

This week I am happy to bring some very exciting news. Last night we held our first Naming Ceremony of the Second Half (our third Naming Ceremony of the summer). The day of a Naming Ceremony is full of energy and up at Flying Cloud we call them “a Party Day!” We had a wonderful group of guests come to celebrate the young men receiving their Flying Cloud names. Indian Brook brought a couple dozen visitors and all of Saltash Mountain Camp made an appearance. The night was filled with great food, fun games, and crazy dancing. Most importantly though, nine people were given their Flying Cloud Names.

Please join me in welcoming all of our new Flying Cloud brothers:

Stone Meadow
Amber Heron
Mink Brother
Maple Holds the Spring
Ember Speaks
Wolf Echo
Solstice Raising
Catamount Carries South

I would also like to send out a welcome to an important F&W community member who was named at FC last night. Pieter Bohen, our Executive Director, was given an FC name in honor of the work that he does for us and all of F&W. We are excited to welcome Pieter to our community as…

Mountain Calls the Light

The Naming Ceremonies run late so we made sure to get some rest today. Things are speeding up fast though. Tomorrow we will be packing up all of our gear to head out on trips for four days. We have a great set of adventures lined up for the boys which we’ll be sure to share more about when they arrive home at the end of the week.

until our next update, be well!

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.