The three-day cabin trips made it back with obvious success.  Campers came back soaked and pretty awestruck by just how much rain can fall from the New England sky.  However, camp was filled with stories of fording streams, swimming in waterfalls in the rain, and persevering in building rainy-weather fires.  The elements paved the way for making friends, learning to take care of yourself, and that peaceful feeling of just looking up at the sky and appreciating the rain.  Luckily, it was a warm rain.

Some more words from SAMmers during trip debriefs:

“We saw how much our counselors are there to look out for us.” - Shrewsbury Camper

“Pico did silent meeting on the summit of Pico Mountain.  We felt so connected” - Pico Camper

“We did silent meeting grouped up on canoes on the lake.  It was really special” - Glastonbury Camper

It’s a beautiful thing to watch the campers reconnect after trips.  Having the opportunity to return to each other and actualize their growth just solidifies it that much more.  Upon return campers express appreciation and affection for SAM as a community and SAM as a place.

This connection to SAM has made it more reasonable to talk about the issues that affect our community.  Discussions about how we treat each other, the language we use, and how we treat the place, have a wonderful feeling of compassion and ownership.  These topics and more were covered in detail during an evening facilitated by two of our amazing cabin staff.  The entire community was able to create a contract around what they would like to add to our pot of “SAM Soup”; a spoonful of enthusiasm, 1 lb of forgiveness, 4 ounces of fun, 3 gallons of respect, 1tbsp of honesty, 4 pinches of appreciating the hard times, and a ton of love were some key ingredients added by campers.

By Saturday we were back at it again! Day trips went out with much excitement as campers signed up for their choice of full-day adventures including caving, summiting Saltash Mountain, rock-climbing at Deer’s Leap, and a hike to tour Tamarack Farm and face some challenging ropes-course initiatives.

As an evening activity “Three-way Camp-wide Capture the Flag” speaks for itself, pretty loudly if you’ve ever heard it, but evening activities such as “Rap Groups” could use some explanation.  This is the only time as a camp we take the opportunity to meet as separate groups determined by the campers specified gender.  Both groups were very productive as they discussed what it means to be male/female, how we are affected by gender stereotypes, what these stereotypes imply, and how each group would like to represent their gender in the SAM community.

After a few more healthy and delicious meals prepared by our amazing cooks, Sam Arfer and Joe Deely, SAM campers were off into the wilds once more.  Campers left on Monday and Tuesday in co-ed groups for six or seven days to canoe and portage through the Adirondacks, backpack and gaze from the peaks of the Green Mountains, take on some rocky challenges through rock-climbing and caving, and many of our fourteen year olds have travelled to Flagstaff Lake in Maine for a combination backpacking and canoeing trip.

The Questors, our 15 and up co-ed expedition and leadership program, have now been out for 12 days.  All reports are great, though very few!  The group has taken to the “Leader of the Day” model for teaching individual leadership and is jelling as an expedition group.  They have completed the seven days of canoeing in the Adirondacks and will be receiving their second resupply today as they backpack through the High Peaks region.  They are going to have quite a story to tell by the end of this huge journey.

Again we thank you for this amazing opportunity.

Sunday evening many SAMmers had their first opportunity to visit our Crafts Barn which holds an array of costumes and props as well as our arts and crafts materials. Campers donned gorilla suits, fencing masks, evening gowns, and top hats to perform “public service announcement” skits on life here at SAM: using KYBOs (outhouses), the water front, and 5th Freedom (freedom of expression without fear of judgment).

SAMmers were soon off to their cabins for “Cabin Discussions”. Campers are given the opportunity to provide input on how they would prefer life in the cabin to be. A few of the discussed norms included “no teasing”, “doing your part with chores”, and “make every camper feel welcome”. Cabins will often revisit this contract they all are a part of creating.

Monday was full of excitement as we spent the day gearing up for Cabin Trips. Campers started by reviewing maps and scouring over the itineraries for their first trips. After making some tough decisions around the preferred trip menu items (“Two days from now, will I want cream cheese or jam on my bagel?)”, campers were off to see the Mac-O-Bac Mamma, our gear specialist, to gather all group supplies, test stoves, set up tents, and pack food. Other activities in preparation for the trips included some canoe training, otherwise known as “tippy tests”, and some fun games to begin the process of becoming a functional group. It’’s amazing what you can learn with some blindfolds, a couple of old socks, and 10 ft of spare rope! We closed Monday with an adventurous tour of SAM camp, aka “The Magical Mystery Tour”, in which each place of interest held a new obstacle to overcome. Once completed, campers would get a clue to send them to the next location until all areas of camp were visited.

Tuesday campers awoke to sunshine and chocolate birthday cake (of course after a well balanced breakfast). The morning activity included deciphering phrases referencing our upcoming trips from a multitude of our represented languages, including Japanese, Icelandic, Portuguese, French, German, Spanish, American Sign, Latin, and Hebrew. This was a perfect transition into departure. Cabins set off on foot, by canoe, and by van for three-day adventures in the surrounding Green Mountains. The Questers, our expeditions program for campers ages 15 and up, set off for their twenty-day adventure canoeing, backpacking, and rock climbing in the Adirondacks of New York!

Even in the midst of all of this activity it was the many acts of kindness that I observed from camper to camper that stood out most. I saw campers continually reaching out and helping each other with packing, doing chores, and supporting those who are feeling a little overwhelmed by the sudden change of environment. Many SAM staff have commented on how supportive and helpful they find this group of campers to be.

We thank you again for the experiences we are able to have with these great campers.

“You know the saying, ‘you can’t tell a book by its cover,’ well, it is really true. All of us stereotype to some degree. But, on trips, we have a chance to really meet people and get to know them beyond how we might just have thought of them when we first met them.”

“I learned that teamwork was really important for our group. By working together we were able to deal with the challenges on our trip.”

“Amelia (a SAM counselor) has a saying that ‘There is no such thing as bad weather or good weather, just different weather.’ I found out that that was true on our trip. One of our best hikes was 4-1/2 miles done in the rain.”

“I was scared when I found out that I was on the Mt. Abe trip, because I didn’t think that I could do the hard hiking. But, I found out that if I worked really hard at it, I was able to accomplish more than I thought that I could.”

Whether they were hanging onto a rock face, on a peak above treeline, or on the Connecticut River in the valley of the mountains, campers on all trips were also touched and spoke about the natural beauty they encountered. One camper, while packing up the food for his Week Three trips, remarked, “Now that I know so much about camping, I am going to take my family on a camping trip.”

These Week Two trips have had a great impact on developing our community and our in-camp life. When we are at SAM, some of our morning is spent doing “Asanas”—SAM speak for chores. Additionally, some of the senior campers are given the role of Asana Guides, and after doing their own chore with their cabin, check up on how a specific other chore was completed. Their findings are reported out each morning following Silent Meeting. One of the Asana Guide responsibilities, held by three campers this session, is to be the camp “Social Barometer,” reporting on how campers are living and acting as a community. Their assessment following our trips: “People seem to be getting along much better. There is much less bickering, picking on people, and staying just with one group of friends. Campers are really going out of their way to help someone out.”

While relaxing and fun, the in-camp experience was a short one this time around in order to have a third round of trips go out and return before Visiting Day. Still, we were able to fit in a “Beach Day,” active games in the field, beading and bracelet making, as well as a night of group building games and an evening of male/female discussion groups. Additionally, a group of 11 campers were able to visit the F&W’s Barn Day Camp in Plymouth to help with barn chores, hang out with the animals, and do some incredible hill rolling at the F&W fairgrounds.

As we write, campers are again out of camp. There is one four-day trip to a section of the Long Trail in Vermont where they will stay two days on a pond, and day hike up a mountain with a fire tower that, on a clear day, affords incredible views of Southern Vermont. (Back in camp, this group will be treated to a somewhat secret 24-hour set of adventures). The other two groups are on five-day trips to points further from camp. One group is canoeing in the Adirondacks. (“Wow, we get to go back to New York,” was the humorous reply from a couple of New York City-dwelling campers.) The last group is hiking in the Franconia Range of the White Mountains in New Hampshire, on a trip that will provide both wonderful views and exciting swimming.

We will have everyone back in camp by Friday evening, in time to welcome our visitors and guests this weekend. For everyone else who will be here, we are really looking forward to spending some time at camp with you while you visit with your child. It is still a few days out, but the weather is forecasted to be great. Hope you have a good week. We sure are!

Returning to camp from trips is full of ritual at SAM. Groups pack-in (clean up food containers, return group gear, and hang up wet tents, tarps and clothes) and then are treated to any mail they may have received when they were gone. The sauna is cranking, and the showers plentiful. Campers and counselors reconnect and hear and share tales of adventures. In the evening, we gather around the fire, each group presenting their “trip skit or song,” a usually comical version of the past few days’ experiences. The trip skits for the 3-day cabin trips were excellent, providing laughs as well as some sense of the challenges each group had encountered. When campers were then asked to think and talk about what kind of learning about them or others the trips had provided, their insights included those quoted above.

Friday and Sunday were our first, genuine “regular” in-camp days. We were blessed with weather that encouraged and allowed most campers to visit the waterfront to swim or canoe. Campers also built Andy Goldsworthy-inspired fairy houses, learned some sign language, played three-legged soccer, did some water color painting, and/or began carving a wooden spoon. On Friday morning, a small group of campers worked with counselors to help develop the outline for our Interdependence Day skit.

For a variety of programmatic reasons, Farm and Wilderness celebrates the July 4^th holiday on the first Saturday of camp. Renamed “Interdependence Day,” it includes activities that emphasize the concepts we try to teach at camp over the summer—our interdependence on fellow campers, the other camps of F&W, and other people in our lives, as well as our interdependence on the natural world around us. On Interdependence Day, all of the camps gather together in the evening to share something of ourselves that we have worked on as a camp. We also eat ice cream, play together, socialize and dance. Additionally for SAM, the tradition involves writing and performing an original skit, and hiking the nine miles to Indian Brook the day of the celebration, stopping at the center of Plymouth (near President Calvin Coolidge’s childhood home) to eat lunch and practice our performance.

This year’s skit was an Indiana Jones spin-off—Samdiana Jones—and was a fantastical story about the quest to bring back self-made music to end the encroachment of electronic music that had taken place at Farm and Wilderness in its absence. From making props to speaking lines to holding sign cards and singing the final song, every camper and staff pitched in and had an important role. An evening thunderstorm turned out to be a wonderful opportunity for us to perform twice– once for Indian Brook after we enjoyed dinner together, and later at the square dance barn for most of the other F&W campers and staff. The feedback about our skit—about the nature of the topic, the cleverness of the plot, the delivery of the lines, and our wonderful costumes and props—was incredibly positive. Working hard and working together to pull this success off was a proud accomplishment for all of us at SAM.

We didn’t have too long to sit back and relish in our pride, however. On Monday, new co-ed trip groups were announced, and they met to go over itineraries, create menus and pack their gear. On Tuesday, everyone again hit the trail. These trips are four days long. They include a hiking trip over a section of the Long Trail in Vermont that affords beautiful views, a canoe trip on the Connecticut River, and a rockclimbing trip that after practicing skills on a low ropes course and the climbing chimney at the Plymouth camps, is off to use these skills at a place called Silverlake, north of us in Vermont. Each of these groups is assuredly having adventures as I type. I look forward to watching their skits, hearing their stories, and probing the insights they will bring back with them to camp.

Last Monday, as we sat in staff meeting, it was amazing to review all the wonderful things that had happened in a week. I want to be honest with you that though this e-mail gives you the outline of what we are up to, it does not begin to compare to the richness and spiritedness of the experience. SAM Camp this month is an active, creative, thoughtful and happy place to be!

We have had an excellent start to camp at Saltash Mountain. On Sunday, 22 campers and 4 Questers arrived at SAM (our affectionate name for our camp) by car, bus and plane. We are a geographically diverse group, for sure, with campers coming to Mt. Holly from Vermont, the Boston area, Philadelphia, and New York, as well as North Carolina, Florida, Missouri and California.

About a third of the campers this half have some previous F&W experience. These young people delighted at visiting their old bunks, singing graces and songs they remembered, playing tetherball, slack-‘em and ping-pong once again, and reuniting with friends from other summers. New friendships quickly began forming and the traditions that make a summer at SAM so special were carefully passed on through group games, wacky (and informative) skits, trip meetings and cabin time. Campers have “taken” a Magical Mystery Tour to many of the important places around camp; participated in creating “Full Value Contracts” (rules that cabin groups develop and commit to in order to have safe and fun summers together); and sat, listening to the birds, trees, silence and each other in our first Meetings for Worship together.

Much of Monday was spent preparing campers for their first camping trips. They looked at maps of where their group was headed, created menus of what they wanted to eat on the trail, and went over what personal and group gear was needed and how to pack it. Campers tested cooking stoves, packed cheese and gorp and tortillas for their journey, learned how to hang tents and tarps, and took canoe “tippy tests”.

Then, Tuesday morning, each group headed out of camp. This week, the trips are two nights and three days and campers travel with their cabin groups. Campers and counselors in Pico have canoed to a camping site on our lake which they will explore the first day, before hiking to a mountain and shelter on the other side of the lake the next. The Shrewsbury group traveled by van to a part of the Long Trail (a hiking trail that runs north and south the length of Vermont). Among the places they will visit on their trek is Little Rock Pond. The girls and counselors in Okemo cabin were also headed to the Long Trail, a section just a little south of SAM, where they will be hiking and get to visit the beautiful (and fun to swim in) Clarendon Gorge. The final cabin group includes the Questers. This program is for 15 and 16 years olds who have some previous experience with camping, hiking and perhaps canoeing and rock-climbing. The four campers and two trip leaders in this program left today for three weeks of non-stop outdoor adventure and wilderness leadership instruction in the Adirondacks.

With all of this activity, I do want to prepare you for the possibility that it might be several days before you hear from your camper. Some kids found time to write during their Monday rest hour. Many were too tired, or opted to read a book or engage in a quiet activity on their bunk, instead. We will be sure to encourage everyone to put something in the mail when they return from their trips. But, that won’t go out until Friday at the earliest and mail service to and from this part of Vermont can be incredibly slow. If you don’t hear, and/or are feeling concerned or anxious, please feel free to give me a call at SAM (802-259-2415). However, I do want to assure all of you that when campers packed up and got in the vans or canoed out of camp today, they were a happy and excited bunch!

Jeff