“I learned that even when you encounter the unexpected, if you work together with friends, you can have fun. . .” “I learned that it really helps if everyone pitches in and shares the weight when someone is having a hard time. . .” “I learned that even though my chocolate didn’t totally melt, banana boats are a really good camping treat.”
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 4th 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!