Unplugged and Unforgettable

Nick Gordon attended Timberlake from 1985 to 1987, earned his Pioneer rating, and went on to become one of Hollywood's most accomplished independent film producers. His latest film, The Brutalist, won three Academy Awards, four BAFTAs, and three Golden Globes including Best Motion Picture Drama. His son Pierce is a Timberlake alum (2019–2023) and was part of the Rangers cabin featured in the NPR documentary Boys of Summer. Pierce will return to Timberlake this summer as a counselor.

I love it when two things apparently contradictory turn out to be complementary. Nick Gordon keeps a framed photo of legendary Timberlake staff Dan Wolfson on the wall of his home office in Los Angeles while across the room, somewhere nearby, sits a Golden Globe. Remembering Nick as a camper while I was on staff in the 80’s, I wanted to learn if there was a connection between his career path and those early off-grid summers at Farm & Wilderness.

Nick Gordon is a film producer — the kind who makes big, ambitious, difficult films that many people in Hollywood wouldn’t touch. His most recent, The Brutalist, is a three-and-a-half-hour epic about a Holocaust survivor and visionary architect chasing a distorted American dream. It swept awards season, collecting prizes from the Academy, the BAFTAs, and the Golden Globes. Before all of that, he was an eleven-year-old kid from Cambridge, MA, who got dropped off at a camp in Vermont and had his life changed.

I sat down with Nick to talk about his years at Timberlake, what it takes to make it in Hollywood, and why — as a parent, a producer, and a person — he believes in what Farm & Wilderness does more than ever.

Let’s begin with: “It Changed My Life"

Nick came to Timberlake the way many kids do — not really knowing what he was getting into. His stepfather, Tom Franklin, had three children of his own who had all attended Farm & Wilderness camps going back to the early 1970s. His stepsister was among the first female Pathfinders at Indian Brook. When Nick was eleven, Tom simply said: You're going to this camp in Vermont.

"I didn't know what it meant," Nick recalls. "I had just finished sixth grade in Cambridge. I grew up as a bicoastal kid — my parents separated when I was four. My mom was in Cambridge, my dad was in Santa Cruz. I was an only child. My parents were both from Australia, so I had no blood relatives in the Western hemisphere other than my two parents. I was very independent. And I just sort of rolled with whatever came my way."

What came his way at Timberlake was something he hadn't expected.

"Pretty much instantaneously, it just changed my life. Walking into an open-air cabin, seeing the wooden bunks, meeting all the boys, looking out onto the waterfront — it all just kind of took your breath away. I felt very strongly the sense of community. I felt supported by my counselors and mentors. Being immersed in this community of boys and men together was huge for me as an only child."

He still remembers his counselors by name. Matt Janger, who read The Princess Bride aloud to the cabin every night before bed. His other first counselor was Amos Glick who went on to become a professional actor. His biggest role model at camp was Dan Wolfson — "that guy was just everything to me."

"It felt like a place where a young kid could thrive and spread his wings and learn and grow. All the things."

Nick’s “Pioneer Rating” and What That Means

The Pioneer Rating at Timberlake and Firefly Song Camps recognize both skills and leadership development. Nick earned his Pioneer rating in his second summer, when he was in Otters at Big Lodge at the age of twelve. He believes he may have been one of the youngest campers ever to receive it at the time — a distinction he offers with characteristic self-awareness: " I think in that era, I was pretty young for it."

But what the Pioneer rating gave him wasn't just a credential. It was evidence.

"That first summer I was just feeling out what the possibilities were. But it was my second summer that I really started going for it. Things like the map and compass “Get Lost” hike — you're twelve years old and you get dropped off a few miles from camp. You're perfectly safe, they're monitoring you. But you feel this: I have to figure this out. I have to bushwhack my way back to camp before dinner. And it's just so confidence-building. It gives you this belief in yourself — that you're capable of much more than you thought."

He came back for a third summer but didn't go for his Pathfinder. He was heading into high school, and the seasons were shifting. Still, he's clear-eyed about what those three summers gave him.

"I think, I think that the drive and the determination — I keep coming back to this phrase about believing in yourself. I got that at Timberlake. I just did."

The Backstory: From Cambridge MA to Hollywood LA

After Timberlake, Nick's path moved through Cambridge Rindge and Latin — where he was a classmate of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, shaped by an extraordinary drama teacher who made all of them want to work in the arts. He went to Harvard, did theater, took a screenwriting class with Spike Lee. He moved to New York, then eventually to Los Angeles, initially to be a writer.

"Being a screenwriter writing feature films is a feast-or-famine thing," he says. "You write spec after spec after spec and hope you sell something. I found it very challenging."

What kept him going, he says, traces back to Vermont.

"I would like to think that the perseverance to stick at it — a lot of that came from Timberlake and F&W. I just think I would be a different person without it."

He eventually met his business partner, and together they built Brookstreet Pictures, which they've now run for fifteen years. Over that time, Nick has produced ten or eleven feature films, growing from low-budget genre work to major independent productions featuring the likes of Ralph Fiennes, Jessica Chastain, Michael Keaton, Al Pacino, and Adrien Brody. He just produced Michael Cera's directorial debut, and recently wrapped a film about young Richard Burton.

"It took a journey," he says simply. "This doesn't happen overnight. You really have to stick to it."

There's a phrase from Farm & Wilderness that he returns to often, one that has guided his professional life: Work is love made visible. (from “The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran)

"That really speaks to me. My job is kind of non-stop — seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day. When I was making The Brutalist in Budapest, our shoot day would end just as LA was coming online because of the time difference. I'd be on the phone with agents till three in the morning. But for me, it's about the quality of the work. You can't execute at the highest level if you're phoning it in."

And Now...Do I Send My Son To Camp?

When the time came for Nick's son Pierce to think about summer, there was never much question about where he was going.

"I was very adamant that he get a taste of this. In the modern age, where we're just inundated with nonsense all the time — social media, phones, all of it — it's more important than ever."

Pierce attended Timberlake from 2019 to 2023, a run that included his first summer just before COVID shut camp down, and then the remarkable arc of returning and continuing through to his final year in Rangers cabin. That cabin became the subject of Boys of Summer, the NPR documentary filmed at Timberlake by directors Mito Habe-Evans and Annabel Edwards. This summer, Pierce returns to Timberlake as a counselor.

Reactions to Boys of Summer Documentary

Watching Boys of Summer as both a parent and a former camper was, Nick says, deeply moving.

"I feel like they probably could have told a hundred different stories. What they chose to focus on is so important and so essential. I thought they did an amazing job. The distillation of the crucial importance of a place like F&W — I know it's not just for boys, I know that — but boys are kind of a mess right now. We read it every day. There's a new article in the New York Times about how boys are struggling."

He speaks from experience on both sides of the lens.

"You say the wrong thing to a kid you have a crush on, and before you know it she's posted something and her friends are reading about it and laughing at you. There's this spiral effect. You feel like you're living in a glass house — literally just trying to figure out your way. That creates even more importance for places like Farm & Wilderness, where a kid can leave his phone behind and spend six or seven weeks in the woods."

One moment from the documentary stood out to him above all others.

"That moment on the rock climbing wall — the counselor encouraging a kid to keep going. That's F&W in a nutshell. Not in an oppressive way, not 'I'm not letting you quit.' Just very gentle, very nurturing and supportive. That's TL right there. That was very special to see."

On Vulnerability, Success, and the Values That Travel

On the surface, Farm & Wilderness and Hollywood couldn't seem more different. One is deliberately simple, rooted in the woods and shared community. The other is brash, relentless and self-serving. Nick has thought about this tension.

"There's certainly a lot of superficiality and a vapid nature to this industry," he says. "But for me, it's about the work. And trying to operate with integrity — which I know is another very prominent value at F&W."

He doesn't use social media. Never has. He's never been on Facebook, Twitter, or “whatever it's called now”.

"If somebody wants to talk to me, they can call me. I'm much happier to meet for coffee and talk face to face. I think some of that also comes from my years at F&W — just the connection to other people and to the world around you. Going out into the woods and sitting quietly with your own thoughts. Giving yourself space to think. That's so important, now more than ever."

When asked what he hopes educators and youth development professionals will take away from Boys of Summer — which is heading to SXSW EDU — Nick offered something genuinely hopeful.

"We're not born with this frenzied, fractured attention span. We succumb to it. And I think one of the things F&W offers — one of the things the documentary captures — is that every kid is an actual living, breathing human being. The protagonist in their own story. We're so quick to categorize people based on a tweet or a post. It's not fair to them. It's not fair to yourself.

"But a place like F&W creates a space where you're fighting those tendencies in a very natural, organic way. Going back to simplicity. Compassion. Listening to one another. And it's amazing — you see kids do that, and they feel better about themselves. You can see the growth. They grow into more mature, better people because of the experience."

Before we wrapped up, Nick reached across his home office and pulled a framed photo off the wall to show me — a shot of Dan Wolfson at Timberlake and camper in front of the TL Catamount Bell.

"That guy was a real-life hero to me as a little kid," Nick said and I could see how the work done by one staff to inspire a camper had impacts that lasted a lifetime and into another generation.

Boys of Summer screens at SXSW EDU in March 2026. To learn more about Farm & Wilderness camps and Camp Timberlake, visit [farmandwilderness.org].

Interview conducted February 25, 2026. Edited for length and clarity. Drafted using Claude AI

On a warm September afternoon in Philadelphia, I sat down with Bill Schwarzschild, age 88, whose eyes still light up when he talks about his first ride to camp in 1950. Picked up at White River Junction in an open-body stake truck—a mode of transportation that would raise eyebrows today—Bill was about to begin an adventure that would shape not just his summers, but his entire life. 

When $600 Could Save a Life 

In 1950, Bill's parents paid $600 to send him to camp—equivalent to over $8,000 today. But this wasn't just about summer fun. With a polio epidemic in Philadelphia that claimed over 300 lives that summer,  families who could afford it sent their children away from the cities. "I was glad my parents could afford it," Bill reflects. "I had a bunch of friends with polio."    

What they got for that investment was transformative. Bill credits his F&W experience with literally saving his life during his eight years in the Air Force, where he learned to lead based on what he learned in the Vermont wilderness. "It taught me to be comfortable in the woods. Self-reliance," he says. When asked what F&W should never stop doing, his answer was immediate: "Teaching self-reliance." 

The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same 

Bill's memories paint a picture of camp life that would be both familiar and foreign to today's families. There was no electricity except at the Main Lodge, where square dances were held on nights when they fired up the generator.     

Some details have evolved—what Bill knew as "Submarine Island" (now Paradise Island) got its name from how the dam's opening and closing affected access. They had "The Monster" and they would take out the center section and see who could run back and forth ten times without losing their balance.  

And there were hippies before the term “hippie” existed.  The F&W gardener’s three children were all named after medicinal plants and his first co-counselor went everywhere with a barn owl on his shoulder.  “It lived in the cabin with us.  It stunk!  The kids hated it! “  

Lessons in Humanity 

Perhaps most remarkably, one of Bill's favorite counselors was a young German named Pete Schiller. This was just after World War II, and Bill's Jewish family had lost 15 members in the Holocaust. Yet this experience became "one of the best experiences of my life to that point, as I learned that not everybody of one group was bad." 

This wasn't unusual for the progressive-minded Webb's, who were also hiring Japanese staff like Tatsuo Arima, who would later serve as a UN diplomat. The commitment to diversity and inclusion—revolutionary for the 1950s—remains a cornerstone of F&W values today. 

Tamarack Farm, 1950

Learning to Make Your Own Fun 

"One summer it rained all the time," Bill remembers, "and we just took cardboard boxes and slid down the hill. The idea was to learn to have fun. And to take care of yourself... to learn how to live in the wilderness."    This is reminiscent of  "Mattress Sliding", which campers still enjoy on wet days. 

This resourcefulness, this ability to find joy in simplicity, echoes through every F&W generation. The spirit remains the same: creativity, resilience, and the confidence to solve problems with whatever's at hand. Whether it's sliding down hills on cardboard in 1950 or using cardboard for banquet decorations,  there is an ongoing  culture of making magic from very little. 

Robert Frost reading his poems at the Calvin Coolidge Birthplace 

A Legacy That Endures 

Bill went on to become a Scoutmaster for many years, crediting his F&W experience with making his troop successful. He served eight years in the Air Force, where wilderness skills learned at camp quite literally kept him alive. His own son attended Timberlake and became "a world-famous marine biologist and ecologist, teaching and running the Atlantic Coast Lab for UVA." 

Throughout his life, Bill continued to give back—he started the library at Indian Brook (now Firefly Song) and supported the camp financially throughout his business career. When people ask where he grew up, his answer is always: "At The Farm & Wilderness Camps." 

The Thread That Connects Us All 

As I listened to Bill's stories, I was struck by how much has changed—and how much hasn't. Today's campers arrive by car and bus rather than stake truck, but they still experience that same mix of excitement and nervousness heading into the unknown. They have electricity in the lodge without needing a generator, but not the cabins. Most of all they still learn to find joy in simple pleasures and form deep connections with counselors who become lifelong influences. 

The camping industry has evolved dramatically since 1950, but F&W's commitment to its core values remains unwavering. Joyful play, purposeful work and rugged outdoor living—these aren't just nice ideas from a bygone era. They're the living, breathing heart of what makes F&W extraordinary, generation after generation. 

Bill's parting wisdom rings as true today as it did 75 years ago: "The idea was to learn to have fun. And to take care of yourself." In a world that seems to change faster every year, some things—the most important things—remain beautifully, powerfully constant. 

What F&W memories connect you across the decades? We'd love to hear your stories of how camp shaped your life. Share them with us here.

Clearing The Path 

When Tate Hausman reached out to me this winter with a special request, I knew we had something meaningful ahead of us. His son Lincoln's grandfather Bob had one simple holiday wish: a family camping trip at the site of the former Flying Cloud. There was no place he'd rather be than returning to this special place that had shaped so many lives.

After clearing the administrative hurdles, I was fortunate to join the Hausman family for what became a beautiful demonstration of how "work is love made visible."

The Journey In

The entry to the site remains as challenging as ever, accessible only to large trucks without significant risk. The Hausmans courageously navigated the numerous dips and potential bottoming-out sections in their Toyota Sienna. While they made it through, Mike the Logger later reported that the cover for the oil pan had been sacrificed somewhere along the trail on their way out—a small price paid for this meaningful pilgrimage.

Three Generations, One Purpose

What struck me most about this visit was the beautiful level of intention present throughout our time together. The trip consisted primarily of clearing brush from the numerous trees downed by ice and wind storms over the past 24 months, along with sweeping out and tidying up the Round House.

Bob Hausman, who served as Flying Cloud Director from 1966-67, exemplified this intentionality perfectly. While clearing a path, he made sure it was wide enough for a counselor to walk side by side with a camper. As he explained, "It's about more than getting from A to B, it's about having the conversations." Even in this maintenance work, the educational philosophy as a Director shone through.

The family shared stories that brought the site's history to life, including tales of "The Great Leap Backwards" in 1968—led by Bob's brother—when the feeling was things had gotten "too high tech".  This change was primarily about getting rid of the noisy generator to pump water, but donkey also got the boot!

Learning from Experience

Lincoln shared valuable insights about the practical realities of camp operations that will inform our future planning. One detail that surprised me: a pile of brush as tall as my head will likely all be used in a single day. It's easy to underestimate such quantities when you haven't lived the camp experience.

He also showed me the circle where obsidian chips were historically found and turned into necklaces and other crafts—a tangible connection to the land's deeper history and the hands-on learning that defined Flying Cloud.

Former Executive Director Len Cadwallader also hiked in to join our efforts, adding another layer of institutional memory to our work.

Looking Forward: Damage Assessment and Future Plans

The winter storms left their mark on the outhouse infrastructure. Two KYBOs took hits from downed trees. The KYBO above the trail near the Meeting area sustained repairable damage. However, the Drumming KYBO's fate was sealed when a massive tree, downed by lightning, fell directly upon it. A new era will indeed bring a new KYBO.

As I looked ahead to programming returning to this clearing in the woods in 2026, I asked Bob about the ideal capacity. I was surprised to hear "40-50" as a perfectly manageable number of campers. While we'll likely start with about 32-36 maximum for the new program, it's encouraging to know we have room to grow.

The Road Ahead

We're targeting Memorial Day weekend 2026 for a work crew of 24-30 people to camp and prepare the site for the first sessions the F&W Base Camp program of 2026 summer season. This will likely  include constructing that new KYBO and addressing the various maintenance needs we identified during this visit as well as... clearing brush!

If you're interested in being part of this site preparation effort, please click here to fill out the survey to help us plan for the Memorial Day weekend work session.

This family visit reminded me that Farm & Wilderness's greatest strength has always been its people—the connections formed, the lessons learned, and the love for this special place that spans generations. 

About the Family Members: 

Bob Hausman: TL camper '53-56, TF 57-58, TL staff 59-64,  FC Director 65-66.

Rick Hausman: TL camper 55-59:  TF 1960;  Counselor Apprentice (CA)  at TL, 1961;  counselor at FC (under Brother Bob’s direction), 1965;  FC director, 1968-70; F&W Board Member in the 1970s and 80’s; [Editor of the Interim, ’69-70; helped establish Camp Seaforth, 1970;  Ninevah Foundation Board Member. 

Nate Hausman: TL 90-'91, FC camper '92-'95, FC counselor '99-'04, FC co-director '04-'06.

Tate Hausman: Went to camp as Dan Hausman: TL 86-91, TF 92, TL staff 94.

Lincoln  (Wolf) Hausman: TL '18-23, FC 21-23, TF 24-25

(There are more Hausmans, this is who made it on the trip!)