RED SPRUCE GROVE

Dear Friends, 

I hope you enjoyed our video highlighting an incredible Summer 2021. What a summer it was! It is so hard to believe it is September.

I wanted to share more information with you about our upcoming Fall Open House on October 9 & 10, 2021.

In light of the continued spread of the Delta variant among the unvaccinated and the incidence, while low, of breakthrough cases among the vaccinated, we have made the decision to scale back our Harvest Weekend plans. We know many folks were looking forward to coming to F&W for a taste of fall (we were, too!), and we hope we can return to a full fall weekend of community, fun, and food next year.

While we’ve decided not to host our usual overnight and indoor weekend, we are able to open up and offer outdoor and distanced tours and day activities.

This year, we will be hosting a Fall Open House on October 9 & 10 including tours of our camps for new and returning families, a scheduled hike, and visits to the Farm!

Fall Open House Schedule of Activities:

• Camp Tours: Two tours a day on October 9 & 10 at 10 AM and 1 PM. We will tour Barn Day Camp, Timberlake, IB, SAM, Flying Cloud, and Red Spruce Grove. Each tour will last about 2 hours. Please register for a specific tour (space is limited) via Eventbrite.
• Guided Hike: We will host a guided hike around our Woodward trails on Sunday from 2 PM – 4 PM. Please register for the hike (space is limited) via Eventbrite.
• Farm Visits: Visit the Farm Team at Tamarack Farm on Saturday and Sunday from 10 AM – 4 PM featuring a farm stand and activities. Activities include brushing the resident fiber rabbits, carding wool, hand-dipping beeswax candles, and making potato stamp art.

Everyone who wishes to come should reserve a general admissions ticket for the day, then choose from our ticket list for specific tours and our hike if you are interested in those! 

If you are in Vermont and want to stop by, say hi, visit the Farm, please do! Just let us know you are coming by registering for the general admissions ticket for Saturday or Sunday or both!
REGISTER for Fall Open House! 

We plan to host our Ice Cutting Weekend in February and a Spring Planting Weekend in May.  Please stay tuned to our email updates and check back on our website for information closer to those dates.

In peace,

Frances McLaughlin, Executive Director

After a whirlwind few days, we’re getting into the rhythm of life at Red Spruce Grove! It’s amazing to be back in the meadow with both new and familiar faces. Despite two days of rain and fog, and some new systems to get used to, spirits are high – we’ve been singing an RSG classic song “Vermont Weather” (adapted from a Scottish tune) to fortify ourselves against the storms…

I am a friend of Vermont weather

I don’t mind the wind or the driving rain…

Walking, walking, ‘tis my pleasure,

From this forest I was made.

This summer gives us a unique opportunity at RSG: to spend the entire three weeks of the session at our off-grid site, living with the land and one another. We’ve spent the first two evenings of camp discussing how important it is to treat the earth with respect – because the earth sustains us – and also creating a values contract together about how we can solve conflict, be inclusive, and bring positivity and fun into our camp community. Campers have also started learning the physical skills that make up daily life at our little homestead. They’ve tried their hands at axes, bow saws, knives, and a drawknife for peeling logs. They have been washing dishes, cleaning kybos, feeding chickens, building fires, and generally jumping in headfirst to life at the Grove!

Something that excites me the most about the beginning of camp is when campers and counselors start to feel both ownership and creativity in camp. Red Spruce Grove belongs to all of us; we create it together. Here are some highlights of ways folks have already been bringing their curiosities and ideas into camp:

• During a map-making activity, we collectively drew a map of the Grove after having some time to explore (harder than it sounds)
• Each household group is working hard to be inclusive and welcoming, even though we spend time in separate groups
• A few campers have stepped up to play instruments or lead songs during singing time A few campers have appointed themselves “chicken crew” and took care of a chicken who was being bullied by the two others
• There is a spontaneous frog funeral happening during rest hour today
• The firewood pile is HIGH!

These next few days there will be more introductions to the basic skills of camp, like shelter-building, knots, and care for the garden. We’ll also be starting some craft projects, hiking down to Lake Ninevah, and playing lots of silly games.

It’s wonderful to be back at camp, and to see everyone so happy to be together – and away from technology – after such a hard year and a half. I’m sure there will be more challenges ahead… probably some more rain, or some conflict we’ll have to work through… but I’m so confident in this community’s ability to work through it, even on day three. That’s what camp is about, isn’t it? Developing the resilience to move through challenges and make it to the other side. I can’t wait to see how we face challenges, grow, and learn together.

Signing off, until next week,

Tori

It seems like a study comes out every week about the importance of gratitude. Everyone agrees that cultivating a practice of giving thanks improves mental and emotional well-being. But I think there is more to it than that. Sharing gratitude in community, as we do at camp, can be a richer experience than simply writing it in a journal or thinking it silently. Standing in morning circle at Red Spruce Grove, we share daily appreciations for the natural world right after waking up. It’s clear that our thanks feed off one another, becoming a flurry of gratitude as each person reflects on what was said and adds their own appreciation to the mix. We remind each other what to be thankful for. How could we remember it all by ourselves? When we offer our thanks to the fog, the birds, the trees, and the insects, we remember that we are connected to them in a web of relationships.

Evening circle at Red Spruce Grove frames the day with a second round of gratitude: appreciations for one another. Especially towards the end of our time together, this circle sometimes seems to go on and on into the night, even as the stars appear and the light fades from the meadow. Speaking thanks to one another knits our community together. We do this again at the end of the session, in the more intentional setting of our Affirmation Circle.

One of my favorite things about Farm and Wilderness is that every camp does a form of affirmations for each person – camper and staff – at some point during each session. Each camp puts their own spin on these, from the Flying Cloud Honoring traditions to the heartfelt staff-to-camper affirmations read aloud at Indian Brook. At Red Spruce Grove, we share affirmations for one another once we return from our wilderness site. Each person writes and speaks words of thanks to another, chosen randomly, and gives them a “token”, which ranges from a simple bouquet of flowers or a feather to a handmade craft. These affirmation circles are often the sweetest moments of the session.

It’s a goal of mine to be able to fill my days with the amount of gratitude I speak, hear, and feel at Red Spruce Grove. During this inward-turning time of year, I hope we can remember to bring this spirit of thankfulness to everything we do, and to our communities beyond camp. Sharing thanks ties us to each other and to the world.