Well, campers are coming home from trips today, and that officially wraps up week two! Soon I’ll get you a few of the stories from the Conn River Canoe, Silverlake Climbing, Little Rock Pond Hiking, and White Mountains Hiking trips, as well as from the FC capstone Flagstaff where older campers spend a week hiking and canoeing around Flagstaff Lake in Maine
Though a whole lot happened this week, I want to focus on just one special event: the first Naming of the summer!
The Naming is a very special event for members of the FC community in that it’s a time to recognize and honor our new members with a name.
The Flying Cloud name is meant to represent many of the best qualities of a person, as well as to connect them to the local area and one another. One unique FC aspect of the name is that we try to avoid saying our own names. Since they represent our best qualities, we feel it would be immodest to state those attributes ourselves, and instead we have one of our Flying Cloud brothers make the introduction for us. As a result, your son or friend will have to wait to share his name with you until someone who knows it can introduce him. Don’t worry though, if you really want to know, you can always ask me or even better, there’s a master list of all the FC names EVER in the office.
At Flying Cloud we recognize that in addition to being a way to recognize someone’s best self, the gift of an FC name is also a way to mark an important rite of passage in anyone’s life. As such, before someone receives their Flying Cloud name they must go on a twenty four hour Solo. During this time those about to receive their name are taken deeper into the forest, away from the FC clearing to allow them an opportunity to reflect on themselves, their life and their experiences at FC. For most people, the Solo is a challenging experience. They are discouraged from communicating with their Solo brothers, or from eating or drinking. By placing these challenges before themselves, those about to be named have a powerful opportunity to look inside themselves and see who they are and what beliefs they hold most strongly.
Upon returning to the community, the Soloers are given a night of rest before the Naming Ceremony day. For many campers, the Naming Ceremony is one of the most vivid memories of their experience at FC. The campers spend the entire day building a fire and cleaning the Naming circle, with the knowledge that as dusk falls we’ll be having a serious party!
As the sun sets, the guests are seated in the Naming circle and the Flying Cloud campers line up in their FC blankets to await the lighting of the fire. For this first Naming, a gift of summer rain whispers away as full darkness falls to allow for a beautiful moon rise. As the first sparks fly upward, the drum beat begins and we raise our voices in song….
Hang on for now, and perhaps later in the summer this story will continue….