Hello once again from Flying Cloud! Our first session has come to a solemn and powerful close. While our full-season campers are taking changeover day as a chance to climb Gork Mountain and pick some wild berries, we’re all missing those of our brothers who have left the clearing for the summer and returned to the “outside world”.
Last week, we held the second Naming Ceremony of the summer, where 11 more of our brothers received their Flying Cloud names. Thanks so much to the other Farm & Wilderness camps who joined us for this powerful moment! The names received during this ceremony were:
Trillium Otter
Alpine Path
Cloudborne Chickadee
Celestial Spark
Fox Gift
Owl Reads the Night
Summit Drum
Shaping Ember
Kindred Harrier
Firefly Dancing
And
Hawk Shares the Light
After a few final days of activities, where campers wove belts and baskets, played improv games, made soap, and finished carving and boiling spoons, we closed the session as we had opened it—with a friendship fire.
While the first friendship was focused mainly on our fire keeper, Sunshower Hawk, using bowdrill the start the fire that has kept us fed and warm thus far, the closing friendship fire of first session was devoted to reflection on what this summer at Flying Cloud had meant to the members of our community.
As our speaker, Wolf Echo asked, “Who speaks for Flying Cloud?”, campers raised their hands and spoke eloquently about their experiences:
“Before I came to Flying Cloud, I was nervous, but when I got here I felt so welcomed! Now I feel like I’m friends with everyone here, and that we’re all connected as a community.”
“The time I’ve spent at Flying Cloud isn’t always something I can explain to my friends or family back home. My love for FC is so great and unstoppable that I have no words to describe this place, the people I’ve met here, or the bonds we share.”
“This is only my first summer, but every new experience, every new craft has been amazing. I hope that this place can go on forever. Being off the grid, we really have to work for everything we have. It really makes you grateful for the simple things in life.”
“I’m sure we could go on all night about how much we love Flying Cloud, and I know that every time I come here, I’m so incredibly happy, and every time I leave it’s with a tear in my eye. Other summer camps might be a lot of fun, but this one really makes us feel something deeper.”
“Flying Cloud may be a place for simple living, survival skills, and learning a stronger work ethic, but ultimately it’s really a social experiment—a place with no judgment, no competition, where everyone can be themselves and love each other.”
“My experience as a Flying Cloud camper has changed over the course of my four years here. At first it was a place where I could escape the stress of school and home, a place where I could come to learn what it means to become a man. Later, as I figured out how FC works, it was a great place to come and have fun. This year, though, I’ve realized that FC is a kind of school where they teach you things you would never learn in regular school, like how to build lasting friendships and how to live in community.”
“When I was sleeping out by the Naming fire the other night, I was looking up at the stars, and they were so beautiful that I admit I shed some tears. Flying Cloud is the kind of place where you really learn to see and appreciate that kind of beauty that’s around us all the time.”
“Even if the group of people here changes from year to year, the way we treat each other remains the same. You can’t help but be yourself.”
“The morning dew on the grass, the torrential rain, garter snakes slithering out of the path, a bear getting into the trash shed, birds singing in the morning, mosquitoes buzzing in our ears, the wood that we collect and burn, the dirt we sit on…I wanted to speak to the place and space we occupy here. Flying Cloud isn’t Flying Cloud without all of these things. Flying Cloud isn’t Flying cloud without a deep appreciation for all of these things.”
It was a very special moment to hear this group of young men speak so clearly about this place that many of them called their “second home”! While we’re all missing the first-session campers, we’re also looking forward to greeting the second session campers who will be arriving tomorrow, and having as much fun second session as we did in the first!
—FF