Exercising the Heart - Farm & Wilderness

This morning Rebecca, Farm & Wilderness’ Executive Director, visited and asked if we allowed recorded music in the kitchen. I let her know she had mistaken our Timberlake band for recorded jazz musicians!  Our musicians organized the epic program for Interdependence Day on July 10 where all F&W campers could contribute to something spectacular and larger than life. You can see photos online of our “Chariot of Sound” that did the intro from “Seven Nation Army” (by the White Stripes) on PVC tubes played with a flip flop. Anything is possible! The day ended with a towering bonfire built by campers and a contra dance for over 500 people.

We now move into a cycle of activities that involves learning to make dairy products (including a visit to the local Plymouth Cheese Factory), a swim clinic, rock climbing at various F&W camps, Trip Skills, Andrew Goldsworthy-style art installations, bow drill making, and wild edibles. I ran into the wild edible group yesterday and they were cooking up yellow birch, burdock root, tiger lily, clover and ginger root.

The J1 campers and Senior Lodgers have returned from their hikes, all of which were successes. One J1 got the nickname “little champ” because he was so small but his attitude was so big and made the whole hike a great experience for everyone.

Young Hawthorn cabin stepped it up in our Chore Olympics when they had finished organizing the stage and raked under the kitchen back porch, pulled out cinderblocks and used them to make a porch wall depicting “Helm’s Deep” from the Lord of the Rings. These 9-10 year old boys worked hard for over two hours, using their cabin time to improve the community and really impressed everyone. Go First Lodge!

Challenge comes in a lot of forms. We want our campers to get fit for the cardio-vascular goal of a healthy heart, and also get an emotional work out of their metaphorical heart. I attended our “Guy Night” for our elementary school age campers. They discussed societal stereotypes of men and boys, what we can do to support each other having more freedom from being put in boxes, and how we can check ourselves on language that can be hurtful to each other. Having these conversations in a sincere way means we can enjoy being ourselves more in every other activity without worrying about put-downs. Having these conversations at a younger age mean they can make better decisions when they reach middle school.

Big and First Lodge (9-12 year olds) will go out on trips from July 15-18^th, while Senior Lodge has a small camp of their own. Looking forward to the next adventure of the summer!