Wilderness skills are at the core of a camper’s experience at Farm & Wilderness. At Indian Brook, one of the primary goals of our Wilderness programming is for campers to gain confidence through learning specific skills that will allow them to experience comfort in a wilderness setting and hopefully fall in love with everything wild.
Wilderness skills are important because they provide life-long enjoyment and teach stewardship of our planet. I am excited to be part of a team at Indian Brook working this summer to challenge campers in the wilderness where they learn skills like resiliency, courage, and perseverance. This experience resonates with aspects of myself in the wilderness that I learned as an IB camper.
This week in the Indian Brook’s “Wilderness”:
- Trips: On a two-night backpacking trip, a group of 9-year old campers started out unsure, and a little nervous. The summer staff showed the group different kinds of trees, taught them about the rocks on the trail, particularly the granite, and explained how it was deposited there during the Ice Age. About 45 minutes into the hike, one homesick camper said to me “I feel like this whole woods is my home.” For the rest of the hike, she showed me every piece of granite she came across, every beech tree, and every striped maple (also known as moose maple or moosewood). Other campers in the group also learned the names of trees, got excited about cooking pasta on an open fire at the end of the day, and braved two nights at open shelters in the woods. Towards the end of the trip, I asked the campers if anyone had done something they hadn’t thought they would be able to before we departed. One camper answered, “I didn’t think I could carry this heavy backpack so far.” The camper who had been homesick said, “I didn’t think I could go for so long without being homesick.” The trip had been a transformative experience for the group – a challenge that they rose to and mastered.
- Interdependence Day: On July 10, we all celebrated Interdependence Day at F&W. This is a big celebration that ends in an enormous bonfire. Indian Brook campers spent many mornings and afternoons in the days preceding Interdependence Day gathering birch bark, collecting brush, and chopping huge logs for the bonfire with their newly acquired axe skills. Indian Brook campers also worked interdependently with Timberlake campers and staff on building the bonfire.
- OLS: Several campers are progressing well on learning knife and fire skills, and we will continue to offer opportunities during morning and afternoon OLS activities for campers to earn their Woodswoman rating. This rating gives campers recognition for gaining mastery and safely employing various areas of Outdoor Living Skills; knife use, axe use, camp fires, knots, wilderness ethics, finding water sources, and shelter building.
- Girls Wilderness Program: For the third summer, 10 campers who desire more in-depth wilderness training will set off with three staff to live communally in a rustic basecamp during the Girls’ Wilderness Program. In a remote setting, the campers learn about and how to prepare wild-edibles, make fires using bow-drills, practice wilderness-based crafts such as hide-tanning, learn archery and other advanced wilderness skills.
— Beth Bird, Wilderness Liaison, IB camper ‘78-‘80.
