I have been thinking of the camp during this perio...

I have been thinking of the camp during this period of covid and am a little surprised that their home page does not address this. Minimally, I would have thought this late in the game that they would have made a statement as to precautions they were taking.

I am neither a parent nor a camper under the current ownership. As such, I am not in a good position to judge the place in its current state, I can share my thoughts as to a visit that proves that you cannot go home again and that indicates that the current owners are not as into the place as the founders.



My third cousin spent a few summers at the base camp and took at least one trip. I recall that her father was a huge supporter of the camp.

The place always had been about peace, love, and understanding.

I returned to the general area in 2000 and had a great visit with founder Richard Herman. I also got new perspective as to my 80s era distress as to my camp mother taking up with the studly farm boy in her employ.

The current board at that time was not especially receptive to my offer of wealth, wisdom, and wallet but was open to letting things develop over time, That just faltered, but there was no real offense.

Seeking both to give back and desperately wanting peace, love, and understanding in an increasingly cold cruel world, I looked up the camp in 2012 and saw that it had new owners. I hoped and thought that this would mean new energy in an era after the break-up of the marriage of the founders (aka my camp parents .)

The husband was nicely receptive and agreed to a pre-season visit. I thought that it was clear that my objective extended beyond seeing how things had changed to exploring my rejoining the camp family.

One surprise, but not offense, was not being invited to stay over. My experience had been that visiting scholars regularly came and went. My surprise was compounded on seeing on my arrival that a barn had been converted to housing that had several empty rooms and a kitchen area during this pre-camp season period.

The owners did have a staff member, whom I knew as an infant and in whose parents home I had temporarily stayed my first summer on staff, show me around. He was nice.

The husband also kindly invited me to a very informal buffet dinner that night, it overall was a wonderful time, but I noticed that the wife was a little uptight. It almost seemed like someone had dragged a needle across a record when I sat in a not-so-recently vacated chair only to have the wife glare at me and noisily pull out another chair for the person who had been sitting in the one that I had used. I recall that I and others had sat in different chairs throughout the evening. I did not intend any offense and objectively did not think that I had acted badly. Musical chairs seems common at such gatherings.

Considering my old guard status and eager willingness to volunteer and to discuss a major gift, I was surprised that they were not at all responsive to my idea of my becoming one of the visiting scholars I remembered coming up for a week when I was a camper and a staff member,

One of my ideas was to offer a Judge Judy style activity in which I would settle minor disputes among campers. I also run a film and television review website and could have shared that expertise. On top of that, I happily would have been a free warm body to help out where needed.

I would have liked to have discovered that the spirit of the place fully lived on.