WITHOUT THE COMFORTS

BY BEVERLY PLUMMER
Reprinted from the 1965 Chicago Tribune, Camp Minocqua  for Boys is featured in the article and is the summer camp that Jeff Lorenz  is an alumni of  from 1966-1972. He went on to found Swift Nature Camp in 1997.

Television, telephones, and mother-love are all great things. In the winter, of course, but next summer, more than 4 million school age youngsters will trade them for tents, rain, poison Ivy and unforgettable times,

IT GETS COLDER and colder. The rain comes down like the sky is broken. The tent leaks all night and breakfast is bread and rain water eaten under the picnic table.

Is this "Ah, Wilderness!" or "Aaarg, Wilderness!"? Only the boy or girl scrunched damply under the table can tell you. But chances are [even tho it had to be said thru chat- tering teeth] he d say it was GREAT! For this wet, cold, shivering youngster is one of 4 million school-age American children who look forward ea- to camp every summer. Why should a child be so anx- ious to go to camp that he s willing to go without six months' allowance to help foot the bill? Or get up at a snowy 5:30 a. m. to deliver the morn- ing papers so he can buy a new snorkel for camp?

It's not the creature comforts he s seeking-that s for sure. For comforts such as television, telephones, and five-course dinners are better provided at home than on a 100-acre tract of trees and bushes.

Actually what this child is seeking, even if he s not con- aware of it, is a sense of adventure. A chance to be a conqueror rather than a spectator. An opportunity to create

his own security in a strange atmosphere. And where, in to- day s chrome-plated world, can a child find such an opportunity except in the wilderness?

As an American, he still has something of the early pioneer in his bones-the pioneer who slew his own dinner, stitched up his britches, and then fought off the enemy before he went to bed.

A note from a city-bred 14- year-old to his parents last year states proudly, "Besides clearing three campsites out of the bush, setting up a compass course, and assisting the surveyor map the boundary lines of camp, we got to help skin a 125-pound bear and cut logs for a new kitchen floor." This glowing letter was written by a lad who lived 10 stories up in a plush apartment where a maid laid out his clothing every morning!

There have been camps of one kind or another almost from the beginning of America -even the first settlers were campers of a sort The first organized camps began to appear on the east coast as early as the 1860s, but it wasn't until the very late iBO0s that camping grabbed a really firm foothold for itself. It was evidently firm enough, for today there are more than 13,500 organized camps scattered thruout the United States.

The first organized camp in the midwest was started by a young doctor. [just graduated from Northwestern university medical school] following the worst typhoid fever epidemic Chicago has ever known. Dr. John Perley Sprague had been raised in the lumbering country of Maine and had never quite got used to the ways of the city. It bothered him that so many children were growing up with no intimate knowledge of nature, so in April, 1903, he set out for upper Wisconsin be- fore the ice was even out of the rivers and lakes to find a spot to set up a camp.

What he finally settled on was a point on Lake Toma- hawk near Minocqua, which still stands today and is still in operation under the direction of his daughter, Helen, and son-in-law, Jack Broomell. Boys who go to Camp Minocqua today board the train at Chicago s North Western station

and arrive at camp about eight. hours later.

The 15 campers who went north with Doctor Sprague in 1903 were not so fortunate; but when this story is told, many a boy declares he'd give his right arm to have been in that first group.

"We took a train from Chicago," Doctor Sprague wrote CAMP For City-Dwellers: A Place in the Open In camp craft classes such as bowl-making, boys can create with their own hands.

in his notes, "and when we woke up in the morning, we had only gone about 200 miles be- cause a bridge had washed out. It seems there was a lot of flooding that year. There was no diner on the train and they took the sleeper off, too. During the afternoon they fixed up the bridge and we went on, only to be stopped again when the tracks disappeared under water at the Wisconsin river. But they decided to try it and we got across and kept right on going to Mosinee, where the tracks were under water again. And we had to stop once more."

At 4 the next morning, Doc- tor Sprague got everybody off the train and they got up a game of baseball in the grass beside the tracks. Hungry to the desperation point, they finally found a boarding house cook who fixed breakfast for them for a hatful of coins that had been collected. The rest of the trip was made partly by box car and partly by hand-car.

"Finally," Doctor Sprague said, "an engine came down from the north and picked us up and on the third day we finally got there."

Camp Minocqua is much the same today in spirit as it was 60 years ago; the ultimate aim of its directors always has been to provide the child with a natural atmosphere in which he can grow in all directions. This is the aim of all good camps today.

"There was no 'baby-sitting' in those days," Helen Broomell says. "It was primarily an opportunity for boys to spend the summer out-of-doors . . . it wasn't even supposed to be a 'character-building' experience except as the good influence of the men rubbed off on. the boys."

Camp Minocquafor Boys would be classified today as an "all-around" camp with a good solid emphasis on individual growth, altho the program includes a liberal choice of everything you might consider important to camping: riding, sailing, crafts, archery, etc.

There are so many camps today which, altho they maintain social orientation as the ultimate goal, are highly specialized . A few examples: folk- singing camps, language-of- your-choice camps, all-sports camps where a child chooses one major and one minor sport and works on proficiency in these areas all summer long. There are pioneer camps, camps for the psychologically disturbed, riding camps, and tours-of-Israel camps.

The rivalry between different types of camps is much like the rivalry between competing high schools. One group of boys came back from a visit to a neighboring camp with these words of disgust: "It's a chicken camp. Everybody wore identical T-shirts, and there were these 'Gung ho' loud speakers that blasted out instructions all day long - just like in the movies. All the one had to do was sit on their duffs while 'big brother' told them what to do over the loud speaker."

CAMP-The Counselor Must Love Children. Nature was like downtown New York. Everything was paved! You couldn't get dirty if you want- ed to."

For some children, being able to get good and dirty with a bunch of other guys is reason enough to go to camp. They come from big cities where they have no close companions, even in their own family group; often they don't even sit down to dinner with their parents, but eat in the kitchen with the maid.

This was a real revelation to one of the foreign-exchange counselors who came to this country thru the efforts of the Committee for Friendly Relations Among Foreign Students. He was surprised at the bad table manners of some of the boys from wealthy families. He referred to the children in his cabin as "small gangsters," but this was a term of real affection for he was completely charmed by their warmth and maturity.

"An American camper is not as well disciplined as the Swedes," the counselor later observed. "He is less bashful and somewhat more matured than his Swedish mate. But you very soon get acquainted with him and after two hours he declares he likes or hates you more than anybody in the world."

He was judging only boys from a small segment of American life, however, because unless a child has a wealthy uncle or well-to-do parents, he can't afford a summer at

a private camp. Rates begin at about $575 and go on up.

Private camps are only a small part of the organized camp picture, tho. Only 3,000 of the nation s 13,500 organized camps are privately owned and run. Most of the rest are agency and day camps. A "season" is more flexible at these camps, running from one day to several weeks and costing as little as $15 per week.

Many find it hard to understand why anyone would choose to work at a summer camp, but the conclusion can only be heartening to any parent considering sending his child.

Because the pay is poor, the hours are bad, and working conditions sometimes unfavorable [such as an "overnight" in a leaky tent], it can only be assumed that counselors take these jobs out of a love for children and nature.

One of the toughest jobs a director has is selecting good counselors. At one time these young people were chosen because they possessed some special skill, but today directors seek well-rounded, emotionally mature persons. In addition to counselors, the director hires cooks, kitchen boys, stable boys, a camp-mother, a doctor and/ or a nurse. Each staff member is selected with infinite care, because it takes a special kind of person to be able to live so intimately with so many children or young adults for such a length of time.

WHAT TO LOOK FOR IN A CAMP

A PARENT interested in finding the best camp for his child should consider the following points:

1. A good ratio is one counselor for every eight campers; an ideal ratio is one to four.

2. A good director will ask for a personal history of your child. Not so he doesn't, forget her, because if he doesn't feel he needs to know such things as the fact that Sally still wets her bed or is afraid of the dark, he isn't very interested in her.

3. A good camp has a rigid code of safety and health, but a flexible and adaptable daily program of recreation.

4. Fees alone do not make a camp bad or good, and in no way indicate what a camp is really like.

End of article

Today, Swift Nature Camp has progressed with the times enhancing a child's personal growth while at camp,   Camp Minocqua is still in the heart of Director Jeff Lorenz and often is being recreated at camp in the camp for the 21st century.

THE HYBRID MIND: The More High-Tech Education Becomes, The More Nature Our Children Need

I once met an instructor who trained young people to become the pilots of cruise ships. He described the two kinds of students he encounters. One kind grew up mainly indoors, spending hours playing video games and working on computers. These students are quick to learn the ship’s electronics, a useful talent, the instructor explained. The other kind of student grew up spending a lot of time outdoors, often in nature. They, too, have a talent. “They actually know where the ship is.”

He wasn’t being cute. Recent studies of the human senses back that statement up. “We need people who have both ways of knowing the world,” he added.

Currently, the force of economics is on the side of technology and standardized efficiency.

Optimistic researchers suggest that multitasking is creating the smartest generation yet, freed from limitations of geography, weather, and distance—pesky inconveniences of the physical world.

Others are skeptical, if not hostile to technology. In his book The Dumbest Generation, Mark Bauerlein, a professor at Emory University, reels out studies comparing this generation of students with prior generations, reporting “they don’t know any more history or civics, economics or science, literature or current events”— despite all that available information. Other researchers believe that people who experience too much technology in their formative years experience stunted development of the frontal lobe, “ultimately freezing them in teen brain mode,” as Maclean’s magazine put it.

Here’s a third possibility, what I call the hybrid mind. The ultimate multitasking is to live simultaneously in both the digital and physical worlds, using computers to maximize our powers to process intellectual data and natural environments to ignite our senses and accelerate our ability to learn and feel—combining the resurfaced “primitive” powers of our ancestors with the digital speed of our teenagers.

Want Students to Learn? Ignite the senses now

Scientists who study human perception no longer assume we have only five senses: taste, touch, smell, sight, and hearing. The number now ranges from a conservative 10 to as many as 30, including blood-sugar levels, empty stomach, thirst, and proprio­ception (awareness of our body’s position in space).

Ever wonder why you have two nostrils? Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley did. They fitted undergraduates with taped-over goggles, earmuffs, and work gloves to block other senses, then set them loose in a field. Most of the students could follow a 30-foot-long trail of chocolate perfume and even changed direction precisely where the invisible path took a turn.

The subjects were able to smell better with two functioning nostrils, which researchers likened to hearing in stereo. And they found themselves zigzagging, a technique employed by dogs as they track. “We found that not only are humans capable of scent tracking,” said study researcher Noam Sobel, “but they spontaneously mimic the tracking pattern of [other] mammals.”

In 2009, researchers at Madrid’s University of Alcalá de Henares showed how people, like bats, could identify objects without needing to see them, through the echoes of human tongue clicks. According to the lead researcher, echoes are also perceived through vibrations in ears, tongue, and bones—a refined sense learned through trial and error by some blind people and even sighted individuals. It’s all about hearing a world that exists beyond what we normally mistake for silence.

What else can we do that we’ve forgotten?

The U.S. military has studied how some soldiers seem to be able to use their latent senses to detect roadside bombs and other hazards. The 18-month study of 800 military personnel found that the best bomb spotters were rural people—those who’d grown up in the woods hunting turkey or deer—as well as those from tough urban neighborhoods, where it’s equally important to be alert.

“They just seemed to pick up things much better,” reported Army Sergeant Major Todd Burnett, who worked on the study for the Pentagon’s Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization. “They know how to look at the entire environment.” And the other enlistees, the ones who’d spent more time with Game Boys or at the mall? They didn’t do so well. As Burnett put it, they were focused on the proverbial “screen rather than the whole surrounding.”

The explanation may be partly physiological. Australian researchers suggest that the troubling increase in nearsightedness is linked to young people spending less time outdoors, where eyes must focus at longer distances. But more is probably going on here. Good vision, acute hearing, an attuned sense of smell, spatial awareness—all of these abilities could be operating simultaneously. This natural advantage offers practical applications. One is an increased ability to learn; another is an enhanced capability to avoid danger. Still another, perhaps the most important, is the measurement-defying ability to more fully engage in life.

Today, students (and the rest of us) who work and learn in a dominating digital environment expend enormous energy to block out many of these senses, in order to focus narrowly on the screen in front of the eyes. That’s the very definition of being less alive.

Who among us wants to be less alive? What parent wants their child to be less alive?

I believe that a central goal of modern education should be to encourage such flexible thinking, to nurture the hybrid mind — to stimulate both ways of knowing in the world: digital and direct experience.

Screens and Streams: The river of knowing

Research in this area remains a frontier in the academic world, but evidence is growing. Schools that do use outdoor classrooms and other forms of nature-based experiential education report significant student gains in social studies, science, language arts, and math. Students in Finland lead the world in math and science scores; in that country, it’s an article of faith that the best education includes time spent in the classroom — with lots of recess and learning time outdoors.

Children are more likely to invent their own games in green play spaces rather than on flat playgrounds or playing fields. Green play spaces also suit a wider array of students and promote social inclusion, regardless of gender, race, class, or intellectual ability. One study found that so-called at-risk students in week-long outdoor camp settings scored significantly better on science testing than in the typical classroom. At the Human-Environment Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois, researchers have discovered that children as young as 5 show a significant reduction in the symptoms of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder when they engaged with nature.

Cognitive and behavioral benefits accrue well beyond school boundaries. In inner-city housing projects in Chicago, investigators found that the presence of trees outside apartment buildings were predictors of certain behaviors: less procrastination, better coping skills, greater self-discipline among girls, better social relationships, and less violence. Educators benefit, too. Canadian researchers found that teachers expressed renewed enthusiasm for teaching in schools that engage their students in natural settings.

Maximum learning usually takes place when more of our senses are engaged. Yes, tight digital focus is often needed, but the healthy brain — the learning brain — also needs to pay a different kind of attention, an attention that researchers have called “fascination,” which often happens in more natural settings. This kind of attention restores the parts of the brain fatigued by too much “directed attention.” This is true for students, for teachers, for all of us.

Is education moving in this direction? Some schools are. They’re creating natural play and learning spaces, school gardens; they’re using nearby nature in cities and wilderness beyond them to connect the young to the world of knowledge. Often, they’re incorporating new technologies into these experiences.

But too many school districts are putting all their eggs on one computer chip, while reducing recess, canceling field trips, and demanding that students spend ever more time at their desks, staring at screens.

Few today would question the notion that every person, especially every young person, has a right to access the Internet, whether through a school district, a library, or a city’s public Wi-Fi program. We accept the idea that the divide between the digital haves and have-nots must be closed. But all children also have a right to develop a wider spectrum of their senses and mental abilities, to know the real world, and to be fully alive.

By Richard Louv on March 30th, 2015 

Do you know kids & teens looking for a fantastic, good ol' days, totally hip & fun summer adventure that's reasonably priced?

Delighting both girls and boys, Swift Nature Camp has been a favorite childhood experience for my boys each summer since 2003. I trust the directors, I adore the counselors, I appreciate the outside active fun, and I love the gorgeous setting. And, I love that it's cheaper than my daughter's camp! Swimming, canoeing, fishing, tubing, riflery, archery, crafts, camp fires, camping trips, clowning, & good ol' capture the flag in the woods are some of what my kids love about Swift. The break from school kids, family life, and electronics gives them the awesome experience of pursuing new and different activities with fresh, friendly kids that just want to have fun without the drama. Not once in our 12 sessions did I receive a letter from the boys feeling down at camp. In fact, when they came home, they always said they wanted to stay longer next time. I'd love for you to learn more about this camp in Minong, Wisconsin. It has been a key factor in shaping my kids into the people I love today. Check it out.

The above note was taken from a camp families facebook page. At SNC our goal is to be part of your childs development and help your child be the best person they can be and get ready for life filled with self confidence and independance. Please see our other Parent Testimonials.

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