I hope the fall is treating everyone well. It’s been so much fun to reconnect with many of you as we plan for 2012. I’ve enjoyed sharing so many fun stories from the 2011 summer with you and been overwhelmed by our early enrollments thus far.

It seems like just yesterday...

After a few months of catching my breath and getting settled back into routines at home, it’s time to get out on the road and visit with my summer friends. I hope you can join us at one of the dates listed below, and bring along a friend or two that might be interested in a summer at Chewonki. These events are for prospective, new and returning Chewonki campers, trip participants, alumni and their families to gather, enjoy some pizza and other munchies, view slides of past summers and get excited for summer 2012. If our travels are not bringing us close to you, please share this schedule with friends who may live in the cities we’re visiting. And, if you feel that there is strong interest in Chewonki where you live, please be in touch and we might be able to arrange a reunion in your town.

I hope to see you over the next few months!

Sincerely,

Garth Altenburg,
Director, Chewonki Camp for Boys

All times 7pm unless otherwise noted. Please RSVP to the hosts.

November 3- Manchester, MA
Hosted by Liesl & Andy Hawley
27 Old Neck Rd, Manchester MA
978-525-3211, a.hawley@comcast.net

November 7- Brooklyn, NY
Hosted by Ilisa and Steve Rissman
20 Pierrepont St #2C / 2D, Brooklyn, NY
718-246-4439, ilisalynn@nyc.rr.com

November 8^- New York, NY
Hosted by Keryn Kaplan and David Stallbaumer
Email kerynkaplan@gmail.com for location

November 9- Pelham Manor, NY
Hosted by Jill and Owen Glist
969 Pelhamdale Ave, Pelham Manor
RSVP Thomas Dillon 212.979.8700 or thomas@lambentservices.com

November 15- Washington, DC
Hosted by Lisa and Paul Maco
4400 Greenwich Pkwy NW, Washington, DC
202-625-1514, lisa.maco@me.com

November 16- Bethesda, MD
Hosted by Mittie and Curtis Rooney
5111 Wehawken Rd., Bethesda, MD
301-229-4483, mrooney@axcomgroup.com

November 21- Newton, MA
Hosted by Rachel Rock and Joshua Levy
60 Montvale Rd., Newton, MA
617-795-5985, rachelrock1@me.com

December 1- Cambridge, MA
Hosted by Kim and Layne Ainsworth
7 Brown St., Cambridge, MA
617-497-5728, kainsw@yahoo.com

After some showers and clouds on Sunday and clearing skies on Monday, we are enjoy a perfect day today on Tuesday for our weekly Tent Day outings. The majority of the camp is off at Popham Beach, but we also have groups sailing, picking blue berries and making a dessert for the entire camp, a nature activity involving scavenging for the annual wild edible food fest, a day hike to the Camden Hills, a live-action role-playing adventure activity here on campus, a frisbee golf outing, and a special Woodcraft activity trip to the Big Eddy Campground and Baxter State Park. We have so many groups doing so many interesting things, it’s really hard to keep track!

The energy around here remains high and very positive. Our new 10-day campers have settled in nicely into Long Hall and Stockade, respectively. Long Hall went on their overnight camp out last night. Saturday night’s campfire remains memorable for all who have attended. On Sunday we gathered for our weekly Sunday Service meeting involving songs, readings, and a skit performance of the children’s book The Rainbow Fish which stimulated some good discussions on sharing, friendship, and the qualities that matter most in life such as compassion and kindness towards our neighbors. Sunday night’s Capture the Rocks game is always a highlight, and last night was the final group night of the session. Our Puffins and Owls were able to do some star gazing with the help of some local astronomers, while our Herons played the popular Wolves and Caribou game. Our Ospreys hiked south on our peninsula and then floated back on the incoming tide assisted by life jackets under the late evening skies. A “float” is a favorite Chewonki tradition.

Our cabin wilderness trips continue to go well. Pete Gillies, Ranch House, South Hall, and Gordy Hall have all returned in recent days with wonderful stories of their adventures. Outhaul, New Hall, Shang-Tu, Xanadu and Quarter Deck are currently out on their trips.

If this pace sounds hard to keep up with, the last few days of camp will be even more busy with special activities including a treasure hunt, waterfront regatta, closing campfire, and celebration banquet on Sunday evening. As a reminder, closing day is on Monday, August 15th. If you a picking your son up by car at Chewonki, please be here between 8:30 am and noon. There is no camp program that morning other than saying goodbye, so the earlier your arrival, the better. Please do take a few moments to stop by and say hello to me before you depart. More details can be found here.

I look forward to these final fun days of camp. Thanks for sharing your son with us.

Sincerely,

Garth Altenburg

“Polar Bears! Polar Bears!” Several times a week these words ring through Osprey Circle and the lower fields inviting all campers and counselors to take part in a pre-breakfast morning swim.  For some this might be a once a summer experience but others wouldn’t think of missing a polar bear swim. For the writer and many others a polar bear swim is simply a wonderful way to begin the day; in addition there is the incentive of receiving the highly sought after Polar Bear Patch for completing half or more of the swims in a session.

On Tuesday July 26th almost 30 campers and counselors came down for the first Polar Bear of Session II. It’s hard to imagine a better way to start the day; the tides were with us and the water was warm. Wednesday saw another beautiful swim and the prospect of many more.  – Henry Heyburn, Watefront Director

13 commonly occurring natural history items. 400 acres. A little more than one hour to find them all. Can you do it?

Welcome to Friday night’s camp activity, the Nature Scavenger Hunt! Our enthusiasm at Chewonki for the natural world makes this event possible, as well as the skilled teachings of Doc Fred and the rest of his nature staff. Cabins compete as teams against their neighboring cabins, scouring Chewonki Neck in as efficient a manner as possible with hopes of accurately collecting as many items on the list as possible. Last night, skies were overcast and the sun now sets just after 8 pm, so our campers were also competing against darkness with hopes of finding their items. Once the lists are distributed, campers scatter at  the word “Go!” to find the items on their list. Our library of field guides is available to our campers to help the campers identify the items.

I was very impressed with the amount of knowledge on display by our campers, much of it gained here at Chewonki. Even more impressive was the enthusiasm for the general activity and for finding all of the items. I feel it is part of what makes Chewonki a little different than most other summer experiences. Nature is cool here! We model a genuine enthusiasm for learning about the world around us. The winning teams will get to enjoy a special dessert tomorrow with their cabin as well!

So, how would you do on this scavenger hunt? Here are the items: Non-insect arthropods; A female Eastern Hemlock cone; a non-native, invasive animal species;  a Moosewood leaf; an aquatic insect; the inflorescence of a wild plant; a non-gilled mushroom; physical evidence of the life activities of some wild mammal; a macroscopic marine alga; a land-living mollusk; galls formed by mites; and the seed of a White Ash tree. Bonus item: Exuviae.

On Wednesday we took campers on the third Puffin Watch of the summer, another fantastic time with great weather and wonderful bird sightings! We have been leaving from New Harbor Maine on the Hardy Boat Cruises; 12-18 campers with binoculars and books in hand. We travel out to Eastern Egg Rock, circle the island and check out the diversity of bird life out there before heading back to the harbor. The boat has a naturalist on board who shares plenty of information and experiences with everyone and is always willing to answer camper questions.
Over 100 Puffins nest on this island, along with various species of Gulls, Terns and Guillimots; we see Cormorants, Eiders, and Gannets as well. As one would imagine, the Puffins are the hit among the campers with their small round bodies and clown like faces. We have been lucky to see some good rafts floating on the water and flying with food as well. The chicks have hatched and the adults are bringing food to their burrows so there is plenty of activity.
The trip offers a wonderful opportunity for campers to get out on the water, experience a huge nesting colony of various loud and active birds, and see some of the Maine Coast beyond the tent day beach trips. For birding it can’t be beat because the campers have the chance to look at shapes, sizes, behavior and silhouettes’ to aid in identification. Sometimes the light isn’t quite right to see feather patterns so watching behavior and flight patterns are the next best tool for campers learning species.
Campers on these trips can add as many as 12 new birds to their lists, and for many this is their first sighting of a Puffin “in real life”!

Birding on the Neck

We have been having great fun with birding during the first session and during the first week of the second session. Several bird walks happen each week, 10-20 campers eagerly rising around 6:15 a.m., 7:00 on Sundays. 14 campers earned their binoculars during first session, many more received their “Birding Journals” and field guides, and still others worked on their various birding patches. The second session has campers ready to receive binoculars even before the first week is up!
I have been impressed with the early morning enthusiasm, and the willingness of everyone to share their own personal knowledge with those campers that may be just beginning to develop their skills. Everyone has been making great observations, picking up details in field marks and behavior that the book never seems to share.
Our summer bird list in the dining hall continues to grow with campers adding birds seen during activities and on their trips.
As summer winds down the birds are less vocal, but it just means better observation skills to see and hear what’s out there! The barn swallows have all fledged and we are watching to see when they will gather up and all leave. It may be before the end of camp!
Other activities have included early morning bird banding, several Puffin Cruises and a breakfast trip to the upper part of Montsweag Brook for some different birds. See more about our Puffin Watches in the next blog!
Lynne Flaccus, Staff Naturalist

I walked down to the waterfront after rest hour today with the hopes of trying standup paddleboarding. If you are not familiar with standup paddelboarding, it is a combination of canoeing and surfing. Basically, you are standing up on a large surfboard and paddling using paddle similar to a long canoe paddle. We were offering a special one-day clinic taught by Raf Adams who owns SoPoSup, a standup paddleboard company in South Portland, Maine. 

I knew it was a special day at our waterfront when I had a hard time finding a lifejacket. It seems like we have an endless supply of lifejackets, so it is always a good sign of lots of activity when there aren’t many left. Sure enough, there were campers in boats everywhere! I counted over ten kayaks in use, four sailboats, six or seven canoes, and of course the twelve or so campers that were there to try paddleboarding. The Chewonki waterfront is one of my favorite places on Earth and I love it when our campers are taking full advantage as they are on a day like today.

We opened our second session yesterday by welcoming 125 campers under crystal clear blue-skies and comfortable temperatures- a welcome relief after the stifling temperatures on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Twenty-four hours later, the skies have turned cloudy and it has even cooled off a bit more, but our campers are settling in perfectly and having a great time. After a pasta dinner on Sunday evening, we gathered up a Campfire circle for an opening campfire, sing-a-long and introductions, followed by first night candlelight discussions back at the cabins. Today our campers proceeded through a variety of orientation activities by touring and learning about the activities around campus, as well as visiting the health center for health check-ins and the waterfront for swim checks. This afternoon our campers engaged in a “choice afternoon” where they got to sample our activities. The full activity program will begin on Tuesday. This evening promises to be a thriller with our first game of Capture the Rocks on the lower field between our two camp teams- the Sags and the Hocs. All in all, it’s been a very smooth start. Our campers are happy and settling in, and I am very impressed with the outstanding job our counselors are doing. I look forward to providing more updates later this week.

We’re about to head off to Popham Beach for our final Tent Day of the first session. It looks to be a perfect beach day. As I write, I look out on the quad from my office and I see scaffolding set up for tonight’s Talent Show. The next few days will be busy with closing celebrations for our 3 1/2 week campers, while our 5 and 7 week campers head out  for their wilderness trips.

As a reminder, departures on Friday by car will be from 8:30 to noon. Please be here before noon! All of our major goodbyes and farewells will have been said the night before and there is no programming on Friday. I am sure your son will have many stories to share with you about these last few days. In the meantime, our Program Director Kate Fox wanted to share with you a brief look into the life of our cabin buddies. In short, we need new books for our camper library. If you have old books that could be used by our campers that you would like to donate, please bring them with you on Friday or Sunday.

CABIN BUDDIES It’s 8:20 in the evening. “Rocks,” an amplified version of capture-the-flag, has just ended. The task: to calm 9 excited campers so that they can be asleep by 8:45 Unsurprisingly, we’ve found that the best method to accomplish this feat is a book and familiar voice. Each cabin on the lower field is assigned a member of the camp support staff to serve as a “Cabin Buddy,” an outside, caring adult voice whose primary goal is to be another helping hand to the cabin throughout the summer.  On most nights, once teeth have been brushed and faces have been washed, the cabin buddy will read to the cabin from a chapter book. The effect is striking: children who minutes before were running wild on the lower field  will lie in rapt (albeit increasingly sleepy) attention to listen to a chapter from  Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Jack London’s The Call of the Wild, or J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter. After reading, the cabins are quiet and the campers are either asleep or well on their way.

Reading to campers is an amazing way to let them connect with support staff, while allowing counselors a precious few minutes of time for themselves. The book also serves as a further point of cabin cohesion and discussion, and facilitates the elusive and essential gelling of a cabin group. Chewonki’s Library is well stocked with age appropriate classics from which to choose, but we are always on the lookout for more contemporary young adult literature to add to our repertoire. If you have any used books lying around and would like to make a donation, please bring them on opening or closing day of camp. Rest assured that they will find a good home at Chewonki! - Kate Fox, Program Director

By Nick Morrison, Head Counselor

Camp just keeps rushing by. Glancing at the calendar, trying to remind myself of everything that has happened in the past few days, the fullness of our summer here is clear. I spent Tent Day yesterday at the Reid State Park beach with the Owls, grilling burgers by the lagoon, and taking a lovely afternoon walk down the rocky outcrops and tide pools. On Monday I spent some time wandering the activity areas: it was hot enough that I was not surprised to find both campers and counselors at the tennis courts taking a water break, lounging in the shade reading or napping as a few stalwarts carried on some matches. In the cooler space of the pottery room kids were painting a variety of clay markers destined for the camper gardens–an enormous carrot, a dinosaur for the ‘dinosaur kale’, and so on. During general swim I successfully persuaded a reluctant camper who hadn’t been swimming yet to give it a try–after telling me several times the water was too cold, he sat on the steaming hot dock for only a few more minutes before slipping into the water. He stayed in for the rest of the period.

But for me it’s really the weekends at Chewonki that are most memorable. I’m the unofficial music director here so Campfire and Sunday Service have always been two of my favorite parts of the week. We’ve had very strong camper participation in our first two campfires–check out the Flickr photo collection for some wacky costumes that will give you only a hint of what was going on! And camper participation at the last Sunday Service was truly moving–more than a dozen campers spontaneously shared reflections on their first two weeks at camp, the new friends they’d made, the kindness of their counselors, and how lucky they felt to be at Chewonki. Not the kind of soul-bearing you hear every day from ten-year-olds!

I’ve also made it part of my mission here this summer to increase the sing-along component to both Campfire and Sunday Service–I’ve revamped the songbook to include some more recent favorites, and you’ll see pictures under the Sunday Service photo collection of several groups of campers coming to the ‘stage’ to sing with the musicians (that’s me with the beard and gourd-banjo!). I’m also offering a music activity and some general swim jam sessions: these will generate camper-created musical numbers for both the next campfire and the talent show next week.

Later on Sunday afternoon I played some chess games on the quad while munching on watermelon. And Sunday evening Rocks is still probably the best exercise I get all year…once a Hoc, always a Hoc, and I can’t help but get revved up along with the kids. As first session races to a close, I’m looking forward to this weekend’s Campfire and Sunday Service as one more chance for these kids to laugh, sing, and share stories and reflections together as another session winds down.