On a still-warm day in December, they sat in the sunroom of their Norwich, Vermont home and reflected on their own Aloha experience. Not surprisingly, they talked a lot about their work at Ohana, the family camp they helped build over the past decade.

“One has very few opportunities in a career to start something from scratch,” said Andy.

In 2001, Posie Taylor, then Aloha’s Executive Director, was creating a long-range plan for the Foundation. Almost on a whim, Andy threw out the idea of adding a full-scale family camp to Aloha’s offerings. He and Deb were directing Hulbert’s family camp, which ran in two, one-week sessions a year. The family camps were fully subscribed at 100 people each session, and Deb and Andy wondered if there was a way to translate Aloha’s powerful experience for children into something equally powerful for families. Recalling the range and potential of the Aloha programs at that time, Deb said, “A piece was missing.”

What seemed like a casual comment became real just a year later when a hilltop camp on Lake Fairlee came up for sale. Seeing the opportunity, the Foundation laid out more money than it ever had in its history — and put Andy and Deb in charge of bringing the Ohana vision to life.

The couple drew on their personal experiences and, crucially, on what Aloha already had been doing so well for decades. They moved forward asking themselves several questions: How do you compress the Aloha experience, the bonding and closeness that develops over the course of a summer, into the one or two weeks that families could come together? What kinds of unifying programs do you create when your campers span several generations? Was there a family equivalent for the kinds of counseling and mentoring that are so meaningful for Aloha’s younger campers? How would Ohana keep from being an exercise in nostalgia? How could a camp with roots in the early twentieth century address the needs of families today?

Aloha took ownership of the acreage and the century-old, dilapidated set of hilltop buildings in 2004, and Andy and Deb threw themselves into rebuilding them into a camp — and not into just any camp. Understanding the intangible hold of traditional camp scale and architecture on Aloha campers, they guided the painstaking restoration of the main lodge, right down to the rustic details of the porch railings. Deb and Andy knew they’d be attracting people who hoped to recapture the magic of youthful camp experiences with their families, or who wanted a shot at experiencing something they’d missed. “We hoped that people who’d come here as children in the 1930s would see the new lodge and say it looked just as they remembered it,” Deb said. “And that’s exactly what happened.”

They drew on the Aloha experience in setting up a rhythm for the new camp’s structure. “Summer camp has a beginning, a middle, and an end,” said Andy, so — unlike a typical resort, where families come and go as they please — they set defined start and end dates for each Ohana session, and chose programs to fit along that arc.

They knew that a part of the Aloha magic came from exposing campers to something new: new knowledge, new experiences. And so they made sure that Ohana programs would include a sense of discovery and education, as well.

The new family camp opened in 2007, with Andy and Deb still unsure how the power of the shared experiences they’d seen among young Aloha campers would translate to mixed-age families.

A visit to Ohana in 2011 offers answers to some of the questions they started with. One afternoon last summer, Sandy Roche sat on a towel by the dock while several of her six grandsons played in and around the water. This was Roche’s third visit to Ohana. She’d first come to the hilltop camp as part of a Road Scholar (formerly Elderhostel) group. “I wandered up to the family house where all these families were contra-dancing,” she said. “I thought, ‘I’d love to bring my family here.’”

Her family, though, like many other families, was spread across the country, juggling busy schedules. Two of Roche’s daughters lived in Montana; one lived in New York, as did Roche herself. Still, they found a week in the summer of 2010 when they could be together at Ohana — three generations, six cousins between the ages of three and twelve. At the end of the week, one of Roche’s sons-in-law told her it had been the best vacation he’d ever had. It was easy to decide to come back in 2011.

At Ohana they found a nice balance to each day, with organized activities for young and old in the mornings and the rest of the day free until dinner. No sit-down lunch interrupted the flow of the day. Instead, with the help of kitchen staff, Roche and her family made their own bag lunches after breakfast in the lodge’s huge kitchen, where all the produce, the maple syrup, and much other food besides came from local farms or the camp garden.

Roche and one of her grandsons carved wooden spoons under the guidance of local woodcarver Bill Shepard. Other groups weaved baskets: They were easy to spot because they sat together on the dock each day, keeping their basket strips moist in the water while they worked. The activities, carefully selected by Deb, taught skills that reached back to earlier eras and brought local artisans and guests together in community.

Roche and her family spent most afternoons down at the lake. She liked watching a group of children, her grandsons among them, building sand castles, digging in the sand, and playing in the water. “There’s nothing for children that’s more soothing or better for imaginative play,” she said approvingly. She had also noticed that, even with many children and adults down at the waterfront, “I never hear a cross word,” and there wasn’t a cell phone or laptop in sight. She thought it had something to do with the people who came to Ohana, but also something to with the way the camp was run.

“The organization of the camp lends itself to cooperation and mutual respect,” she said. She gave “What is it?” as an example. Every evening before dinner, she explained, Ohana campers and staff gathered on the broad front steps of the lodge. “Deb Williams brings out some object from nature — a feather, an insect, a rock — and the children are asked to come back the next day with an idea about what it is, and what’s interesting about it.” It was while Deb and Andy were running Wildwood Nature Camp for Massachusetts Audubon Society that Deb developed her approach to teaching natural history to a wide range of ages. The “What is it?” table on the lodge porch was full of nature books, from simple picture books to detailed guides, to help answer each day’s question. Deb answered the previous day’s question with simple statements that even very young children could follow, yet tucked in information that might be new even to seasoned naturalists. Afterward, Andy often read a poem or part of an essay. “They take seriously,” Roche said, “the fact that we are all here together.”

The balance that Deb and Andy sought appeared to be working. In 2011, nearly one-third of Ohana’s business came from family reunions. Camp enrollment overall is running ahead of plan, and its financial picture is equally rosy. In the sunny room in Norwich, Andy asked, “Were there times when it could have teetered and gone the other way? Absolutely. But Deb and I felt strongly that if we created a really good, high-quality program, it would stay.”

They’ve seen that people hunger for time together and time in the natural world, that they hunger for authenticity and role models, and for connections to a wider community. Ohana helps create these experiences. For some, Ohana gives them an experience of summer camp they never had as children. For others, Ohana gives them a chance to return to the well, to be refreshed by memories and add new ones.

“It felt like the right time to move on,” Andy said. “We gave it 150%, gave it our all, for six years. We’re very satisfied with our work.”

As he talks, snowshoes hang next to the door behind him; pack baskets sit on top of a bookcase; paintings of northern landscapes hang on the wall. Laughing, Deb said that the rest of the house was still filled with boxes. “Two entire careers of stuff to move back into our house,” Andy said.

“I’ve been running trips since I was 16,” he said. “We’ve been in the overnight programming business since our twenties. We started when our oldest child was one year old. Now our children are all grown up.”

“We can go canoeing now,” Deb said! — though Andy explained that while they’d love to spend much of next summer paddling, perhaps in Quebec’s far north, a landscape they both love, “the complication is that our entire network is people who run summer programs.

“We’ve felt so lucky to have had the opportunity to work in such a historic place,” he said. “We wanted to stay until it felt stable. We’re leaving at a good point.”

To Andy and Deb, we’d say this: We’ve been lucky to have you. May the wind be at your backs.

Author Kristen Laine, writes and blogs about environmental education, women’s issues and children in the outdoors.  After her graduation from Harvard, Kristen went west, and in between outdoor expeditions in the Seattle area, became “Outside Magazine Online’s” first editor.  Now on the east coast, Kristen lives with her husband and two children in Orange, New Hampshire, and when she’s not writing, can often be found rowing on the Connecticut River.

Quidditch, if you have managed to make it thus far in the twenty-first century without opening a Harry Potter book, is the game of choice for young wizards. The eighth and final movie based on the series had opened earlier in the summer, and Quidditch was in the air at Horizons.

Much more was in the air, as well. Horizons runs three two-week sessions from late June to the middle of August. Of the 130 or so campers participating in the second week of the middle session, about 18 had elected to play in the Quidditch match. On tennis courts alongside the field where the quaffle hoops had been placed, young players hit balls back and forth with rhythmic thwacks. Campers worked on a dance routine in the Wolf’s Den nearby. A pulsing beat rolled out from the building; the dancers kept to the deep shadows on the hot, bright day. A row of archery targets stood at attention beyond the dancers. On a normal day, many of the Quidditch players would be pulling back their bowstrings and letting arrows fly toward the targets. Yet other campers were putting the finishing touches on a show — Cinderella, complete with music, costumes, and a set — for a parents’ open house that Friday, or sailing on Lake Fairlee.

“One of the things that’s unique about Horizons,” says camp director Tracey McFadden, “is that it has the feel of a residential camp” — all the activities, counselors, cabins that campers use like clubhouses, meals together in a burnished-wood dining hall looking out over the lake — “but at the end of each day, the kids go home and sleep in their own beds.”

Some campers come for more than one session. Each year, about a quarter arrive from outside the Upper Valley: Some are visiting grandparents, some stay in vacation homes nearby or are at Ohana, Aloha’s family camp. And some are the children of Aloha staff. As a result, Horizons has an international feel that is similar to Aloha’s other camps. Over the years, families have enrolled younger siblings of campers at Hive, Lanakila, or Aloha in Horizons as a way to introduce those children to The Aloha Camps.

On the Quidditch field, Will Vaccaro chased after the quaffle for Ravenclaw. The dark-haired 10-year-old had the round face of a young Neville Longbottom, from the Harry Potter books, but his wide grin and energetic pursuit of the blue quaffle  astride his green noodle was his alone. Will’s mother, Elizabeth, had been a camper and counselor at Aloha and now runs Horizons’  swim program. Opposing Will and the Ravenclaws were a faster, older, and larger side, all counselors — Slytherin House, of course. The campers, though, had a better command of Quidditch and its rules, and had been practicing, to boot. Almost immediately, a flurry of pale blue went through one of the hoops: 10 points to Ravenclaw!

One studious-looking Slytherin — counselor Miriam Whittington (aka Hermione Granger) from Hanover, New Hampshire — wore a blue oxford shirt and tie. Most Horizon counselors come from area towns. Assistant counselors must have completed at least one year of high school. Many continue through college. McFadden has instituted an apprentice program for Horizon graduates, beginning after their eighth-grade year. Miriam, along with over half of the other counselors, was a former camper herself starting at age seven and working her way up as an assistant counselor, lead counselor, and now an Archery (and Quidditch) instructor. In these ways, says McFadden, “through campers and counselors, Horizons creates strong and lasting connections between local communities and the camp.”  Eventually, the counselors’ age and coordination gave them the upper hand. In spite of several more goals from Ravenclaw and encouragement from the sidelines, the counselors won handily, even though the pale pink marble of a snitch remained hidden, somewhere in the grass.

Gryffindor took the field in red pinneys. Referee Ann Perry dropped the snitch somewhere and blew her whistle. Gryffindor’s pint-sized seeker — in real life a Blue Jay named Tyler Odell — flew around the field on his swim noodle broomstick wearing a dark red cape. Gryffindors scored on their first shot and then their second. Then things got a little chaotic, and as the combatants tried to clarify whether a bludger could throw a quaffle at an opposing player or needed to make direct contact, little Tyler found the snitch in the grass and held it up. Anne Perry blew her whistle. Match to Gryffindor!

The Gryffindors practically flew off the field. Watching the celebration around Tyler, the young seeker for Gryffindor, it was hard not to think of another young seeker, Harry Potter himself. Will and the other Ravenclaws quickly pulled on their green pinneys for a rematch.

“There’s not usually that much competition” at Horizon, McFadden says — though she admits that some kids sign up for the third camp session just for its “capture the flag” game on the second Friday, when the whole camp divides into red and blue teams. The Quidditch game had a certain ad-hoc feel to it — good energy and high spirits, along with a make-it-up-as-we-go-along playfulness — that seemed about right for a hot summer’s day. But the campers themselves seemed to hover in a magical balance between knowing that they were running around a field with swim noodles between their legs and feeling that they were actually flying through a Quidditch stadium on broomsticks.

There is freedom and nervousness, both, in being away from home, as young wizards and campers know — even if only for the day. In the right balance, it heightens a child’s sense of wonder and imagination — when for the space of a sunlit afternoon, swimming noodles are broomsticks and you can really fly, and somewhere out in the grass you might find the golden snitch. There’s magic at Hogwarts, and there’s a little bit of magic at Horizons Day Camp, too.

Author Kristen Laine, writes and blogs about environmental education, women’s issues and children in the outdoors.  After her graduation from Harvard, Kristen went west, and in between outdoor expeditions in the Seattle area, became “Outside Magazine Online’s” first editor.  Now on the east coast, Kristen lives with her husband and two children in Orange, New Hampshire, and when she’s not writing, can often be found rowing on the Connecticut River.

Each day at Hive is filled with adventures AND hugs

“Who sends a seven year-old to camp?”

I start with this question because I got it a lot when I made the decision to send my daughter for her Elfin summer — and I repeatedly asked it of myself when I was packing her trunk.  “Who sends a seven year-old off to camp?”

But the decision to do it was actually very easy: my daughter has always had a daring spirit and when she heard that there were places for kids to go adventuring by themselves away from their families, she was thrilled.  My husband and I could have said, “No, wait until you are older,” but we wanted to encourage her.  We were frank with her about the challenges — yes, she would probably have moments of wanting to go home.  That was normal. How was she going to handle it? we asked.  She would talk to her counselor, she said, and find something to keep her busy.  Good plan, we said.  At worst, we told her, you’ll have ten days that were harder than you expected but you will come home proud that you tried something new.

Girls form close relationships with their tent families

Her ten days as an Elfin were magic.  She did not want to come home at the end. I believe that her age actually helped her.  Seven year-olds are adaptable, and so much more capable of living in the moment even than nine or ten year-olds are.  She was not yet able to project too far into the future or waste time imagining worst-case scenarios.  My hope is that by giving her such a positive experience at this stage we are helping her to strengthen that optimism and positive outlook as an indelible part of her character.

“Your daughter wears a uniform to camp?  What kind of place is this?”

Actually, Hive’s uniform standard was one of the selling points for me.  As the mother of daughters I am constantly battling materialism, early sexualization, and the kind of caste system that emerges among girls based on what they wear.  The Hive uniform eliminates ninety percent of those problems before the kid opens the car door her first day.   Uniforms do the opposite of taking away individuality –  they encourage girls to see beyond the superficial and to meet each other as they really are.

My daughter has great pride in her Hive uniform — it identifies her as part of the Hive family.  It contributes to her sense of Hive as a special place away from other places, where she wears clothes she only wears there.  The one uniform piece she wears at home is her green Hive fleece.  I have noticed she wears it on days when she has a test or something scary coming and wants to remind herself of how strong and capable she is — and of the great people who are backing her.

Girls connect with friends at activities and in their age groups

“How can you stand to have her gone so long?”

The first summer, I really suffered.  I walked around with my cell phone plastered to my palm, just in case she might need me.  The second summer I started out like that, but it quickly proved exhausting.  She was a Lolander now and would be gone three weeks.  At some point I realized I was going to have to actually separate — stop thinking about her, stop worrying about her, live my life at home and know that she was good and safe where she was.  My husband and I took advantage of the opportunity to focus on the two younger children, spending our weekends doing all the “kiddie” activities their older sister would find boring.  It was a neat time, and the two youngest kids had a chance to really get to know each other and were much closer by the end.  The time apart was good for all three of them, who discovered they missed each other and appreciated each other more because of it.

Girls learn new skills and are proud to help

The separation was also good for her parents.

Letting your child grow up is hard.  While a seven or eight year-old is by no means ready to be on her own, she is ready for more independence than her parents may easily accept.  Time away from her gave us a chance to view her with fresh eyes when she came home — to see her as her counselors and tent-mates had seen her, and to start thinking about ways to help her be more self-sufficient at home.  But, perhaps more subtly, we started to really see her as separate — a person with her own interests and ideas, and her own story.

“What does she get out of camp that she can’t get at home?”

A favorite Chinese proverb: “Do not confine your children to your own learning, for they were born in another time.”

I can teach my daughter how to be a woman, and I can teach her to be a member of our family.  But I can’t teach her how to be of her generation.  I can’t teach her how to be in the world without me.   So part of my job is exposing her to people of her generation I want her to learn from.  That is perhaps Hive’s greatest gift.

Great counselors are able to nurture campers, as well as encourage their explorations

I have yet to meet a Hive counselor I wasn’t impressed by.  I have adored both of my daughter’s tent counselors.  They are smart and funny, passionate and capable.  Most importantly, they are nurturers.  They take great pride in the responsibility to help girls grow into fierce, independent, capable women.  In these counselors, my daughter has role models and people to whom she can turn for comfort and encouragement.

It is obvious that the questionnaires we fill out before camp are carefully read:  Both summers my daughter has been placed in tents with girls with whom she shared some interests, and also whose strengths and weaknesses balanced each other.  At the encouragement of the camp, before she left I talked to my daughter about goals for her summer, both practical (learn to canoe) and spiritual (work on skills for managing test anxiety).  The letters we got from her counselor during the summer updated us on her work and provided details about how her test anxiety was manifesting and what tricks they were trying for tackling it.

Even the youngest Hivers are ready for a little independence

I practice these skills at home with her — but the part about her learning to do it without me absolutely must happen away from me.  And when it comes to choosing the best “away from me” Hive has been a life-changing gift for my daughter.

Hive offers her a version of the world where a woman’s value is weighed in her character and determination, her self-discipline and leadership skills, and her compassion for herself and others.  Hive nurtures those things along with a responsibility to pass them on — and a bright hope for a world in which all women are valued this way.

Elizabeth has been a Hive mom for two years, and was a Hiver herself in the 1980s.

The challenge to get to the top is physical and mental

One morning late last spring, 30 eighth-graders from Claremont, New Hampshire, walked off a school bus at Hulbert Outdoor Center. They’d heard about this day from students who’d graduated before them at Claremont Middle School. They’d heard their teacher, Jessica Warkentien, call it “a culminating experience.” Her phrase captured the day’s double purpose — both a celebration of the end of middle school and a series of challenges that would test the students in new and perhaps surprising ways.

They followed a wide path from the bus into the woods, where five instructors trained in experiential education were waiting to guide the students through a ropes course. With the help of the Hulbert staff, the young teenagers ambling up the path would learn — perhaps discover — how they assessed risk and limits, how they performed under pressure, how they gave and received support from others.

At the end of the day, some would get back on the bus feeling that their measure had been taken and that they’d come up short. Others would have surprised themselves and their peers by how well they’d performed. All of them would come away with a deeper understanding of themselves and each other.

Agnieszka Jasinska-Kot, Erin Wilson, and other instructors fitted the group with harnesses and helmets. “Choose a partner,” Jaskinska-Kot told them. Students rushed to pair up, leaving only two quiet girls, Jordan and Emily, unpaired. Emily wore a pretty scoop-necked shirt decorated with beads and held a sweatshirt in her hand like a security blanket. On a normal school day, she’d be in special education classes. On this day, she and several other students from that program were joining their classmates. “Want to be my partner?” Jordan asked Emily. Emily nodded and smiled shyly.

The students walked two by two up a treelined walkway to the course, which was tucked in among tall oaks and pines on Hulbert’s nearly 200-acre grounds. Eleven poles formed a near-circle, its only gap that walkway, which ended at a 35-foot tower. Over the students’ heads, a sturdy wire descended from a platform high on the tower. The height of the Hulbert experience for many of the teens — in both senses of the word — would come in sliding down from the tower on a zip line.

“Like something in a movie,” one of the boys whispered to another. An Indiana Jones movie, to be precise: High overhead, strung between poles, the ropes of a Burma bridge swayed from one of the poles to the central tower. From another, wooden squares just wide enough for a growing boy’s foot improbably attached each to the next, a challenge called “floating islands.” Jaskinska-Kot walked the teens through the other challenges: star climb, moving vines, dangle duo, diagonal beam, lizard climb, shoelaces, trapeze. That last involved climbing up a pole studded with metal staples, then standing on top of the pole and jumping for a trapeze bar hanging five feet away.

Not all the challenges involved climbing. Jaskinska-Kot showed them a low zip line that ran along another pathway through the trees. “If you don’t get across,” she explained with wry humor, “you hit a raging river filled with crocodiles.” Never mind that no river and not a single crocodile ran across the low zip’s path. Jaskinska-Kot wanted the pairs to work together. If the legs of the person on the low zip line touched the ground, she told them, “Your partner has to come and save you.”

Excited chatter spread among the teenagers as they looked high above them. Human beings seem hard-wired to be afraid of heights. Ropes courses turn this in-born fear to educational advantage. This being middle schoolers, whose swirling adolescent questions — Who am I? Do I fit in? How do I act? What’s important to me? — can feel like life-or-death matters, being excited pressed right up against being scared to death.

Some of the kids immediately seized the moment. Sierra, fingernails bright in neon pink, big silver hoop earrings tucked behind her helmet strap, raced across the Indiana Jones bridge. Hannah bolted to the top of the star and leaped from pole to trapeze before rushing into line for the zipline. They were among those in the group who relished challenging themselves. They had a sense of themselves as leaders, comfortable out in front, and the tests affirmed it in front of everyone. Sierra, a dancer who was used to performing, told a classmate, “I’m not afraid of heights.”

Others quickly absorbed harder lessons. Two pairs of boys ran to be first in line below the lizard climb. Robbie clambered up holds on the vertical pole to a wooden platform. Earlier, he’d boasted to his friends that the Burma bridge, at the top of the lizard climb, had his name on it, and that he’d make quick work of it. He stepped out onto the first loose “V” and called down, “That’s so sketchy!” His partner wasn’t there: He’d wandered over to the low zip line. Robbie hung on the ropes another second, then flung himself back onto the platform, defeated. He laid there for a time, then slowly down-climbed the lizard pole.

But some lessons took longer to unfold. For the first hour, Jordan and Emily lingered at the edges of the action, avoiding and drifting among elements. They watched Hannah climb the star and squeeze the blue rubber duckie hanging above it. They stood side by side watching a bunch of boys run with the low zip line, but stepped aside when it was their turn and instead wandered over to another element, another line. Emily smiled and watched, kneading her sweatshirt between her hands.

The two girls got in line for the rope ladder, the most direct way to reach the zipline platform. (You wouldn’t call it the easiest way when the ladder rises at a swaying 45-degree angle to the platform.) This time, though, Jordan clipped a safety line into her harness, asked an instructor to check it, and started climbing up widely spaced two-by-fours. She moved quickly and steadily. Emily craned her neck to watch, smiling harder. Someone called out, “Good job, Jordan!” as the girl pulled herself onto the platform.

There, instructor Erin Wilson clipped Jordan to another safety system and congratulated her on her climb. Wilson, who had been timid as a child, understood the effort it could take to make it to the tower. Before she moved back into the shade of the platform, Jordan peeked out and smiled down at Emily, pale sunlight reflecting in her glasses.

When Jordan’s turn came to climb out on the zipline platform, a call went up from the tower. “Where’s Emily?” Wilson called. “Emily, we need you. Grab that rope and run it down to the end of the zipline.”

A couple of boys called out, “Run, Emily! Run!” A look of irritation flashed across Emily’s face, replacing the fixed smile. But she picked up the line and ran slowly down the hill.

Wilson gave Jordan the signal to go. The girl dropped down from her high perch, her legs windmilling as if running through the air. “Go Jordan!” a boy yelled as she flew down the green tunnel.

A few minutes later, she walked back up the path with Emily, pulling the zipline rope for the next flyer. Emily, sporting a wide grin, showed Jordan how to hand the rope to Wilson in the tower. The two girls stood side by side again. You wouldn’t know that anything had changed.

They wandered again to the low zip. Emily emerged from the group with the safety line clipped to her harness, received her go-ahead, and ran down to the raging river and the crocodiles. She got hung there, giggling. Jordan rescued her, also laughing. “You did good,” she told Emily.

“Want to do it again?” Jordan asked her beaming partner. Several boys shouted out encouragement as each girl ran to get across the river and as each rescued the other from imaginary crocodiles.

“We don’t measure success by how high you go, but by how you’ve challenged yourself,” Jaskinska-Kot had told the students before they’d started. Hulbert school programs director Jen Hargrave calls it “challenge by choice.”

Who’s to say how many tests were passed that morning?

Robbie, the boy who’d backed off the Burma bridge, had discovered the limits of his bravado within five minutes on the ropes course. He’d learned something about partnership, too: His first partner had deserted him, and when he wandered away from a second partner, two classmates chewed him out. Later, he rose to the challenge, cheering for his partner and for others.

In their final minutes at the ropes course, the tallest, biggest boy in the class started up the rope ladder to the zip line but stopped partway. His classmates called out encouragement, as they’d done for others, but he stayed put, as if frozen into place. Immediately, one of the instructors placed herself directly below him and quietly talked him back down to the ground. “You’ve done great,” she told him. “Congratulations.”

Jessica Warkentien hears from former students that they draw on lessons learned at the ropes course all through high school. Before this group graduates from middle school in a few weeks, she’ll remind them of the challenges they faced at Hulbert. High school, she’ll tell them, is just another challenge.

Hulbert Outdoor Center hosts more than 50 school groups a year, in a combination of home school, public school, and private school groups. Most of the students come in the fall. Some of the groups from more affluent communities stay overnight. Teachers recognize the deeper levels of trust and bonding that emerge during the multi-day visits, traits that ripple through the course of the school year. One such teacher, Jessica Lahey of Crossroads Academy in Lyme, New Hampshire, witnesses a transformation in her students each year. “They enter Hulbert as one class,” she says. “And they come back to school a completely different class.”

Jessica Warkentien yearns to extend her students’ experience at Hulbert — and perhaps make it available earlier in the school year, so the effect on the class can start to play out in middle school. Her group comprises only one-sixth of the Claremont eighth grade. But funding even Warkentien’s 30 students is a challenge of its own in the New Hampshire school district that’s long been synonymous with the question of what’s a good enough — an adequate — education for children in the state’s poorer communities.

“All schools are having funding issues,” notes Hulbert’s Hargrave. “I’m very interested in finding sources to continue our great work here.” Hargrave is helping Warkentien with the funding efforts at Claremont; she knows many other students could benefit from the challenges in Hulbert’s woods.

Maybe next year, or the year after that, a yellow school bus, or two, will follow the Connecticut River north seven exits on Interstate 91. Maybe they’ll drop off every Claremont eighth-grader for two days of team building, confidence building, character building, community building. With so much potential, Warkentien wonders if short visits are adequate. Maybe it could be three days.

“It’s the best thing we do with our kids all year,” she says.

Author Kristen Laine, writes and blogs about environmental education, women’s issues and children in the outdoors.  After her graduation from Harvard, Kristen went west, and in between outdoor expeditions in the Seattle area, became “Outside Magazine Online’s” first editor.  Now on the east coast, Kristen lives with her husband and two children in Orange, New Hampshire, and when she’s not writing, can often be found rowing on the Connecticut River.

Director Downey watches Friday night's performance.

Anne Downey, Department Head of Aloha’s Performing Arts Department, had just called a short break from rehearsals for this year’s show, “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” and the Hale, Aloha’s music building was quiet and almost empty. In two days, families and friends would arrive for Show Weekend and the back-to-back musical performances that have become a much anticipated and grand Aloha tradition. Downey gave the confident, matter-of-fact sense that she’d been through this nervous period before and that this year’s cast would be just fine. Still, she was now counting the remaining preparation in hours.

Some girls shuffled off to the main building to refill water bottles. Others retreated to shade under trees or on the porch. A heat wave was cresting over New England, spreading even as far north as Fairlee. Every door in the building stood wide open to welcome small gusts coming off Lake Morey or slight forest breezes. Downey waved her copy of the script like a thick fan and explained that after the break, the cast would do a complete run-through of the show. “We want them to see what they can do,” Downey said. “We have girls on lights, backstage, on stage. This is big-girl camp. Every girl plays an important role.”

Camel's head

Mia Melendy, wearing something that looked like footed pajamas in a rough tan fabric, unzipped to the waist, approached Downey. “I’m having trouble keeping my head on,” she said, showing the director a tall contraption of yellow burlap, twine, and felt — a camel’s head. Long yellow ribbons dangled below it. Downey, Mia, and one of the stage crew worked out a seviceable ribbon-tying sequence, and Mia walked off carefully, holding her new head high.

That night they’d do a second run-through in front of Aloha counselors, staff, and campers. “Tonight the energy level will go way up,” Downey said, with the predictive powers of someone who’s been putting up shows for years. And the ever-ticking internal clock ticked on: “Seven minutes to full dress!” she called out. Immediately, girls streamed through every door, pulling on costumes, carrying props, calling out questions or answers, and then disappeared behind stage. “Turn off the house lights,” Downey called. The show was back on.

Five teens in black dresses took their places on stage. Singly and together, they began the story in song:

Kira Farley as Joseph, with cast

Some folks dream of the wonders they’ll do
Before their time on this planet is through
Some just don’t have anything planned
They hide their hopes and their heads in the sand…

Joseph, played by Kira Farley, appeared, barefoot in shorts, singing “Any Dream Will Do.” She had followed her older sister to Aloha four years earlier, starting at Aloha Hive; last year, her first as an Aloha camper, she’d had a bit part in “Once Upon a Mattress,” in which her sister played the lead. Kira was invo

lved in drama as well back home, but she especially liked doing theater at Aloha. “I can focus on doing just this one thing,” she said. And she was having fun practicing her part everywhere she went at camp, back at her tent, on the docks, walking to and from meals.

Nine angels tromped down the middle of the aisle wearing white ankle socks and wings dusted with silver glitter. One of them was Bailey O’Donnell. She had a long list of roles in the play: angel, sheep, wife, dancer, be-bop dancer, screaming girl, adoring girl. It was her first year at Aloha; two of her cabin-mates had auditioned with her in the first week of camp and were also playing angels, sheep, and so forth. “It’s really amazing that I’m here,” Bailey said as the break was ending, tying back her red hair in preparation for donning her angel costume, “Because usually I have bad stage fright.”

Jacob, Joseph’s father, was being played by Jayne O’Dwyer. Jayne liked the community aspect of theater at Aloha. “We audition together,” she said, “we start practicing together every day, sharing scripts. It’s the best way to meet people.”

Stage left

On stage, Jacob’s other sons acted out a classic case of sibling rivalry, with gusto. “We’re great guys, but no one seems to notice,” they sang. Some of the “sons” displayed peach-fuzz beards and smudgy soul patches. All displayed quite a lot of macho attitude, relishing the number of male parts, all of them going to girls.

The show rolled along through song after song, with Downey making adjustments on the fly and writing notes on a lined pad of paper. At one point, she called out, “Where are the Ishmaelites? What happened to the camel?” She called for the entrance music to start again, and Mia — the front half of the camel — sauntered slowly up the aisle behind the traders who would buy Joseph from his brothers.

Suzzy Bator returned to her spot alongside one wall out front, after handling the Ishmaelist problem. She had dubbed herself the show’s “stage chick.” “My mom said, ‘You have to be in the play,’” Suzzy said. “So I said stage crew.”

The run-through ended, and Downey and the other staff called the cast in and again turned off all the lights. Chatter, laughter, talking filled the darkened stage. Downey held up a hand, pen high. The theater quieted. “That was just great,” she said. “For your first time through, that was a great run-through. It’s going to be awesome.” She paused to let her words sink in. “I’ve got a lot of notes,” she continued…

MJ Parry makes a cameo appearance as a dancing cactus

And she talked about the need for angels to walk more quietly, to glide, as if they were angels, and the need for Joseph to find a pair of pants to wear, and for the camel to get into costume earlier, even in the unrelenting heat. Outside the day was still bright. The curtains flapped in a slight breeze. Downey came to the end of her list.  “Go over the top tonight,” she told them. “Your counselors will really love it. Rock the house.”

Someone announced that the lifeguards would stay on duty long enough for anyone who wanted to get in a quick swim. After that, the minutes would pass even more quickly: dinner, make-up, costume, curtain up. The audience for the run-through — and then the back-to-back real thing — wouldn’t appreciate all that was passing through these final minutes, but they’d sense the passage of years.

Someone asked Jayne, aka Jacob, if she thought she came back from camp a better actor. Her response was immediate: “I feel like I come back a better version of me.”

Elvis Presley helps save the day for poor Joseph.

Author Kristen Laine, writes and blogs about environmental education, women’s issues and children in the outdoors.  After her graduation from Harvard, Kristen went west, and in between outdoor expeditions in the Seattle area, became “Outside Magazine Online’s” first editor.  Now on the east coast, Kristen lives with her husband and two children in Orange, New Hampshire, and when she’s not writing, can often be found rowing on the Connecticut River.

Beginners get one-on-one coaching on the Aloha crew dock

Aloha Camp was in full summer swing last week, one perfect day following another. On Tuesday afternoon, the sun beamed down full, adding sparkle to Lake Morey’s brilliant blue. Four campers walked down to the lake past the ARC (Aloha Rowing Club), where Aloha Crew counselors Emma and Arielle waited for them on a short dock.

Among the colorful beach towels draped over dock posts and the boisterous splashing of swimmers, the girls gathered around a sleek, gray, metal rowing machine. Harper settled into its sliding seat. The rowing machine, a Concept 2 ergometer, mimics the action of rowing. Olympic and collegiate crews train on Concept 2 ergometers year-round. While other campers watched, Arielle talked Harper through the sequence. Harper grasped a handle connected to a coiled chain inside the flywheel of the “erg” and pushed her hands away from her body — “as if they’re going across a little tabletop and then coming back underneath it,” said Arielle, impressing upon Harper the importance of keeping her hands level. “We don’t want any divots in the table.” Next Harper leaned her upper body forward, maintaining the extension of her arms. Finally, Arielle asked Harper to add legs to the sequence. The camper slid all the way to the front of her slide until her body was tightly compressed at what rowers call “the catch.” On Arielle’s command, Harper uncoiled in the reverse sequence, pushing down her legs, unfolding her back, and pulling her arms and the handle in above her waist. The flywheel whirred.

The lakeside scene on this perfect summer day was, in some ways, at odds with the classic imagery of summer camp. Rowing is a complicated sport, best taught by experienced coaches, best learned on expensive equipment that in turn needs to be treated with extra care. A teenager interested in learning to row can find youth programs in the few places with the right combination of demographics and location, in cities like Boston, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Seattle. It’s rare to find crew at a summer camp, and rarer still to find a camp, like Aloha, where rowing has a long tradition.

Beginners learn the stroke on an ergometer

A quarter-century ago, before women’s crew swept through colleges around the country and began trickling down into high schools, a former canoeing counselor and lifelong friend of Aloha, Alice Jones (Jonesie), donated a single rowing shell to the camp. The single was kept at canoeing, where it was particularly appreciated by counselor Jan Fulton, who found a way to share her delight in rowing with Aloha campers. She recommended to then-Aloha director Nancy Pennell, that the camp direct a family donation toward the purchase of two, four-person rowing shells from Harvard. Pennell set up Aloha Crew as a department in 1997, with Fulton its first head.

In recent years, as crew has worked its way into the country’s mainstream, the sport at Aloha has followed a steep growth curve of its own. Overseeing the program today is Laura Gillespie, a former collegiate rower at Dartmouth, experienced youth coach, and a current national-level masters’ rower. Three weeks into the 2011 summer session, 60 campers had already signed up for crew. Some, like Heather, followed the example of mothers who rowed in college; others had heard about it from sisters, cousins, and friends. Some, like Harper, had simply been curious.

Harper and Heather and the other campers on the dock stood on the bottom rung of the Aloha crew teaching ladder. Each needed to show a command of the three basic rowing-motion techniques on the erg and in a boat anchored at the dock before she could progress to the novice level, rowing by pairs on the lake.

Arielle looked on, offering tips and encouragement. She was a counselor in the crew department this year, after serving an apprenticeship in 2010. She’d learned to row at Aloha, had taken that interest back to her home in the Boston area and joined a junior program on the Charles River. But her days during the school year were too full to include rowing. She was grateful that she didn’t have to give up rowing entirely, but that she could return to Lake Morey and teach rowing four periods a day, six days a week, to Aloha campers.

After several minutes watching the erg workout, Arielle sent Harper over to Emma and Gillespie, who were holding a four-person Vespoli racing shell in place next to the dock. The Vespoli four was also new to Aloha. Aloha parent Loretta Leatherwood had made her local high school crew team an offer: She’d purchase them a new racing shell if they’d donate the one they were currently using, along with its high-performance oars, to Aloha. Harper gingerly lowered her body into the boat. With Emma and Gillespie coaching her, Harper practiced the stroke she’d learned on the erg, now holding an actual oar in her hand.

On Wednesday afternoon, Harper again walked down to the crew dock, and was again met by Emma, Arielle, and Gillespie. This time, she stepped into the bow seat of the Vespoli four as a novice rower. The stroke and second seats were occupied by two of the department’s advanced rowers, as was the coxswain’s seat, facing the stroke; another novice took the third seat. The four pushed out from the dock. Gillespie and Arielle followed close behind in a launch.

The rowers pulled past the sound of swimmers splashing and yelling. Singing voices — practice in the Hale for the upcoming musical — carried over the water behind them. Out on the lake, bright white sails of a regatta between Aloha and Lanakila floated on the blue. A cooling breeze tagged along below puffy white clouds like a child running along behind big white kites. Harper chewed on her lower lip, concentrating on each stroke.

Arielle called from the launch, “How does it feel?” Harper replied first with a shake of the head and a sideways smile. “It’s hard,” she said. “It’s hard to follow another person.”

Later, Harper would say she was glad she had started with the erg. “It wouldn’t have worked to row on the water first,” she said. “I’m not the most coordinated person.” With the erg experience in her mind’s eye, she found she could focus on the sequence — arms out, then body, then legs up the slide — and do it with a heavy oar in a tippy boat. Out there on the water, the coaches saw it taking hold, saw her falling into a rhythm, maybe falling under rowing’s spell.

Harper appreciated something else, too. “It isn’t necessarily a sport that everyone gets introduced to,” she said. “Here, it doesn’t matter where you’re from or if you’ve ever seen anyone row before. Everyone gets a chance to try it. We’re all starting from the same place.”

Before leaving the dock, girls are confident of the rowing stroke

Rowing is taught at Aloha in the Aloha way. In a typical rowing club or team, the focus is on refining skills and preparing for competition. At Aloha, the point of every activity, crew included, is to further a young woman’s understanding of herself. The focus is on making good use of opportunities, of consciously making choices. That means, Gillespie says, that some girls come down to the crew dock every day, and that other girls come down once or twice and don’t return. They all learn something about themselves in the process.

For the campers who chose to make crew a focus of their time at Aloha, a special opportunity awaited. The morning after Harper rowed into the middle of Lake Morey for the first time, the two experienced rowers and coxswain from her boat and several other advanced Aloha rowers traveled to the Connecticut River. There they practiced in an eight-person shell, rowing in the same boat with experienced master’s level athletes — one of them Loretta Leatherwood — and coached by a former Dartmouth coach.

Yet even with that kind of opportunity, even the opportunity to experience a featherweight Vespoli racing shell and high-performance oars, crew is unusually hard. And as hard as individual rowers must work, crew requires an equally intense group effort. It’s extremely difficult for four or eight rowers to pull absolutely in synch. When all that physics and energy come together, though, rowers experience the paradox of effortless intensity — and the boat feels like it’s flying. That magic, transcendent moment is called “swing.” All rowers strive for the moment. Once they experience it, they never want it to end, and they never forget it.

Four move as one

Back on Lake Morey, Harper and the other rowers steadied their boat as they went, slowly and deliberately, then faster. The sun shone. Perhaps there was more than rowing going on: four girls pulling together, feeling the reward of something hard done well, individually and together, a metaphor for Aloha, the rowers in full swing, the camp in full swing, gliding across the sparkling blue of a perfect summer afternoon.

Author Kristen Laine, writes and blogs about environmental education, women’s issues and children in the outdoors.  After her graduation from Harvard, Kristen went west, and in between outdoor expeditions in the Seattle area, became “Outside Magazine Online’s” first editor.  Now on the east coast, Kristen lives with her husband and two children in Orange, New Hampshire, and when she’s not writing, can often be found rowing on the Connecticut River.

At Aloha, there are many moments that help to create close, loving community for girls.

For the staff and counselors of the Aloha Camps, a new season means a new outbreak of seasonal sickness. Not the flu or even a summer cold — but homesickness, a discomfiting ache for home that can trouble mind, body, and spirit. Luckily for the sufferers, homesickness is generally not hard to cure. And reassuring for all of us, recent research highlights the successful strategies that Aloha staff and families have used for years.

Most children who attend summer camp feel some longing for home — an estimated nine out of ten, according to a 2007 study by the American Academy of Pediatrics. One in five children rate their distress as moderate to severe, and a much smaller percentage — between 6% and 9% — report intense homesickness.

Lanakila Camp director Barnes Boffey thinks that homesickness is a much smaller issue at Aloha Camps. “”It is very rare for us to send someone home because of homesickness, maybe two campers every five years, and even then the issue may be more the parent’s than the child’s.” he says. He treats homesickness, in part, as a challenge of imagination. “Our first question is ‘Do you want to continue to feel homesick?’ Most kids say ‘No.’ We ask ‘How would you like to be feeling?’ ‘Well, I’d like to have a good time.’”

“We don’t ask campers to shove aside their feelings,” he says. “They may continue to miss mom and dad. But we help them imagine what having a good time might look like. If they can’t imagine it, they can’t make it happen.”

Aloha alum and parent Patricia Manney has a double perspective on the subject. Her first camp experience, at age ten at a sleep-away camp in New York, was “horrific,” a clash of values and cultures that had young Patricia begging her parents to take her home. In advance of the next summer, Patricia and her parents looked for a camp that would be a better fit. They discovered Aloha. When she thinks back on her first year at Aloha, she doesn’t remember being homesick; she does remember being glad she was in a place that “cared about the person.”

Manney’s son Nathaniel Gruendemann was also 11 when he arrived at Lanakila for the first time. He, too, doesn’t remember more than a passing twinge of homesickness, even though home was across the country in California. His younger sister, Hannah, who started at Aloha Hive at age 7, felt the separation more keenly. She badly missed home for several days. But letters from her folks, meeting new friends, engaging in new activities,  and talking to counselors she admired helped her manage and eventually overcome her feelings of homesickness.

At Lanakila, a loving tent family becomes a child's home-away-from-home.

The experiences of the Manney and Gruendemann family are supported by current research. The sadness of being away from home affects almost everyone, adults and children alike. Younger children are more likely to suffer from homesickness, as are kids of any age who have no previous experience of being away from home. Strong support systems, both at home and at camp, help children overcome homesickness. Children gain confidence by practicing coping strategies. And skills they develop in their time away from home — independence, self-reliance, social skills, and openness to new experiences — prepare them well for later life.

It’s those life skills and the positive memories that allow Manney to look past any feeling of homesickness her children might feel: “I love my kids so much that I want them to have this extended experience away from me.” She also sees that her children appreciate what they have in their family life more after having been away at camp. “If you want your kids to value home,” she says, “let them be away from home. Your sense of loss, and theirs, is minuscule compared to what they’ve gained.”

Tips for preventing and treating homesickness:

• Let your children know that homesickness is normal. Tell them, before they leave home, that almost everyone misses something about home when they’re away, and that they can do many things to feel better if they become homesick.
• Include your child in the decision to spend time away from home. Taking part even in small decisions increases a child’s feelings of control. Feeling forced to leave home, the Pediatrics article notes, often increases the severity of homesickness.
• Practice being away from home. Schedule two or three days at a friend’s or relative’s house. Avoid talking by phone. Afterward, talk together about how the time apart felt, what worked, and what you might try the next time to make it easier.
• Learn about the new environment. It’s easy to browse the Aloha website and to connect with fellow campers ahead of time.
• Prepare together. Pack together. Mark the time that will be spent at camp on a family calendar.
• Keep in touch at a distance. Research suggests that phone calls and text messaging exacerbates homesickness during stays away from home lasting one month or less. Letter writing encourages self-reflection. Practice writing letters ahead of time to give children confidence that they’ll be able to communicate and maintain contact with you. Include pre-stamped and pre-addressed envelopes and paper with camp supplies.
• Emphasize the adventure, not the separation. In her letters to Nathaniel and Hannah, Patricia Manney writes about what’s going on at home, and encourages them to share their stories with her. “It reinforces how much you value their experience,” she says. As the end of their time at camp approaches, she tells them she’s looking forward to seeing where they lived, learning more about the activities they pursued, and meeting the friends they’ve made and the counselors who have worked with them. “It’s a way of saying, ‘I’m excited about your accomplishments,’” Manney explains, and it also helps parents and children make the transition to being together again.
• It can be tempting to give a child who is concerned about going away to camp an “out” — to promise an early pick-up if the child is missing home too much. Lanakila director Boffey has seen such promises backfire. “If kids are wondering if they should come home or not, they don’t get involved and committed the way they need to.”
• Express confidence in your child’s resilience, even if a child is homesick. Boffey will say to a parent whose son is homesick at Lanakila, “The thought we all want him to have is, ‘This is really hard right now but I’m here for seven weeks and I better figure a way to work it out.’ That thought will encourage him to ask for help and to face the fear, loneliness, or difficulty. Facing the fear and learning he can do it is, I think, one of the very reasons you are sending him to camp.”

At Aloha Hive, Director Kathy Plunkett gives out lots of hugs.

Manney thinks it’s easier for kids to become integrated into a community during a full session. The first one or two weeks, she says, they’re figuring everything out, getting into the swing of things. They’re only starting to get it by the third week, right before the half-sessions end. Returning campers integrate much more quickly. When Nathaniel saw his parents halfway through summer at Parents Weekend, he felt sad. Not because he was homesick — but because he realized the summer was half over, and he had so much more he wanted to do before it ended.

Her advice to parents: “Trust the process. Aloha has been doing this for 106 years; they’ve got it down.”

“Aloha has one of the greatest senses of community and mission of any organization I’ve ever been involved with,” she says. “It maintains the best of what tradition has to offer, but in a way that lets kids define the experience as they see fit. Aloha seems to say, ‘All we want is for you to be yourself. Yourself is enough. Yourself is wonderful.’ The process is so beautiful that if parents trust in it, their children will bring that beauty home.”

Author Kristen Laine, writes and blogs about environmental education, women’s issues and children in the outdoors.  After her graduation from Harvard, Kristen went west, and in between outdoor expeditions in the Seattle area, became “Outside Magazine Online’s” first editor.  Now on the east coast, Kristen lives with her husband and two children in Orange, New Hampshire, and when she’s not writing, can often be found rowing on the Connecticut River.

Children gain immense self-esteem conquering challenges outdoors

Richard Louv is back, and this time, he’s telling us that not only should children be spending more time in the woods, but that his advice goes for plugged-in adults too.  That means you, reading this post on your laptop, and for me as well, writing inside on a beautiful spring day in Vermont. The bestselling author of 2005′s Last Child in the Woods has written The Nature Principle: Human Restoration and the End of Nature-Deficit Disorder, which will be in bookstores on May 10th.  Like his previous book, The Nature Principle is likely to make a big splash in the media, and in our collective consciousness, as Louv argues that the success of future generations will belong not to people who focus solely on technology and the digital world, nor to those who eschew the progress made by technological advances and improvements, but to those who Louv would claim, have a “hybrid mind,” able to enjoy and harness the powers of both worlds.

When Louv coined the term Nature-Deficit Disorder, he started a movement, praised by parents, educators, mental and physical health professionals, to get children back outdoors.  The advent of screen time, parental fear for children’s safety outdoors, and reduced access to outdoor spaces has meant a decline in amount of time that children are spending in natural settings.  Louv and others argue that there is a case to be made for the decline in children’s time spent outdoors being one factor in the increased diagnoses of attention disorders, depression and obesity in grade school children. Louv’s book offers suggestions for ways to encourage healthy outdoor activity, not only in rural settings, but for children growing up in urban and suburban areas as well.

Kids' physical play is a lot more fun outside!

In 2011 Louv writes about more than simply getting your kids off the couch and into the backyard, but about how the demands of our 24/7  world, and electronically structured lives need to be offset with the healing and soothing balm of time spent outdoors.  In the June issue of Outside magazine, in an article titled Get Your Mind Dirty, Louv references the recent field of study called “Interruption Science,” concerned with the detrimental effects of the constant assault of electronic interruptions on our mental well-being.  Even when adults or children put away the smart phone or MP3 player, we can’t avoid the video playing in the back of the New York City taxi, the PA promotions in the supermarket aisle or the blare of CNN overhead while waiting for a departing flight in any airport.  Our senses are under assault all the time, and although the long-term effects are unknown, it goes without saying that taking a breather, from a walk in a local park, to a wilderness adventure far from home, take the edge off of all those interruptions.

The Aloha Foundation clearly makes it easy to offer your child a holiday from our chaotic 24/7 world.  Whether as a day camper at Horizons, or a residential camper at Aloha, Hive or Lanakila, children have been “unplugging” during summers in Fairlee, VT for over one hundred years.  Long before directors had to cope with policies about cell phones or Game Boys, parents knew that a summer spent living at camp provided benefits that were intangible, related to the confidence built during a summer of challenges, skill-building and simple day-dreaming.

Generations reconnect without the distractions of electronics.

Children aren’t the only ones who can find a natural respite in Fairlee though.  After years of hearing parents say, “I wish I could go to camp too,” on Opening Day of camp, The Aloha Foundation opened Ohana Family Camp, where campers of all ages could spend a week reconnecting with their families in a simple, natural setting.  Although not forbidden, the clutter of phones, laptops, electronic games and gadgets are discouraged in the common spaces, promoting time for authentic communication.  Hulbert Outdoor Center also offers adults ways to get outside, whether with their families at a summer or winter family camp, or, on a gentle canoe paddle to enjoy fall foliage.

Sometimes we all need to be given advice that is actually common sense.  Richard Louv’s newest book will very likely end up on the New York Times bestseller list in the months to come, and for good reason.  There will be fascinating research and conclusions that will be fodder for many a conversation between educators and parents, as well as between early adopter techies and luddites alike! But like modern science telling us that your grandmother’s chicken soup really does help you get better when you’re sick,  The Aloha Camps seem to have instinctively known for more than a century, that time spent playing and working together in a simple, natural setting, is good for everyone.

Laura Gillespie is the Communications & Alumni Relations Manager at The Aloha Foundation, as well as an alumna of  Aloha  Hive and Aloha Camp, and has been a Horizons and Lanakila parent.

Summer allows plenty of unstructured playtime for children.

In 2009, Vicky Abeles’ 13-year-old middle school daughter, Jamey, began to complain of stomach aches after school. A Bay-area lawyer and mother with three children, Abeles began to question whether the pace set by her children’s school schedules, homework, sports and extracurricular activities was a negative factor in Jamey’s health.  Although not a filmmaker, Abeles ambitiously set off with a camera to explore the correlation between the health and happiness of today’s middle and high school students, and the competitive, success-driven curricula of America’s public schools. The result, Race to Nowhere, is a striking examination of America’s current public schools model, a standards-based curriculum promoting future successful members of the American workforce. Specifically, the film critiques the effect on teaching of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which mandates levels of achievement in order for states to be eligible for federal funding. In other words, there is a world of exciting knowledge out there, but teachers are expected to “teach to the test.”

Race To Nowhere

In cooperation with the Upper Valley Educators Institute and the Dartmouth Teacher Education Program, The Aloha Foundation is sponsoring an exclusive Upper Valley screening of the documentary film, on Thursday, April 28, 2011, at Hanover High School. Members of the Upper Valley community are invited to attend the screening, and then remain afterward for what is certain to be a lively discussion of the film’s themes and questions.

About the film, Aloha Foundation Executive Director Jim Zien asks, “Why would an organization that operates summer camps and year-round programs of outdoor education sponsor a screening of a feature-length documentary film about school in America? Race to Nowhere portrays the intense achievement pressures students, parents and teachers experience in today’s demanding educational culture — and the tolls those pressures exact on children’s mental and physical health, family life, and community well-being. A clear message comes through in the compelling stories the film tells of over-home-worked, over-scheduled youngsters in high school, middle school and even elementary school: no time exists in their test-driven, performance-defined lives for creative play, personal interest-focused learning, self-discovery or peer social engagement outside the classroom – and that’s a big, snowballing, societal problem.”

Exploration allows kids to discover natural treasures.

The first week of April brought education news of  local and national significance.  On April 1st, the front page of the Burlington (VT) Free Press reported that 72 Percent of Vt. Schools Miss Federal Performance Targets mandated by No Child Left behind. In fact, “No school in the state improved enough this year to get out of the standardized testing doghouse.”  School size, English language speakers and relative affluence of a community play into the complex statistics, but critics and fans agree that achieving 100% compliance in Vermont is unlikely. Darren Allen, communications director at Vermont-National Education Association is a critic of No Child Left Behind, telling the Free Press, “It creates absolutely incorrect impressions about what is going on schools.”

On a national level, April brings admission news of the best and worst kind to college-bound seniors. On April 1st, The New York Times hosted a discussion by a panel of educators titled, “Why You Were Rejected,” in which educators, researchers and administrators spoke to the declining acceptance rate at many of the country’s most selective colleges and universities. The chicken or the egg question comes up as parents, educators and applicants ask whether more and/or better students are creating the low (mostly 10% and below) percentage of admitted students, or, whether it is simply easier, in our digital world, for students to simply apply to more places, bumping up the overall number of received applications. Either way, the numbers work to a college’s advantage, creating an aura of desirability at the most selective institutions.  Mark Bauerlein, a professor of English at Emory University and a fellow at the James Madison Program at Princeton University wrote, “Parents and students put all the power and discretion in the hands of admissions offices at the elite schools. They hope and pray, ‘Please favor us, not them.’ They should realize that colleges do the same. Colleges want to maximize the applicants that they won’t admit. It’s perverse, but true.”

Make time for silly fun with your family.

Race to Nowhere challenges some of the conventional wisdom surrounding the current educational situation in America.  Throughout the film, critics wrangle over the flaws in the well-meaning No Child Left Behind Act, parents lament the environment in which children, even middle-school aged, acknowledge that going to a “good school” is the ticket to a “good job” and subsequent “success.” The obvious problem is that everyone is racing to one, narrow version of success and happiness.  In the New York Times piece, Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, president emeritus and university professor at George Washington University, suggests that, “We have created a monster and a myth: earn a place at an Ivy League institution and the balance of your life will be a bowl of cherries, with a great job, wonderful spouse, perhaps even a Nobel Prize will follow shortly after graduation.”

Race to Nowhere suggests that families reconsider their definition of success, and question whether spending childhood years in school dedicated only to academic perfection, multiple dynamic extracurriculars, elite college acceptance and then high-paying career choices as possibly a waste of a very special time in a child’s life.  Jim Zien reflects on the significance of a camping organization sponsoring an educational documentary in its community, saying, “Camp environments and outdoor experiences provide children with essential opportunities not only to regroup from school in natural, nurturing settings, but also to gain critical perspectives on what’s truly important in life – pursuing personal passions; connecting with their inner selves; forming and maintaining strong friendships over distance and time.” Zien continues, “As educational professionals and youth mentors in an outdoor context and responsible caretakers in loco parentis for school-age campers, we are committed to sharing important information and insights about children with parents and teachers. Presenting Race to Nowhere in our community is a manifestation of that commitment.”

We hope that members of our community will join us, Thursday April 28th at 6:30 p.m. at Hanover High School, to view the film, stay for a discussion period afterward, and consider the questions about the current state of public education in our country.  If you’re not in our area, ask your local school if they’ll sponsor a screening in your area.  The issues covered in this film are of interest to everyone.  After all, it takes a village to raise a child.

Laura Gillespie is the Communications & Alumni Relations Manager at The Aloha Foundation, as well as an alumna of  Aloha  Hive and Aloha Camp, and has been a Horizons and Lanakila parent.

Although it is possible to connect virtually, close, authentic relationships evolve slowly, and in person.

“Facebook ruined our trip!” It was Day 18 of a 45-day wilderness journey through Alaska’s Brooks Range, and it had been raining steadily for days. The group of young women, irritable, soaked to the skin, and their two instructors had stopped for one of the myriad decisions on such a trip — what route to follow, when to stop, where to set up camp, what to cook, who leads, who follows — when 17-year-old Mallory Brooks burst out with her cry of complaint.

Like the other girls standing in the rain, Mallory considered the trip a rite of passage, the culmination of many years of preparation. That preparation had begun at the camp they’d all attended in Wisconsin, where Mallory had spent seven summers. Many campers chose to go on expedition trips before they returned to the camp on staff. Mallory had been looking forward to the Alaska trip ever since she’d returned from a 28-day backpacking trip through the Wind Rivers the year before.

She had hardly been alone in her excitement. The group of teenagers had formed a small online community several months before they left, getting to know each other, checking gear lists together, and keeping a countdown until the day the trip started. Now they stood sniping at each other in the boggy tundra that stretched out endlessly in every direction, equally bogged down in their decision making. Mallory continued: “We thought we were best friends,” she said, “but we don’t even know each other!”

Problem-solving and positive group dynamics are essential skills in wilderness expeditions.

Laura Beebe, one of the two instructors, knew that many teenage girls avoid conflict. At that age, she understood, differences of opinion often end friendships: Girls are more likely to go their separate ways, or to express conflict in passive-aggressive ways, instead of addressing issues directly with one another. But any group traveling and working together so closely is bound to have some conflict, especially when the conditions become uncomfortable.

Laura could tell that the group was close to an internal boiling point. She wasn’t surprised that someone had decided to talk, or even that it was Mallory — experienced and forthright — who had brought it up. Every trip had its challenges, and addressing them was part of the learning process. She was surprised, however, to hear a social networking site mentioned several hundred miles from the nearest Internet connection.

It was the first time Laura had seen the effects of “life lived online” on a wilderness trip. At the time, she was still in her twenties — not that much older than the teenagers she was leading — but she’d come of age using email and cell phones; the young women on that trip were growing up in an age of online social networks. Later on, Mallory, taking courses in college, would come to believe that the group had bypassed three critical stages of group development identified by psychologist Bruce Tuckman, “forming,” “storming,” and “norming,” and tried to go straight to “performing.” Thanks to Facebook, she and the others thought they had formed a functioning group even before gathering in person.

Teamwork in a group makes a trip safe AND fun.

Out on the tundra, Laura saw that Mallory and the other teenagers needed to learn to be friends as they actually were, not as constructs they’d created online. They needed to develop trust in the resilience of their relationships and find ways to handle their differences. The group set up camp not far from where they’d stopped, and began to talk, really talk. Recalling the trip, Laura says, “They had started out being overly positive about everything and everyone on the trip. After they hit that wall, they could see ways they weren’t working together. Even small things, like saying ‘I don’t care’ or ‘Whatever’ or ‘Let’s just get there,’ are ways of not being responsible for the group and not supporting whoever is leading.”

“I don’t want this to be who we are,” one girl said, through tears.

“I do this to my mom all the time, and I don’t know why,” said another, hearing that she rolled her eyes while others were talking.

Reflecting on the comment that started the process, Mallory’s indictment of Facebook, Laura says, “There’s a progression of friendship. We learn to read body language and tone of voice; we learn how to respond to it. You can’t just say, ‘I won’t read that message.’ You aren’t hidden behind some screen. You have to get into the tent at the end of the day. You have to get up and work together the next day.”

Wilderness trips help peel away frivolous concerns, leaving behind genuine relationships and experiences.

The two instructors helped the young women start again. The group crossed an enormous scree field the following morning. Laura heard a new honesty and new respectfulness among the girls. She saw them stepping forward more readily and sharing their ideas and opinions more directly.

Facebook did not ruin that trip, of course. The group re-formed on more solid emotional ground and began to work smoothly. The changes Laura saw on the scree slope continued through the next month. The young women began to lead themselves — taking turns, sometimes along and sometimes in pairs, making key decisions — as their instructors stepped back into safety and advisory roles.

Mallory, who had long found comfort in nature, felt at home in the rugged landscape and increasingly at home in the group. The lessons continued, though. Near the end of the trip, serving as co-leader, she found herself at odds with the other leader about their route. She was confident that she knew where they were. The other girl wasn’t convinced; she thought they were at another point on their maps. The power struggle lasted all day, even as the group continued hiking, each girl stubbornly holding onto her belief that she was right and the other was wrong.

“I was ready to give up,” says Mallory, now a college senior majoring in psychology. But she didn’t. Instead she called on some of the lessons she’d learned on the trip: Use all the resources around you. Ask for help. Really look at where you are.

“Where we really were ended up being trivial,” she says now. “That was another lesson: that it didn’t matter that much.” She remembers thinking that even though it had been a rough day, she was glad she’d had the chance to learn that lesson. She knew she’d put it to use, along with her new self-confidence and self-knowledge, almost immediately: She’d be starting college in less than a month.

Mallory counts her time in the Brooks Range as one of the most important, and transformative, experiences of her life. On the one hand, it was one of the hardest things she’s ever done. Spending weeks in the wilderness — with the unpredictable vagaries of wind and weather, with long, physically demanding days, with inescapable group dynamics — is by nature a stressful situation. And yet, paradoxically, it was the support of the small group, a group that eventually learned to trust one another and work together, that ultimately made it possible for each of them to face the challenges of the larger world.

In 2010, Laura Beebe was named the director of the Young Women’s Leadership Program at The Aloha Foundation. Her experience leading a group of young women in Alaska resonated in Vermont, where girls have been learning resilience and leadership in the outdoors for more than a century. That resonance deepens with the creation of Aloha’s first leadership expedition in July 2011. The expedition takes place over three weeks in northern Quebec, in an open landscape similar to the Brooks Range. “There’s no trail,” Laura says. “No single right way to move forward.”

Author Kristen Laine, writes and blogs about environmental education, women’s issues and children in the outdoors.  After her graduation from Harvard, Kristen went west, and in between outdoor expeditions in the Seattle area, became “Outside Magazine Online’s” first editor.  Now on the east coast, Kristen lives with her husband and two children in Orange, New Hampshire, and when she’s not writing, can often be found rowing on the Connecticut River.