Shelters of all shapes and sizes are popping up all over camp!
While there are many fine shelters in the forest now, I would have to hand the grand prize for shelter construction to Adventure Academy. They built an incredible Wiki-up similar to a teepee with leaves, pine needles and branches used for the construction. Later in the week, the camp sewed leather pouches and gathered precious items from the forest to fill these pouches around their necks.
Growing Wild and Forest Village also built fairy houses, which also doubled as Worm Hotels and Slug AirBnB’s. The two camps constructed these on Tuesday morning and then they met the following day and toured each-other’s mini structures. Then the two camps played fire and ice(similar to red light green light) at Turkey Knoll. Forest Village then built an even larger leaf shelter together and took a group picture inside.
The Pathfinders decided to do something a little different in the concept of shelter, constructing a fence at Red Oak camp. The fence was made of willow branches and mud, which led to the campers to enjoy the nearby creek as a harvesting ground for mud. This mud became perfect makeup for campers to paint each other’s faces while cooling off at the creek.
A Camper from Growing Wild showcases their worm and slug playground. Photo: Ben Bookout
Adventure Academy takes a moment for a group picture at Owl Camp in front of their Wiki-up. Photo: Ben Bookout
Speaking of mud, it suddenly became a precious commodity as the Yellow Warblers found out on Friday. They returned to Cedar camp to find that someone, or something, had stolen their clay. After some searching, campers found the dastardly zombie chipmunks had taken their clay and had it guarded with stick targets. The campers had to knock down the targets to get their clay back and to their surprise, the chipmunks had left ingredients for pizzas! So, the whole camp returned to Hearth Camp that afternoon to use the oven to make pizzas!
Camps like Future Primitive chose to concentrate their creative energy on carving and weaving. They created some beautiful walking sticks as well as lanyard hair-ties. The camp also participated in the three camp game of Old Goat, joining Forest Sports and Gender Creative for a collective game.
As the temperature rose last week many camps made their way down to Fall Creek to cool off. On Thursday, I wandered down to find Gender Creative joining the Yellow Warblers and the Purple Finches as they performed a Viking burial of several deceased crawdads they found in the creek. Each was given a name, which was called out as they were placed on the small Viking boat which in Viking tradition, was set ablaze and placed in the middle of the stream. Campers saluted the fallen crawdads as the small Viking craft burned and sank extinguishing all the flames. All in all it was a very constructive week in camp.
Forest Village shows off their new shelter at Turkey Knoll. Photo: Ben Bookout
A camper throughly enjoying pizza made in the pizza oven at Hearth Camp. Photo: Ben Bookout
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