2 Chapter 2: A Conversation with Kent Busman
Conversation with Kent Busman
Director of Fowler Camp and Retreat Center, Speculator, NY
October 28, 2003
Kent Busman is the director of Camp Fowler; ordained in 19##, Kent has been directing camp Fowler since 1986. Camp Fowler includes several regular residential camp programs and makes the most of their Adirondack location to run wilderness Out Camps as well. Fowler also hosts a May Term wilderness course in collaboration with Hope College co-led by Hope professor Steve Bouma-Prediger. I asked Kent to talk mostly about the wilderness Out Camps.
I’ve been the director of Fowler Camp and Retreat Center for the last 17 years. I work for our regional office, for Upstate— the Reform Church in Upstate New York— and it’s called a synod. That’s the body that owns the camp. So, my job working for the synod is to direct the camp, and I’m also the synod minister for youth, so I help churches with their youth ministries, training the youth leaders, and some events. And, we have three retreat facilities that are open year round. So the camp stuff fills the summer, and I live at Fowler during camp.
How did you get into camping?
I grew up camping with my three older brothers, carrying our gear to the woodlot across the cornfields. We’d walk a mile through the tall corn to get to the woodlot to camp out. That expanded to doing some actual backpacking overnight with gear. This would have been in the early 70s, when that whole movement was springing up— my brothers and I were kind of in on that, I guess, in our own way.
I took a childhood enjoyment and just kept that going into my adulthood— primarily backpacking at that point, but also some canoeing. When I was in college, I had the opportunity to work a program (with Steve Bouma-Prediger) for the Michigan Reform Church’s regional body. That was a program they were starting up that would take youth groups on 10-day trips. We’d load them in a van, and we’d go to the Boundary Waters, or we’d go to the Smoky Mountains, or we’d go to Colorado or Pictured Rocks, through these trips. That was called Wilderness Adventures. And, that was the first time I saw faith and the environment put together.
I had this great love for being outside, great love for being in the woods, and out in creation. At that point, I’d already had a sense of call to ministry, and I’d grown up in faith communities where the environment was never talked about, but everybody was a farmer, so everybody was out in it all the time. The connection was never made inside that church building though, and so I had no model. I didn’t know what to link. I didn’t have that connection with either of them— I had these two great loves, and here suddenly was a chance to put those two together: my Christianity could merge with my love for creation— probably the other way around would be the way to say it— my love for creation could merge with my Christianity. This was a program that allowed that to happen. And that for me was a formative program. I worked that for three or four years in the summers.
We did canoeing in the Boundary waters and backpacking in the Smoky Mountains and Colorado. That program, as I look back on it, was really influenced by the earlier, sort of ‘adolescent Outward Bound’ model. Outward Bound had been around for a while, and that whole stress camping thing that they really pushed— we got in on sort of the end of that. So even by that point, they were starting to back off a little bit from “let’s just take these people and break them, or get them to the point of breaking them, and then they’ll grow from that…” So, we were influenced, I was influenced by those theories of stress camping, of really being out and going bare bones, and pushing people to their limits.
But already that had begun to fade, and we were beginning to sense that, so for us it was less of a “let’s just see if we can push these kids to their outermost limit” thing— and we were allowing it to become a little more reflective, a little more appreciative. I don’t know if appreciative in nature is the right way to term it— maybe cooperative because in a faith context, it’s so much about interdependence and the community, as opposed to independence. And it’s about the group. And interdependence is one motif that’s grown, and started there, and is a huge component of our current programs, both on the trail and at camp.
So that’s how that started. Four summers. A couple in college, and a couple after college. I worked with a couple others the first couple of years, and then when they moved I ran it for a couple more years through the denominational office there in Michigan, and then we moved, and then it pretty much stopped.
We moved so that my wife and I could go out to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. And we didn’t make it— we started, and we got about a month in and had to bail. And that, in retrospect, is a very good thing. At the time it was just incredibly crushing— we’d quit our jobs, we’d packed up, said goodbye, we were really going to be gone for six months and had nothing— we came back to nothing. So, we ended up hooking up with a friend who was going to Colorado to open up a camp that had been winterized for the season, in Creede, Colorado— a place called Wilderness Ranch, run by Young Life. The director at that time was a guy named David Cole, who’s still a good friend. And we ended up guiding trips up there that summer— stayed up there and guided trips with them, so we saw their program. Because we knew backpacking, we knew how to lead trips, we knew how to rock climb— we knew everything they were doing, we knew that stuff and had done it. And that was a real good experience.
We came back, ended up moving to Colorado, painting houses for a couple years to make a living, and then getting this job out here at Camp Fowler. So that’s the road, in a nutshell, of how we got into this.
A mentor, Steve Bouma-Prediger, definitely was a key factor helping me along the way because he’s an academic; he was even then. He had read and thought this stuff through farther. And so, as a mainline Christian— I mean, he’s not a whacko on the left or right, he’s just sort of, very faith filled— he could look at scripture and begin to interpret it through those eyes, through the light of what I think is really sane [laughing], as opposed to the more platonic view we take of it, of separating body and soul— really looking at scripture in I think a better way, in a more true way. That was— lights and bells were going off in my head all the time then, and still have been— that was the key formative time for that. It helped put together what I’d been feeling, and now I had a way of formulating that into lifestyle and ministry. That’s the key.
What was your first move at Camp Fowler as director?
The first move has been the longest move because we’re still there. The first move was really to start to change from just a good place, where kids could have fun, or do different things, with sorta gospel sprinkles over it? I think the main thrust of my whole time here— in a slow, slow process, because it made sense to just begin to build it— has been, “What if we really did this with some integrity, and some consistency, and with some intentionality?”
So our Out Camps, for instance— we call them Out Camps, the tripping program— they were led solely by volunteers when I came. Which is a lot of how we do our program— all our cabin counselors are volunteers. The problem is, you’ve got this wide spectrum of what people know and don’t know and what people do and don’t do on the trail. And, for all the best of intentions, people who were Boy Scouts in the 50s and 60s are not good trip leaders because so much of that early training has stayed, and they haven’t made some of those connections between caring for creation and our faith. And so, when I got there our program was just all over the board, as far as what we were trying to do on the trail and what the intent of our Out Camps program was.
I’m sure it grew out of the fad, of doing it. We started in the 70s— that’s when everybody started, really— and it was a way of sort of keeping up with the Joneses, I think. As opposed to saying, “Look, we’re in the Adirondacks, and this would really be an appropriate thing to do as a camp in the Adirondacks and as a Christian camp in the Adirondacks.” Those thoughts weren’t there. I inherited a camp that had a tripping program that had grown out of that time, but I don’t think there was any core to doing it per se. It was— and I certainly don’t want to belittle those who were before me because they did some great things— but there wasn’t a sense of “we’re doing this because this is who we are” to the program.
So, one of the goals has been to transform that mindset. And we’ve done that by being very intentional about certain community values— community, simplicity, and caring for creation— but also extending that community to the Adirondacks themselves, that we are caretakers. We really push low impact camping, which drove some people crazy. “What do you mean we can’t have a fire tonight? What do you mean we gotta do this and this, as opposed to whatever?” Those are hard things because it’s not as much fun, you know? But it’s necessary—it’s necessary as Christians to teach how to be good stewards, how to care for things. And it really was just a long, slow process of changing expectations and changing mindsets, and we’re mostly there now. It’s just expected and anticipated— this is how we will act on the trail, this is what we will do.
So that’s been the biggest thing: trying to do this with real integrity. Because they’re phenomenal experiences for kids— is it liminal? Is that the word, liminal experiences? And we always lead Out Trips with summer staff now, who have some training. We have a guidebook now on how we do things, so that we can have some consistency with how we teach . We do all the food now. The volunteers used to go out shopping to get food, and when I saw the bag of Pringles go through, that’s when the straw broke on that camel’s back! [laughs]. So that they’re eating the right stuff and stuff that can pack well, that’s nutritious, that tastes good, that doesn’t attract bears, that does all the right stuff, that teaches.
We have some volunteers who might assist on trips— because, some of these folks come with great skills— and some real wealth of knowledge that you don’t get in a 19-year-old leading the trip. And I like some of these people helping lead trips because they make them better. But there’s now an agreed to direction— this is the direction that we go with our program, this is our values. I was thinking about this— I started out of just a pure love for being out. And I really don’t care much for the intricacies of gear talk— I’m not a gear junkie; Prediger is, so funny, because he knows what the cubic inch size of this pack is, and what this material does, and the difference between Kevlar and roto-molded plastic, and all this stuff— and I don’t [laughs]. And I realize that our programs really do take on a personality. And so, we’re much more based around trying to help these kids really enjoy being out— the theory being that if you fell in love with creation, chances are you will better be able to preserve it and care for it, for something you love. So that really is a huge goal of the program.
We also stay in the Adirondacks, and 95% of the time we go out of the High Peaks. We’re not an adventure program, we’re not a mountain top program— that’s not what we’re going for with these kids. Which again is a harder sell, and it’s— you know, to slog through the Siamese Ponds Wilderness; to me it’s probably the most beautiful part of the Adirondacks— but it’s a real different kind of beauty. It’s just not sexy woods at all, man— it’s not Yosemite, Adirondacks-style. But those are conscious choices. We’re trying to get where there are less people— that’s a higher value than spectacular view, for us. And we’ve gotta work on that because that’s harder work than to make the trip good. And it’s harder to figure out the flow of a trip at Weimeneuch (in Colorado). It was very well done, but it was also very by the book, very rote: you do three days of this, you do a day of rock climbing, you do your peak day the day before you come out. It’s just mapped out in that sense— and we don’t have the luxury of that because of our choices to stay where we are and our choices to not go to certain areas. So that’s, you know, I think it’s great that Young Life does that, and can do it, we just don’t have that at our disposal, so we have to think differently, and that makes it harder.
In the past, a lot of our trips were going to the High Peaks, but we’ve consciously transitioned out of that, and again, consciously transitioned. Some pretty conscious choices about where we are, and certain routes that we still do, I don’t like to do— I just haven’t found any good alternatives yet to that.
We run about 16 trips each summer, with our youngest being 5th and 6th graders, and they stay in our wilderness area, at the camp, the lean-to area— that was a big transition, to make it a real wilderness area. And, they stay there all week with one overnight. And then about half our trips are middle school, and about half are high school trips. The format is different for the 5th and 6th graders, who stay mostly there in the lean-tos, but the middle schoolers and high schoolers stay pretty well on the move most every day.
A classic route would be, say, a junior high backpacking trip with put-in at Upper Benson on the lower part of the Northville-Lake Placid Trail, a 120-mile long trail that basically sticks to the lowlands, and not up any ridgelines because we don’t have any long ridge lines in the Adirondacks— they’re not built that way. And they will hike that lower third of the trail in a week, and there’s not a lot to see unless they have good guides helping them to see: the beauty in this stream, or this tree, or this starry night. That type of thing is really what I challenge the staff to do. I’m never quite sure what they do or don’t do on the trail, but by not being based on a pre-existing pattern, a pre-existing ‘this-is-what-will-happen-this-day-emotionally’ to these kids, I think that facilitates the relationships in the group, and particularly with the guides who are there. You’re not playing to a script, and that’s good.
And a trip, for instance, can take any number of forms— if you have a slow group, it ends at one place, and if you have a group that’s cookin’, that wants to push themselves, they actually literally can hike around, get off the Northville-Lake Placid trail at a certain point, put on about nine extra miles, and end up on a lake adjacent to ours. They will have contacted us because they cross a road at one point, and we will have canoes over at the end of our lake on their last day, and they will hike over, find those canoes, and paddle home. And there’s something real – there’s a great memory – there’s something primal about making it home. You know, you could tromp up way the heck somewhere, and we made it home, ourselves. I love that trip, when that happens, because you see them paddling across the lake, and they did it themselves. So that’s a pretty standard trip. I mean, it sounds pretty boring to me the way I’ve described it [laughing].
What is the basic camp schedule that wilderness trippers experience?
On the whole, they come in on Sunday, and they meet the guides right after registration, but because they’re not coming as a group, we can’t get started right away— so that’s always a drag, because, if Joey’s really late, you’re sort of stuck there. They come in, they do some of their initial gear organizing: getting gear, learning about the gear, and sorting out what to bring, what not to bring— they always bring so much stuff, no matter what you tell them (gear lists don’t eliminate over-packing). They then do a fair amount of group building the first day, primarily using some low ropes techniques, Project Adventure stuff. And then they’ll go out, and either as individual groups or as two groups together, they’ll go up to the low ropes area, and then they’ll have dinner. They’ll cook out there— we used to have them eat with us, with the rest of the in-camp, and that just doesn’t work. It delays the formation of community, and it puts them into two different worlds, and it’s too hard for most kids to be able to do well in that. You sort of need to make the cut clean— and also so they’re not so conscious of what they’re not going to have: “You get to sleep in a cabin?”… So just sort of make it clean.
And then go out— they’ll do devotions that night, they’ll do some goal setting that night for the trip, like, “What are you looking forward to?” It’s both individual goals and group goals, but probably more their own at that point because most kids just don’t have group experience— they don’t know what a group experience is, other than a sports team, and that’s a very different type of metaphor. They’ll get up the next morning, have breakfast, come back into the camp, and we will drive them to their trailhead. If it’s a canoeing trip, they’ve loaded their canoes up the night before and got them set to go, and they’ve done some basic canoe or kayak instruction the day before or the night before.
We’ll drop them at their trailhead— one of my favorite routes is a senior high backpacking trip where they have to canoe to the trailhead, we say goodbye, and we paddle the canoes away. There’s a great commitment move there— there’s a great mental “holy crap, there’s no way back but through those woods at this point.” There’s no turning around. Those are the types of trails and experiences that I want to keep finding, and they’re all throughout the Adirondacks. It’s a matter of just finding them and knowing them and being able to get staff up to speed with them. But I’m sure there are more, so we’ve got a lot of work to do yet. Because that type of experience immediately puts the group dynamics into play and gets them hooked into “how are we going to do this?” And that’s just a plain old Outward Bound technique: making them walk through the swamp before you get your stuff with Outward Bound or getting to camp and hiking in the dark for three miles, not knowing where you are. That’s pretty classic old Outward Bound, but the germ of that is still really good. We’re in a new world, a new way of being together, and that’s important— because the trips aren’t long enough— you’ve gotta work fast. The trips are actually only five days, so you’ve gotta move…
We have food packed for them because they’re not there that long to work that into the schedule… When we do the May Term for Hope College (we do a nine-day trip with them), even then food is done for them, but they organize it. We sort of dump out the bags of food and say, this is your food for the nine days. Figure out what’s here, organize it— we’re going to resupply on the fifth day, so divide it up, figure out who’s carrying what— and that’s good, because it helps them know what’s there, and they figure some things out. They’re making decisions that are going to affect the group and themselves, and if they put all the butter in the second trip, you know, it’s gonna be not good if they wanted pancakes on the first trip. And some of it you let them make decisions, and some of it you try to get them to think through some things, and hopefully they think it through, but if they don’t, then nobody’s going to die, and it’s not going to be like— I’m not at the point that I want students to make big mistakes that they really weren’t prepared to make a decision for anyway. I don’t expect anybody, any of our students, to really know food. My goal isn’t to have them screw up so I can say, well, now you’ll pay better attention, won’t you, Brandon? I would rather have them learn that you can make really good tuna nunu on the trail, and that’s a great thing, and “remember how good that tasted when we were so hungry?” I want them to catch the wonder and joy of things, more than the personal toughness act— I’m not into making them tough, you know, “Aren’t you glad you survived that frustrating problem solving activity of packing this food?” Our program is not based on that technique.
So they divvy up the food, pack it, and bolt. So this is the stuff for this meal, and here’s the oatmeal, here’s powdered milk over here, hot chocolate over there, they get to figure out how to put it together, maybe, which is great, because they may put it together in a different way than I would put it together, and I’ve seen some pretty creative stuff come out of kids who didn’t know any better, who weren’t told, “This is what has to be,” and they go, “Well let’s try this!” Well, you get some great stuff. I want them to find that wonder and that joy in those simple things— in the simple thing of a good meal, or, you know, to bake something on the trail— it’s like, “Wow…” I mean, suddenly bread is transformed into, dare we say, something holy, something more wonderful than the molecules that make it up. Those are things that can be life transforming for them. As much so or more so than being able to say they made it to the top of the mountain.
I like peak ascents as much as anybody— no I don’t; I don’t like them as much as some people [laughing]— but I want them to catch that sense of wonder. Our whole camp program now has identified and finally been able to verbalize, as a Christian camp, in the guise of hospitality, there are the three things we do well: community, simplicity, and caring for creation. Those three values arose out of our tripping program. Out of a tripping mentality, those three things. Community, you know about. Simplicity, that enjoying the basic stuff— you don’t have to make it to the top of the mountain to find the beauty of the mountain because we don’t live on the top of a mountain. Most of us live in more normal places, and Christ calls us to find the beauty there. I think biblically that’s a pretty strong mandate. So that’s an important life skill. And then caring for creation, and low impact camping— the, “Let’s-carry-out-more-trash-than-what-we-carry-in”; if we see a place, let’s do our best to make it better if it’s been hurt or harmed. Those are values, again, that I want them to connect with their faith and not see them as disparate things because I don’t want them to grow up to be Christians who think it’s okay to trash creation so they can get more money or whatever. It’s just not okay. So those are the values that we try to impart— that’s sort of how we try to do it. We’ve got a long way to go.
And then some of the other basic gear— tents, stoves— a lot of it is sort of laid out, and the staff have that in their handbook, sort of the best days to teach these things in a general rule, knowing that conditions like rain, cold, fatigue, trail conditions, group dynamics— all will alter that. But usually you learn tents on Monday. You try to teach utilizing opportunity teaching. You teach stoves when people are hungry. You teach tents when, alright, it’s time to set up tents, and you gotta get into camp: “This is our first camp set up, alright, how are we going to do this?” And the goal is to be able to be a good enough leader that you can get the group to the right place, in the right way, at the right time. That’s art, that’s not science, that’s art, to make that happen well. And then there are other things that get thrown in, things like the 10 essentials, some basic survival stuff, or first aid, which could go any number of places in a schedule. Map and compass doesn’t always get taught because you’re not always in a place where it makes sense to teach it. Out West you always taught it because you could do so much cross-country stuff, but man, it’s really hard to slog through cross-country in most of the Adirondacks! It’s not built for it. But the group that paddles back to camp has to know how to find the camp on the lake, and map and compass is a great thing to do at that point, because it begins to make sense. You know, things like plant identification, trees— that happens en route, and really happens as much as the staff are knowledgeable to teach, and are caught up in the wonder of it all themselves. The staff makes all the difference on a trail, and not all staff will know plants, you know? But we encourage staff to shoot for once a day, having some trail time to stop where you show them something or do some natural history teaching.
Our booklet, the staff handbook and journal, is stuff cobbled together from Wilderness Ranch’s handbook and from The Backcountry Classroom— a beautiful book that’s been out of print for years now, with great teaching techniques on just basic, “How do you teach this? How do you teach that?” And then it has stuff from observations over the years, things that would fit into our program, and how we would do it. And that has anything from trail talks, to a brief history of the Adirondacks, to stories, be it biblical references or, again, on different things.
What do you do in staff training?
Our staff training never seems like enough. We have 10 days for staff training— our Out Camp staff are part of a lot of the in-camp stuff that happens, which deals with things like child abuse prevention, and emergency procedures, and just the flow of things, and group-building, the staff and music— and, you know, it’s just not enough. We’ll go out for a couple days— and I’ve done this just about every year with the staff, but I get to go out with the Out Camp staff. And we’ll go out, and we’ll spend usually one night and two days. That’s how much I can get away. We usually start a trail or paddle an area. It’ll always be one that’s on the list for the year, and usually one where there’s some question about it. This last year we hiked in, it was like 15 miles the first day, and it was 18 miles to get out. It was a long, long hike, but it was fairly flat, so we could make good time— we were pretty whipped. But it was to get to a spot that would’ve been like 2 1/2 days in on their trips because we were doing paths and paddles, which is where one group is paddling the first half, the other group is hiking the first half, and then they switch, and the first group hikes out, while the second group paddles out. But there was like a three-quarter mile gap between where the paddlers would stay and the backpackers are staying— there was no trail, there was just an ever-shallowing river going up. We just wanted to make sure that people saw that spot and would know what to do when they got there. But during that time we talked about Bible studies, in particular about what do you do— it’s that biblical component which is easy to get lost, to jettison when people are tired, and it’s a long day, and staff are tired… And we try to have trips that don’t over-do— so that stuff doesn’t get lost, it’s why we’re here— to help connect those dots for these kids. And we’ll do some basic skills with them with cooking, because a lot of staff don’t know how to cook, and that’s pretty important to know how to do that— happy tummies make happy campers.
As for Bible studies, the general theology gets modeled and talked about to the whole group in camp, kind of how we’re approaching this whole thing. The classic “the reason for freezin .” Why are we out here doing ministry this way? What we tend to do, hopefully, with the Out Camp staff themselves are some basic techniques that we think about. Anything from making sure you’re all in a comfortable circle without people having their backs to you, to maybe having a special tent, especially in bug season (it’s really bad) that becomes the place where this happens. Just some basic techniques that can help set it up for success, to work, as opposed to just making it a miserable time for everybody.
And then we have a theme, a summer theme every year, and I go over that with them, over what’s behind it and what has been laid out already for them. And they work that up more completely. Some basic scriptures and a basic flow for the week have been laid out for them already, in terms of things to reflect on and passages. But there’s supposed to be time each day— the goal is to have a quiet time, which could be in the morning usually, and a Bible study time that would tend to be in the evening. That’s the goal, and how well that gets lived out, I probably will be the last person to know…
When I used to run Out Trips, I’d do a reflection in the morning, and then later in the day a more sort of traditional Bible study with a pretty traditional style because that’s what I know. But that’s changing; it’s changing already with me. For instance, if I’m with a backpacking group, I do a lot more now with just sort of solo hiking for quiet time. In some ways it’s a lot more instructive and a lot better with a question to think on or meditate on, and have that time in your space— basically so you can’t see the next person. For most of us that type of experience is not available to us – people are afraid to be out on their own in the woods, and this allows that to happen without you really being “out on your own.” So that sort of thing is good and has been a change for me to emphasize more of that.
And I’m just getting old— my Bible studies look differently, are less laid out in a book and more laid out in my head. The advantage, I think, of getting older, is that you’ve had more experiences, and you’ve got more chances to think on things. I don’t have any more answers; I haven’t gotten any of those, but I’m better at framing the questions and being comfortable with the questions, living with them more, and the lack of answers. And, sort of drawing [pause]— education is, ah, what’s the word, educare, to draw out— I think it’s the Latin. Part of the idea here on the trail is to draw out of these students what’s already there. Often what’s there has come out of their experience from the day or the week of their time on the trail, and there’s a lot of stuff that’s there. But also in their previous life, before being on the trail, there’s stuff— and you draw that out— and that’s where we will see, I think, the presence of God, that’s been there, and it’s often only by reflecting on it that we sense that.
So in paddling in a canoe with a Hope College student and talking— those are Bible studies, those are reflecting on Scripture with a capital S. That’s what I like to do no—– but when I’m 19, I need that paper in front of me. I need that if I’m going to do it well, because I don’t have as many life experiences— I haven’t had the chance to reflect as much on my faith. I may have some wonderful insights and some very profound ideas as a 19-year-old, but most of us need a little more structure, especially if we’re teaching kids. So, we have those laid out for staff. Kids get journals to work on, to write in (they take journals and Bibles along on morning quiet time), and this serves a couple purposes. One, it helps— it’s something physical and tangible that they have on hand there, as a reminder that this is what we’re doing now. It’s a place where they can write down what’s going on, either physically or in their head, and it’s something that they can pull out, five years later, and boom, they’re right back. They’re right back in the West Canada Lakes, or hiking that trail.
What are some examples of Bible study activities you teach the staff?
I think this may just be a product of my own lack of education [laughs], or minimal education in how to teach, but we just do some classic Bible study methods that just have a good flow to it, have a good liturgy to it that way— the “Hook Book Look Took” way of doing a Bible study. There’s a hook, there’s some question, there’s some activity, there’s something that transitions me from dinner, or from hanging out in my tent— there’s some hook that gets me into it. Maybe it’s a blind hike, where I’m blindfolded, and somebody’s guiding me, or calling me, and that’s the hook to the activity or to the study. Then there’s the book— well, we’re going to read about Bartimaeus and being blind, and maybe we’ll do that as a collaborative reading, or maybe people will act that out, or maybe we’ll just pass it around, and everybody will read something out of that. And then there’s the look— there’s the, “What were ways that we were blind, that you were blind today?” And say, “Well, I missed that bear track that you guys saw. I didn’t see it. I walked right over it, and I found out later that you guys saw it.” Or, “That fog was really thick as we were paddling this morning,” or, “When we were in those woods for so long, I just couldn’t find my— I couldn’t see where we were going to go…” What are ways that we’re blind at home, or wherever— how can we connect back to our lives while fleshing out the passage? Putting those experiences into a biblical context to help make those connections. And then the took is, how do we make sure it takes? Tomorrow, what can we do to be more aware? “Oh, we’ll have to point out one thing on the trail to each other, to the rest of us.” Great, alright, let’s do that. So that’s one pretty basic method, but it’s a good one, and it works— it works because it flows. Have you ever been in church when you feel like you’re stuck in an eddy? [laughs] And you don’t know if you’re ever going to be able to get out of whatever you’re in? You know, where are we going with this? What’s going on? And Hook, Book, Look, Took is something that gives it flow.
Head, heart, hand is another way to describe or to go through a Bible study. It’s what did we read, or what did we experience, what happened? How did you feel about it? How did that affect you? What are you going to do about it? Ok, I feel good that Jesus can heal blind people, but then I’m called to be Christ-like to the world, so I can help people see things that they might miss— that’s my hand. And, you know, when I go back, when I go back to school, there’s some really cool things that I can help point out to people. That’d be a way of beginning to live out that story— that faith story— live into actually would be a better way— live into the faith stories that we have.
That’s the goal of what we’re trying to do, is to help kids live their faith. Most of our kids come from a Christian tradition, have some awareness of it, but little or no biblical grounding. And that’s really important to me, that they hear scripture, that they read it, that they are exposed to it, and that it actually resonates with their reality. So, last year, “Welcome to the Village” was our theme of the camp. And it was stories about Christ, of Christ going to different villages, and Christ welcoming. Who did he meet there, and how were they brought into the community? With a good sub-theme of, “Christ welcomes the outcast.” You know, it was the women, it was the lepers, it was the disparate— it was all those people that aren’t normally let in. They’re like the first ones to get into the kingdom.
And so one of the ideas as they began to put together their trail Bible studies was, each day, we’ll just go— we’re traveling to another village, aren’t we? So each camp site is a different village. And that sort of thing works really well— if it’s more than just a Bible study— it becomes a way of living actually. So that’s an example of how that would get fleshed out. And that arose from that group, it didn’t arise from me. So that’s good stuff. That makes it, it probably shouldn’t be the boring time, it shouldn’t be this time, where, you know, “Oh, we have to do this again…?” It gets that way sometimes, and it’s never going to be the most fun part of the trip, but if we don’t help them make some connections, the odds of them doing it later decrease exponentially.
When the trippers get back to camp, they spend the night in the lean-tos. And that’s been the part that we probably do the worst job on, and probably have the best opportunity to improve. You know, you’ve been on trips, and as soon as the horses smell the barn, that group experience starts to break apart, and the trip begins to pale next to getting a home cooked meal, or something, or ice cream. What we’re hoping to do is, we’re going to make a new Out Camp center, which will be, not right in the center of camp there, but actually where the camping area is. And we’re going to convert the campground that’s there now, so people can’t come there in motor homes and trucks anymore and camp— we’re going to turn that over, and it’ll be a place where we start and end trips.
The goal will be to be doing three trips a week— the reason for that has everything to do with the in camp experience of what happens at Fowler. With three trips out, two leaders, that’s 30 people, but 24 students. At that point there’s enough of a group feel, of a larger community feel, that when they come to camp, we could structure how they get their gear, how their first meal is. If we do this with that kind of a large group, there could be a worship time (this is pretty much straight from Creede, Colorado) and someone who talks to the group, about what’s going to happen. And I would want to move that even more to in a sense commissioning the group, to go out to these different areas, to frame it in some of those contexts. But there’s enough of a group then for that sort of thing to happen, to be its own thing. And then they come back, and they’ve got a reason to come back, to share with that larger group what’s happened, as well as, maybe even have that same person, whether that’s me, as the director, or the assistant director— to have a time of worship, and a time of closure that night, with that group— that’s what’s missing for us. They come back and they don’t know where to go, what to do, and so, they’re just sort of drifting around. They really don’t want to go all the way back to the wilderness area, it’s about a quarter mile back on trails, and it’s wet, and I don’t blame them. I say go [laughs], that’s where you need to go, but I don’t blame them for that. They’ve just showered, and the trip’s over, the trip is over. But what we need to do is to claim that time better. We’re missing a big chance, an important chance.
We did one thing this year. We did our first two-week trip with a group. A group of high school and college students hiked the entire Northville-Lake Placid Trail. The perfect length for two weeks: a real challenge, a real formative experience for these kids. So when they got back, we met at a certain place, and they debriefed the trip, and then I served them communion, as a minister, as part of what I’m able to do, and that was a powerful experience for them. That was a good use of that time back— that helped the trip by having that time, as opposed to now, it feels like it’s not over yet, but it’s over. So I’m eager to start implementing some of those things even this summer. And there’s always new— that’s a part of this ministry I think that’s very exciting— there’s always things to continue to work on, to try to get better at, to try to be more intentional about.
I mean, as it is now, they come in and have the dinner that we’ve prepared for them; they don’t tend to eat with the rest of the camp. The rest of the camp will be up in worship, for their final evening of worship, and then the Out Camp will usually have pizza that night, and end with a celebration in camp. And that’s a great meal to have then, and the backpackers love it, those out trippers love it, but it’s not quite right. Their closing is all across the board – it’s whatever’s happening in that lean-to. And that needs to be codified just a little bit better. We’ve got some good starts, but we have more we can do with it. And that’s alright – that’ll keep me excited for a few more years, right Boaz, right? [Boaz is Kent’s dog, sitting beside him, who follows him all over at camp.]
Reflecting on the challenges of building this program, is this what you hoped for?
We’re getting there, we’re getting there, and that trajectory is enough. I believe that lasting change typically is slow change. And so it’s a slow change— it’s like watching trees grow— it doesn’t happen overnight. And part of our problem is that we’re too small, with our Out Trip program. I don’t have enough staff, who then, enough of them return, to carry that wisdom along. So we tend to build up, build up, drop. Build up, drop, you know? So if I look back now at 17 years, I think, “Holy cow we’ve come a long way!” If I look back four years I think, “Man, we’re just not getting anywhere.” It’s that sort of thing. So yes, it’s getting there. We’re making good strides in being a better program. We’re not growing in numbers, but we’ve pretty much got our trips laid out where we’re going to do trips now, so we know our trails better and better and better all the time. And we’ve got our food down quite well, and we’re almost to a point where, this IS what we have, and with minor adjustments that come and go with people, we’re really getting close with that— that’s good.
We’ve been able to put together a handbook, you know, a guidebook for staff. Our gear isn’t great, but it’s being treated better and better. Little things, like, groups get free ice cream if they come back with three more tent stakes than they go out with. They think they’re doing it for ice cream; I’m teaching them to make sure you put all your tent stakes away when you strike up your tent and to keep your eyes open for what other people leave. That’s the reason. They don’t know that, and it’s great. If they knew that they wouldn’t do it [laughs]. And it is amazing what they come back with— it’s great; I love it. They come back with things that aren’t quite tent stakes, asking, “But does this count? Well look what we found!” I forget, but there’s been some phenomenal things that they’ve brought back. So gear has been a big thing for me over the years because it just would get trashed and not well cared for, but we’re getting better at that. And so less and less energy has to get put to that, so more and more energy gets freed up for something else. So, we’re getting there. And we will never be there, but we’re getting there.
Is there anything you’ve tried that didn’t work?
We tried to do mountain biking once, an Out Trip— it flopped. Kids would come with much better gear than what we had. And they were just uncontrollable in some ways. We dropped that one— we dropped that like a hot potato. We did that for three years and dropped it. Not gonna do this. We used to do road biking too, and we stopped doing that because traffic has just increased exponentially. And again, it’s hard enough to get staff trained to do canoeing and backpacking, let alone a totally different skill. We’re just going to focus on what we do well, and do it well.
It’s also surprising how few boys go to camp in general. I guess that shouldn’t surprise me, but it still sort of does somehow. As far as the whole camp program, it’s two-thirds girls to one-third boys— it’s almost exactly what tracks in our churches. Christian churches are basically two-thirds women, one-third men. If you look around at any given time, that’s what you will see. And that’s what our overall numbers at camp are, probably a little less than that. It’s probably closer to 50-50 on the trail than anywhere else. But even then, I’m surprised there aren’t more boys.
I think of it as stuff that guys would like to do, but then, I realize this isn’t structured like what would be typically attractive to males. It’s not “Big Wild! Exciting! Tough! RRRRrrr!” type camping. But that’s not what we’re going for, so it doesn’t surprise me. There’s a program near us that is very popular, very good. They run a really good program. But it’s marketed for that sense; it’s sort of testosterone driven. Which, I’m not going to say anything bad about, but I’m not going that way— that doesn’t fit with who we are and what our goals are, and I want to try to do this with integrity. I want people to know what they’re— well, I don’t know what they’re getting, but to trust what they’re getting. And I think scripture is bigger than just testosterone and adrenaline rush. That’s been just a bizarre turning of the Outward Bound stress camping, and it’s been spun on its head into excitement junkies and adrenaline rushes, which is very different from how it all started. And it’s just a bad trend in our culture because now, again, we’re just using creation for our own jollies. We’re just using it differently for our own jollies. And if you put that in faith context, which a lot of Christian camping does, then faith becomes this “Big Wild, Exciting” stuff. And, I’m a 43-year-old father, and life just isn’t always Big Exciting, and somehow I still believe God’s here. And that’s part of what we’re trying to get across.
Any advice to someone trying to start out doing this?
My advice would be, “Don’t sell out” [laughs]. How bland is that? But don’t sell out. Don’t stop growing. I don’t like the word growth. The word growth has been so widely used that it’s a bad word to use— but don’t stop taking that biblical message to heart, but be open to the fact that things change. But don’t sell out because someone’s always going to have a gimmick that’s going to look really good. But what kids need is integrity, and they don’t need hype. They need to rub elbows with genuine Christ followers who are trying to do it. And they don’t need toys, they don’t need gimmicks, they don’t need bigger, better, faster, wilder, crazier. Focus on the basics; don’t look at creation as your tool, look at it as your partner in this ministry. One more caution is that numbers matter, and if you get too many, you can’t do what you want. You can’t do out-tripping with 1,000 kids, you know? Numbers matter, so you can’t just keep growing numbers and doing more trips, and more, more, more, because things will break down in the end. Whether it’s your partner, creation— which can’t take that many people that you’re sending out— or it’s the integrity of the program, or whatever.
What to do? Make sure you get out to lead trips, on some sort of regular basis. Make sure you get out by yourself to remember why you loved this in the first place. Make sure you get Sabbath— part of getting out is sort of a Sabbath for me as well. Edward Abbey has this beautiful poem called “Save Some for the Other Half .” He said be a part time crusader and make sure that you get out to remember why you’re crusading to preserve this creation. And I think those are wise words— that’s Genesis 1 based. If you don’t love what you’re doing— if you’ve forgotten to fall in love with it, man— then kids will sense that. They’ll sense that lack of passion, that lack of inner call, and they won’t know why, but it just won’t feel right to them. So those are my suggestions…
This is great work, this is great work. The other problem of growing is that you end up behind a desk more, pushing a lot more paper. It was a myth all along that growth, that efficiency was the main goal— to get more kids through, that more kids will have this experience— and so we’re a factory. And that was a myth all along. I’ve watched too many people get stuck behind desks because they forgot. So, stay small.
We’ve been fortunate with funding. We’ve had some very good years. We haven’t had too much of a problem. We’re still a denominational camp that works. In an era where a lot of them aren’t working any more, we still really work. We work hard to keep a large network of volunteers that we do utilize in other parts of our camp, so that helps. And also, staying small helps. Making good use of the resources that you have helps. Having simplicity as one of our goals is just gold. It means we’re not going to buy a lot of fancy stuff— we’re gonna tend to buy the stuff that’s basic and bombproof and use that stuff, and be intentional about doing that. So, that helps a lot with funding, if your bottom line stays pretty low. It’s kind of like these solar panels— I don’t need to earn more money, I just have to be more efficient. I have to be a better steward— that’s better than the word efficient— a better steward of the resources I have. Yeah, so funding is an issue. It’s important, but there are ways. You’re never going to have enough money, no matter how big or small you are. You’re never going to have enough, so you learn to live with what you’ve got, with the means that you have.
In terms of our funding, we’re totally denominational, but probably 60% of our campers have an affiliation with our denomination, and the rest do not. Probably 80% of our retreat users have an affiliation with the denomination, the rest don’t. So, we’re open to all. We have a great group of Muslims that use the camp for retreats. Just had a delightful lunch with the Imam and the former Imam of the Mosque in Troy, and they took me out, and they called me (this is the other day) and they took me to a Turkish restaurant, and I have no idea what I ate, but it was good. And it’s just a delightful connection, because with the camp we’re able to really offer them Christian hospitality, Christ-like hospitality, so that they can be on retreat. And it’s ten days, and they have 60 or 70 people— I’d love to see a group of Christians give up ten days to go on retreat, to fast, to pray, to study. It’s very humbling, it’s very humbling.
So we have other groups that use the facilities. I’ve had a lot of support from the denomination, the synod, for that sort of thing because that’s the sort of thing that could make you lose your job in a denomination. If certain people got it in their craw that, “This is a Christian camp, we just shouldn’t have Muslims here,” you can get taken out for things like that. Cut off at the knees— it’s never directly that— it’s always the other things, some other reason, but it really is about that. So, we are a ministry of the Reformed Church of America, but our reach extends beyond that small group of folks.
The camping ministry in the United States grew out of the old tent meeting, where you drew people out, in a very, very John-the-Baptist way, you drew people out in the wilderness to preach to them for the week. The wilderness was the place to do it; that was the place where you made the clearing in the forest next to the river, and you saved their souls. It had nothing to do with being outside other than that was just the place you did it. So we’ve got that in our group history, which is pretty powerful. And then we have a thing like the YMCA movement and starting camping— which was actually right here at Lake George, the first YMCA camp— the first really organized camp was right here at Lake George. Which as I read the history, maybe it’s different, but their goal was to get kids out of the city and doing things that you couldn’t do in the city: to really breathe fresh air, and to be outside, and the therapeutic, physically and mentally, aspect of that, which then also opens us up to the spiritual. So, it was very wise, but camping has grown out of using the outdoors as a tool, and I think we need to get beyond that.
And as I said before, I think we have to start looking at creation as a partner. Speaking of creation [laughs as the cat hops up in his lap]. And so we’re trying to be slightly more intentional about making the connection that we are part of creation, we are caretakers of it, we have the ability to care for it or destroy it, so we have choice in this. What we’re tying to get across to the campers is that our faith calls us to care for it. And there’s all sorts of ways we do that, you know, whether it’s composting, or gardening, or not trashing our tents, or camping quietly, or with green tents. There are all those different ways that we can do it, but those come out of our faith convictions. And some of that is verbalized, some of that is just, kids know they’re at a Christian camp and learn this is what Christians do when they camp. My guess is that’s what an 8th grader thinks. If all that she or he has known is Fowler, then this is just the way Christians camp, this is the way she or he camps. That’s okay by me, I’m really happy with that, that’s enough. We tell staff, “We don’t need to make these kids good theologians – they need to know God loves them… and they need to have some good formative experiences.” If they can realize they don’t have to have a campfire every night to enjoy being out, that’s a good thing because we’re coming from a hundred-year history of, “the campfire made the camp experience.” I mean, they were intertwined— and it took a good campfire, done well, and we have those— but they’re not essential to the experience, as much as a gift that sort of can come in at different times. That’s the sort of thing we’re looking at, the sort of thing we’re trying to get across.
What gives you hope as you think about all of this?
Looking back and seeing where we were, and seeing— and again, it wasn’t all bad, there’s some wonderful things about that— but seeing some real purpose and direction and integrity come through. What gives me hope is the fact that it’s not even questioned that we’re going to compost— it’s not even questioned— that’s just expected. That gives me hope to see in our master plan (that just got approved) that cars are going to be eliminated from the summer camp part. Kids will be there, there won’t be cars. That’s better than I could have dreamed, or hoped for. That our Out Camp program gets to have an area dedicated for it, gives me hope. That students at places like Hope College can come out, and want to come out, and are seeing the connections that faith and environment have, younger than I got it. Those sorts of things give me hope: the rise in the literature and stuff that’s happening in some of our Christian communities. Those give me hope of surviving, that this is actually working.
And I just note that part of it is just discovering Dutch resistance, saying this is the right thing to do. And even if we lose the Adirondacks, I want to go down swingin.’ I want to go down having defended it as long as I could. There’s a real defiant strain in scripture. The text I preached on this morning, Hebrews 11, said, “All these died in faith never having received the promises, but they saw them from a distance, but from a distance they saw and greeted them.” And I can get a long way on a scripture like that. I may not see— I’m pretty sure I won’t see what I’m looking for or get to live in what I look for— but maybe from a distance, I can see and greet it, and that’s part of what we’re doing.
And this camp I’ve been able to be a part of is really doing a lot of things that are very contrary to what we’re told works, and what we’re told is what you need to be doing. And it’s great [laughs]. And it’s working. And I can’t overestimate how blessed I have been by that because if it hadn’t worked, it would really put things in a very different light, there would be a lot more pressure to change, and I haven’t had to feel that pressure. And I realize that. It’s easy to be boastful when one hasn’t been thrown into the fire. And the longer that this does hold up, the more I’ll be able to resist if I have to. So those things give me hope. I was in church this morning, and a college student who has been to camp any number of times showed up and said hello! Here’s a college student in one of our churches! And that gives me hope, beyond just hello, more than she knew.