Survive in the Woods, Thrive in the World.
Our mission at Camp W is to work daily to achieve a cultural intervention that will bring back into our modern lives a necessary and healthy relationship with the natural world. We are champions of land and village, and navigators of an epic world that needs to exist. We are adventurers who respect the true beauty of our experiences and those we share it with, even if its just ourselves. We are a community where we remember the celebration of hearth, health, and heart through respect for the land and the timeless human story.
We role model a sense of appreciation, gratitude, and reverence for the abundance that the natural world provides. Adventure and stewardship as avenues through experience and learning. Through this awareness we begin to see our direct impact and the great potential we each have to nurture the health of our environment as well as our human family, living life full of love as well as ADVENTURE!
Leading from the heart in all of our interactions has illuminated our staffs lives in ways that we all model for youth. Campers learn to self regulate and self care with such effectiveness many of our families over the last decade experience lasting change in their entire family.
Diversity of Program
Camp W has a wide range of activities and adventures for campers to choose from each day. Utilizing adventure and experiential education we look to foster growth for each camper intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. We really do have something for just about everyone whether a seasoned survivalist, adventurer, or a novice first timer encompassing a large genre of options.
Reclaim and Foster
In the United States kids spend an average of 50 hours per week on digital media, where they are told what to buy, how to be ‘cool,’ and who they should be.
Camp offers a fresh perspective. Once here, campers gain the opportunity to leave behind peer pressure, excessive stimulation, and electronics in pursuit of nature, focused fun, and supportive, growth-oriented activities.
The social environment at camp is a true community.
Our staff are committed mentors and passionate world-changers who are less encumbered by our era of often-superficial massive media consumption. In addition to our full time staff we hire authentic young professionals who engage in multi-faceted disciplines of training before the start of the summer season.
Beauty
Campers can choose any number of arts skills to hone during their time at camp. Including arts and crafts, leather working, metal smithing, pottery, weaving, sewing, painting, and woodworking.
All around Camp W, one can see the artistic contributions of past campers, from cabin modifications and murals to origami scattered around camp.
Wonder
Curiosity is natural and priceless. We create an environment where it thrives.
No matter what activity, campers find motivation and inspiration while following their dreams. At Camp W, a world of wonder exudes from the staff to create immersive environments of play.
Mornings start with an oomph. Counselors wake up their cabins each morning in a unique way. Sometimes it’s energetic, like staging an imaginary meteor strike or an impromptu sing along & dance lead by the counselors. And sometimes it’s quiet and peaceful, like a serenade on guitar with hot tea in bed.
After wake up we move right into mindfulness, finding sit spots, joining yoga, a cold plunge in the pond linked with breathwork, or mindful movement to grow and build the structure of our bodies. This morning focus calibrates and connects our heart, body, and mind to the environment in ways that is in resonance with the natural flow, in turn leaving us all feeling fresh, grateful, and prepared for whatever comes our way that day.
Every day, a handful of individuals on staff manifest a unique new vision for the campers at ‘Choice‘ This could mean pretending to be very old for one hour, performing science experiments with a twist, or creating spur-of-the-moment works of art.
Evening programs bring all of camp together through community and imagination. Adventure games entice participants to explore layers of mystery and plot, rewarding curiosity and grit. Mystery dinners entice critical thinking and play while our bellies fill with delectable delights. Campfires set a tone of reflection and sharing. Dance parties offer fun and humor, and invite campers to get out their shell.
Awe
We share our forest home with some 400 year old trees. At night, our clear summer skies bathe us in the light of the milky way. The Green Mountains ecoregion harbors one of the most beautiful forests on Earth with natural springs, moss, bioluminescence, and incredible fauna. To top it off, our clear waters are soothing AND exhilarating.
Glide through the morning mist during watersports play across the Connecticut River. Swimming, kayaking, and paddle boarding on our trout pond offer fun among the frogs, salamanders, and fish.
Visit our local river spots on the Connecticut, Green, or West rivers, where the locals swim daily during the summer.
Hike along one of our on-site spring fed creeks to natural cascading waterfalls like the Ravine, or Split Rock Falls.
Hike to a summit on the Long Trail to watch the sunrise peek over the horizon.
Potential
Camp W not only supports, but scaffolds, creativity. Campers act on their creative potentials on a daily basis.
Our staff practice intentional speech, compassionate communication, and other well-researched social practices that foster empathy and emotional intelligence in the campers and the community.
Cabin time cultivates a cocoon of comfort and authentic expression through prompted and organic vulnerable discussions and meaningful connections with peers, which is one of the pinnacles of the Camp W experience.
Embers, nightly precursors to bedtime, are contemplative activities that encourage campers to consider life deeply. These times of reflection make the most of kids’ formative years. Campers end their days digging into ideas that truly matter to them, and we explore these to help them grow.
Innocence
Camp W fosters the best of traits that we share as a species: empathy, diversity, compassion, freedom.
Our meticulously sourced and crafted food is beyond what you’d expect from a summer camp (organic, local, homemade). Here, kids don’t need to worry about their physical health as our dietitian crafts all our meals.
We are an intentional community. Campers are challenged by choice. We frame competition carefully, but do include it. We even keep a small size and small staff to camper ratio in order to promote meaningful individual attention and safety.
Cabin counselors provide a letter to loved ones at the end of their camper’s stay. We work with parents to share insights and methods from our time at camp to help perpetuate healthy intellectual/emotional development for youth.
True Community
We live in an age where neighborhood block parties are rare, people go from isolation at home, to an isolated car, to activities that are done either alone or in small groups. At Camp W, we strive to create a real community. There is shared effort as campers help clean their cabins, dishes, the camp, and help with meals. All people belong and we work hard to prevent cliques. Campers and staff have a real voice in how things run at camp (consensus); everyone at camp, including campers, shape the community we all live in. Camp W has core values that we strive to make real every day — “We are a creative, trustworthy, fun community of stewards focused on the mission and vision.” Our hope is that children and staff appreciate living in a real community, and that they’ll take that knowledge and appreciation with them to make the world outside of Camp W a little bit stronger of a community.
True Classic Rustic Camp
Camp W is generally not high tech, glitzy, or full of the latest toy trends. Kids’ lives are full of that already. We provide an environment where a kid can see and watch the butterfly, kick a stone and see how it really bounces, and have a conversation with a friend without needing anything that whistles, buzzes, or hums. Life is reduced to rustic simplicity, and we are once again reminded of the pleasures that come from simply being with one another and spending time with ourselves. At Camp W, we create wonderful simplicity, amazing simplicity, ecstatic simplicity . . . it’s simple to us! Our wilderness trips provide an even higher level of this, without the activities calling the children’s attention to try a new experience, like making their own utensils, and allowing for days in nature as simple as it gets.
Canalization (is that a real word?)
Developmentally, think of an actual canal with high walls (culture) that guide the water (person) along a path. When people travel, they experience anti-canalization as they experience a new way of being and thinking. This is especially the case when the destination is more different than the person’s normal experience/life . . . think of going to India or the deep Amazon from a Western culture.
At Camp W, we aim to be an anti-canalization experience, which is part of the benefit that our two or more week sessions offer. Campers have the opportunity to settle into camp and travel to a world that shakes up their normal experience, allowing for insights and experiences otherwise unavailable. Every part of the day and the way that the staff interact with the campers is designed around this concept.
For example- being awakened in a creative way every morning, experiencing responsibility without punishment, reward, or guilt, seeing what you’re like without your family and normal routines, being out of your comfort zone sleeping outside or learning to live with people you don’t like, having your creative muscle exercised with wish, wonder, and surprise, challenging yourself and being exposed to countless new activities, expressing yourself in real honest conversations, and so much more.