Experiencing The Natural World - Nature Camp In 50th Year Of Creating Young Environmentalists
Aug. 6th, 2004 "Lifestyle" feature on Nature Camp -- by the Lexington News-Gazette and reporter Mary Price

Her hair glistening in the sunlight glancing off the stream, Elisa Martinez carefully holds one end of a finely knit screen and lowers it into Big Mary's Creek near Vesuvius. After only a few seconds, Martinez and her fellow campers lift quickly and cleanly. Their reward is a cornucopia of freshwater aquatic life, ranging from insect larvae to dragonfly nymphs. A few moments later, the middle-schoolers wade out of the stream and gather on the creek bank to sort specimens. There are no crayfish in the day's haul but that doesn't stop one of the campers from mentioning how local stream expert Jay Gilliam can attach one of the crustaceans to his earlobe with no visible sign of pain.

A few hundred yards up the dusty road, another group of children saunters along, each holding what at first appears to be a long stick. Drawing closer, it becomes apparent that the stick is but a vehicle for a small mirror secured to its top and that the mirror's purpose is to help height-challenged humans see just what's going on in a bird's treetop nest."We tried to see a wood thrush but there was a leaf over the nest," one camper explains.

It's all part of a typical day at Nature Camp.

Not your usual summer camp

Nature Camp, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary in Rockbridge County this summer, has as its goal promoting conservation education for youths. To that end, it is much more than a typical summer camp, though in their T-shirts and shorts with writing across the wearer's posterior, the middle- and high-school age campers show every sign of being typical members of their generation.

Unique to Nature Camp is an academic approach to the outdoors. The camp strives to recruit youngsters who have a genuine interest in conservation and ecology and are willing to do what some would consider to be "school work" as part of their learning experience. The camp's brochure states firmly, "Young people who desire recreation only will not be happy here."From a list of 13 subjects ranging from anthropology to archaeology to ornithology to wilderness survival each camper chooses a major. He or she then studies this field for 10 instructional periods and completes a project in that field.Projects, explained Paul Cabe, co-director of the camp with his wife, Leigh Ann Beavers, can range from the simple to the complex. This year's campers, for example, have done everything from studying how the presence of a paved road affects salamander migration patterns to determining which species of oak trees thrives best in what type of soil.

To ensure a continuous challenge for the campers, many of whom come back each summer from the time they finish fifth grade to the time they graduate from high school, the focus of each class changes from year to year.Many times, nature itself provides a focus, with little human help. During one of the camp's sessions earlier this summer, the ornithology class found a nest of newly hatched hummingbirds and was able to study their development from hatching to fledging. It didn't hurt that each of Nature Camp's sessions runs for two weeks and that it takes 14 days for a baby bird to be ready to leave the nest.

To focus on the outdoors, children need to spend as much time there as possible, both Cabe and Beavers believe. To that end, there are no computers for campers' use at Nature Camp though the co-directors each keep in touch with the outside world via a Dell laptop. There are also no televisions, CD players or cell phones. There's not even a film projector there.

" Amazingly", said Beavers, "even the most hardened members of the Nintendo Generation don't seem to mind leaving their electronic toys at home when they come to Nature Camp. We never hear a word about it," Beavers said. "Not a word." "We want them to experience the natural world," Cabe added, "and anything that removes them from sitting in the dirt looking at it takes away from that experience.

`The kids really do amuse themselves with old-fashioned summer camp activities.' -- Paul Cabe

And sitting in the dirt or in the stream, for those studying limnology, the branch of science having to do with fresh waters is a lot of what Nature Camp is about. Campers spend three hours a day in their outdoor classroom and a good chunk of the rest of the day simply enjoying the outdoors, whether by hiking, swimming in the camp pool or nearby streams or playing tetherball and volleyball.

While Nature Camp's technical boundaries extend to only six or seven acres of the George Washington National Forest, "to us the boundaries are legal things on paper," explained Cabe. "We have the whole National Forest, and we use it," added Beavers. When darkness falls, Nature Campers come inside for activities that would have been familiar to their grandparents. Sing-a-longs and square dances are popular evening activities, and more than once Nature Camp has been the scene of a live hoe-down. "The kids really do amuse themselves with old-fashioned summer camp activities," noted Cabe."They write loads of snail mail letters," added Beavers. "And they get loads of letters, too."

"I had found an ideal camp"

Nature Camp began as the brainchild of Lillian Schilling, who in January 1941 was chairwoman of the Virginia Federation of Garden Clubs' committee on conservation. Using the Audubon Camp in Maine as her model, Schilling envisioned a place where conservation and an appreciation for the outdoors could be passed along to future generations. The Afton resident soon convinced her fellow federation members to put their resources behind the project, and in July 1942, with World War II raging overseas, the first session of Nature Camp was held at Lake Sherando in Augusta County.

That first session of camp attracted 24 campers, 13 girls and 11 boys, at a cost of $20 per camper for the two-week session. A history of the camp written in the early 1950s relates that those first campers chose for their camp colors brown, yellow and green. For an emblem, they selected the white-tail deer; for a camp bird, they opted for the whippoorwill; and for an official flower, they decided upon the black-eyed Susan.

A history of the camp, written by Mrs. E.L. Coleman in the early 1950s, relates that "From the day of its beginning, camp was enjoyable, both for its sports and recreational facilities, and for its educational advantages. Prizes were offered for various achievements, and to quote from the prize-winning essay of Ruby Cook of Norfolk, `My Two Weeks at the Virginia Nature Camp': `My first glance at Camp left the impression I shall always have that at last I had found an ideal camp! Our Camp is located near Sherando Lake between the Blue Ridge Mountains and Bald Mountain. When you awake in the morning and see the beautiful mountains, the thought of our country being at war is hidden by that wonderful sight."

Throughout the war years, Nature Camp continued to grow and flourish. By 1948, interest in the camp had grown so much that two sessions were offered, one for youths ages 10 to 12 and another for ages 13 to 15. The next year, Nature Camp hit what was then an all-time attendance high, with 87 children making the trek to Lake Sherando.

But as the 20th century hit its halfway mark, Nature Camp experienced growing pains. Lake Sherando, while scenic, provided inadequate facilities for the growing camp, and there was no guarantee it would always be available for rent each summer. The camp needed a permanent home, and in 1952 that home was found in the extreme northeastern corner of Rockbridge County, in the George Washington National Forest. The camp's board of directors obtained a special use permit to build upon the forest's land and signed a long-term lease with the federal government.There was no camp in 1952, as the summer was taken up with construction of the first buildings at the new site. But in 1953, Nature Camp was back in business. It's been welcoming children to the outdoors every summer since then. This year, about 300 children will pass through the camp, which now costs $600 per camper for the two-week session. About a third of the campers receive financial assistance from a garden club or conservation organization. While the first campers were almost all from Virginia, Nature Camp has since become a global destination, with one of this year's campers coming all the way from Hong Kong. The camp is full every year, with a waiting list, so potential campers are encouraged to download their applications from the camp's Web site at www.naturecamp.net and have them in by mid-January.

Little change expected

Not much has changed at Nature Camp in the last 50 years. And that's just how they like it there.

The pothole-ridden dirt road leading to the camp is the same as it ever was, and the stonework bridge spanning Big Marys Creek is still a visitor's first clue that Nature Camp is near. A few hundred yards further up the road, and the camp appears as if planted in the forest by unseen hands, buildings whose hues match those of the tree trunks so well that living wood and dead timber seem as one.

`Nature Camp has had a more profound impression on my life than any other experience I've ever had.' -- Phillip Coulling, ecologist

Two large bunkhouses, each with its own bathhouse, hold boys and girls, respectively. Another building holds the camp office, while another, named in memory of Schilling, serves as mess hall and social center in the evenings. There's another, larger building that's half museum and half laboratory, and nearby, a fieldstone chapel dedicated in memory of Col. John "Jack" Reeves, the camp's legendary director from 1972 to 1996. Cabe and Beavers live year-round in a cabin on the property.

To be sure, conditions are a bit more modern than campers from the 1950s to the 1970s would remember. Fried bologna, a staple of camp meals for decades, is no longer on the menu, though the camp's mealtime fare is still designed to fuel active, growing young naturalists rather than calorie-conscious adults. Hot water has replaced cold showers, and in a concession to the health department, the swimming pool is no longer fed by a sluice from a mountain stream.

Nature Camp "should continue the way it has for a long time," said Cabe, a professor of biology at Washington and Lee University. "In college, you can teach facts. When you can take a 12-year-old out into the woods for two weeks, you can influence lives."

Agreeing strongly with that statement is Phillip Coulling, a Lexington native and 1986 Lexington High School graduate now working as an ecologist for the state's Department of Conservation and Recreation."I can unequivocally say that I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing now if it weren't for Nature Camp," said Coulling, who was a camper from 1979 to 1985 and a member of the staff from 1986 to 1992. Coulling, who now lives in Goochland County, said he picked up both an academic interest in nature and an appreciation of the need for conservation while attending Nature Camp. Along the way, he also forged strong friendships with others of like mindset. "Nature Camp has had a more profound impression on my life than any other experience I've ever had," said Coulling. "I wouldn't be an environmentalist, leading an earth-friendly lifestyle, if I hadn't gone to Nature Camp. It's a place that tries to develop an interest in the natural world."