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Local Camps Eager to Nurture Nature

June 17, 2009 - RAYMOND -- This year at the Wohelo camps on Sebago Lake in Raymond, participants will dine on plates made by campers as arts and crafts projects rather than on the more convenient disposable paper versions.

At the Friends Camp on China Lake in South China, campers will be asked to give up hot water and electricity for a day.

The boys at Camp Wigwam on Bear Lake in Waterford will be taking baths in the lake and using what camp director Robert Strauss describes as a new-age outhouse.

"We put in a composting four-seater: no water, no flushing," Strauss said.

Life at many of Maine's summer camps is about to become even more rustic this summer, thanks to an effort by members of the Maine Youth Camping Foundation to promote energy efficiency and other environmentally beneficial practices.

The move comes at a convenient time for the state's hundreds of summer day and overnight camps, many of which are struggling with falling enrollments as parents scale back in the gloomy economy.

"This will be saving camps money," said Garth Altenburg, director of Camp Chewonki for Boys in Wiscasset, who has helped coordinate the effort.

Some Maine camps report enrollment has dropped 10 percent, while others say their numbers haven't changed. That appears to be the trend throughout the region, said Bette Bussel, executive director of the American Camp Association, New England, based in Lexington, Mass. She said not only have families enrolled their children much later this year, but demand for financial aid is up, and families are opting for shorter sessions.

Bussel said camps are offering discounts and creative payment plans to lure back campers, especially in Maine, which is home to some of the oldest summer camps in the country. Many camps have been operating for more than a century and are run by the descendants of the original founders. Their campers tend to be equally multigenerational.

"It's like an extended family, and parents don't want to drop it," Bussel said.

On the positive side, she said, as unemployment rates soar, camps have had their pick of a highly motivated pool of staffers. She said summer camps are growing contributors to the local economy. Camps hire staff from their surrounding communities, draw campers' visiting relatives into nearby restaurants, gas stations and hotels, and increasingly are buying produce raised at local farms.

"It is less expensive to buy local produce and supplies than having big trucks come in to deliver things," Bussel said.

With the summer season starting up this weekend, Maine camps are rushing to get ready for the annual onslaught of campers with a number of new energy-efficient and more ecologically friendly initiatives.

For many camps in Maine, which have long stressed sustainable living and nature appreciation, finding new ways to reduce their impact on the environment is not so easy, Altenburg said.

The cabins at Camp Chewonki were already off the electrical grid, and the camp has long offered activities focused on renewable energy and organic gardening. This year the camp has switched to biodiesel-fueled vehicles. Campers' shirts, which are required, will be made out of organic cotton.

At Camp Vega on Lake Echo in Fayette, girls will be able to work in the organic garden.

"If they want to," said Kyle Courtiss, co-director of the camp, which at $10,000 for a seven-week session is on the high end of the spectrum.

This season, propane-fired mosquito traps have been replaced by dragonflies, which have a voracious appetite for the blood-sucking pests. The water ski jump will be hydrated by a solar-powered system. The camp had long ago switched to energy-efficient hybrid vehicles and compact fluorescent light bulbs.

Pilgrim Lodge, a co-ed camp operated by the Maine Conference United Church of Christ on Lake Cobbosseecontee in West Gardiner, is replacing paper napkins with cloth ones, which were donated over the winter by churches across the state. They will be washed in cold water and air-dried.

"We aren't going to iron them," said the Rev. Bryan Breault, camp director.

At the Friends Camp, blueberry bushes are being planted to reduce water runoff into China Lake, and on-demand hot water heaters are being installed in some cabins. Camp director Nat Shed said the campers will also be asked to endorse a day without electricity.

"Because we are a Quaker camp, we don't do anything by fiat," Shed said.

Emma Jordan, 13, of South Portland, who will spend some time at the Friends Camp this summer, said a day without electricity would be fine with her.

"I like the idea because camp is to get away from stuff you are familiar with and having new experiences," she said.

By BETH QUIMBY, Staff Writer, Portland Press Herald, June 15, 2009


Lakes:
Regions: Sebago, Belgrade, Mid Coast


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