Summer Camp is Really Year-Round: A Season of Camps

An Enduring Legacy of Friends’ Summer Camps: Sustaining Land, Culture, and Youth

Quaker summer camps have long been vital spaces for youth development, spiritual growth, and deep engagement with the testimonies of simplicity, peace, integrity, community, equality, and stewardship. While their focus may be on the vibrant months of summer, the work of sustaining these camps is a year-round endeavor. From the early childhood experiences at Quaker Montessori camps like Brixham Friends Montessori in York, Maine, to the transformative adventures of teen programs at Celo in Burnsville, N.C., and Baltimore Yearly Meeting’s Shiloh and Catoctin camps in Virginia and Maryland, these camps foster connection to the land, to community, and to Quaker SPICES in ever-evolving gifts and genius of our tweens and teens.

Quaker camps have been laid down in Philadelphia, New England, and New York Yearly Meetings. Yet are we led to recommit to Friends’ camp sustainability more urgently at present than ever. This article surveys the expansive history, impact, and present challenges of our Quaker camps, celebrating their crucial role in both shaping youth and stewarding land. It also explores how we, as a faith community, can continue to nurture these beloved institutions. Come sit by the fire, Listen for the bell, Feel the silence and welcome the messages and song as it quakes in our circle.

Did you know there’s a Rich History of Quaker Camping Traditions?

Roots of Quaker summer camps extend deep into the past century, founded on diverse unifying principles of experiential learning, cooperative living, and deep spiritual reflection. Many of these camps emerged in the early to mid-20th century as alternatives to mainstream summer camp programs: emphasizing simplicity, environmental stewardship, and nonviolence. In particular, Quaker camps often provided a refuge from our hyper-competitive, consumer-driven world, offering children and teens an alternate experience rooted in mutual support in community care.

Camps like Celo, established in 1939, exemplify the Quaker commitment to alternative education and cooperative living. Arthur Morgan School, (AMS) also in Celo, builds upon this tradition by providing a Quaker-influenced middle school experience that integrates academics with farming, craftsmanship, and environmental stewardship. Like Quaker camps, AMS offers a safe and supportive environment where students can learn to think creatively and work cooperatively without heavy screen time and technosaturation.  Similarly, Friends Camp in China, Maine, and Friends Wilderness Center offer immersive outdoor experiences that reinforce Quaker testimonies while cultivating leadership and resilience in young people.

A Commitment to Stewardship: Land and Sustainability

“We will Survive” One of the defining features of Quaker camps is their deep reverence for land. The move of Quaker Arts Camp Opequon from Virginia’s Piedmont region to the 2,500-acre Rolling Ridge Nature Preserve in West Virginia is an inspiring example of how these camps adapt to external pressures while maintaining their commitment to environmental preservation. Camp Opequon, along with its older sibling, Teen Adventure, provides youth with ‘Shine On’ opportunity to explore, reflect, and develop a profound appreciation for the land they inhabit.

Sustainability is not just a practice but a foundational ethos of these camps. Many incorporate organic farming, composting, water conservation, and renewable energy initiatives into their daily operations. The experiential nature of these programs fosters a lifelong commitment to environmental responsibility among campers.

Supporting Camps: The Many Ways to Engage

To ensure longevity of Quaker camps, let’s root our camps in their integrity. Support must extend beyond summer months. There are numerous ways individuals and Meetings can contribute:

• Financial Contributions: Donations, grants, and endowments provide essential funding for scholarships, facility maintenance, and program expansion.
• Volunteerism: Whether serving on a camp committee, offering skills in construction and maintenance, or working directly at camp, volunteers are backbones of Quaker camps.
• Promoting Enrollment: Encouraging families to constantly consider Quaker camps for our community and children re-ensures their continued participation and growth.
• Year-Round Usage: Many camps offer family retreats, off-season programs, “hip camp” and rental opportunities. Bringing your bridge groups and retreats to camp is helping to sustain them financially while keeping the spirit of community alive year-round.

What is your Transformative SuperPower gained from Camp?

Quaker camps are not just places for recreation; they transform lands that cultivate leadership, social responsibility, and spiritual depth. Campers develop friendly loving kindness, confidence, resilience, awareness – connections to something or nothing greater than self. Skills learned at Quaker camps: conflict resolution, cooperative decision-making, environmental ethics—all resonate far beyond childhood, shaping lives and communities in profound ways.

Looking Ahead: Ensuring a Vibrant Future

To navigate new, arising challenges maintaining invaluable Friends’ institutions let’s recommit to camp sustainability. Each camp, like each camper, built of unique traditions and community, plays a vital role in nurturing a whole child by reinforcing Quaker values. Whether in structured family camps, at Yearly Meeting sessions, or freed into the adventurous spirit of Friends’ Wilderness, each experience is an avenue to enduring power in Quaker summer camps.

Naturally, our work of maintenance and caretaking is eternal, but so too is the grace of joy, the challenges in learning, and our deepened faith, cold and dark as a summer lake bottom’s impossible depth that these camps’ souls provide. By investing our time, resources, and energy, we ensure that future generations will continue to find sustenance, growth, and connection into sacred spaces. In doing so, we affirm that our Quaker camp season is, indeed, all year-round.