Spring is Blossoming

Here in Washington, DC, we are in peak cherry blossom season. And you know what that means — tourist season SPRING HAS ARRIVED!

Growing up, shedding my scarf and gloves meant we were getting close to the end of the school year and, more importantly, CAMP! I remember pouring over the Girl Scout Camp brochure and deciding on what program I’d do (What are my friends doing? Should I bring a buddy or will I go alone this year? Will I be able to tread water and pass the swim test for section three?). It was always a strategic choice since I would be travelling to camp from suburban Philadelphia.

I was bitten by the CLN bug in 1998. I had been a long-time camper at Is-Sho-Da and after years of excitedly waiting to find out if the overnight would be on the Wednesday or Thursday night of my session, my mother finally allowed me to go to CLN and sleep away for the whole week. Even after we moved away from the Capital District, I made the summer trip to the place where friendships are made strong. What started out as a weekly sojourn turned into weeks as a CIT in 2002 and 2003.

I’m still hooked and I’m so proud to be a part of the Little Notch community. When I visited during Membership Weekend in 2011, I was surprised, relieved, and overjoyed that Little Notch still felt the same. It had been six years but I immediately felt at home, even if some things looked a little different. (Can we pause for a moment and reflect on the changes in landscaping the beavers made between Tinuwen and Sherwood Forest? For those who have not visited since 2008, I encourage you to come visit this summer just to see the brook.) That sense of place keeps Little Notch close to my heart and, as a board member, I want to make sure that others can experience the calm of Green Cathedrals, the excitement of section three, and the sense of triumph after completing the mile swim.

Behind the scenes, we’re getting busier every day. The ice on Lake’s Pond is thawing, campers are signing up for the girls program, and we are hiring staff and volunteers who will make sure everyone who visits this summer has a wonderful time.

The first event coming up this spring is Stewardship Weekend May 17-19. This is the big push to get camp opened up after being closed for the winter and we need all the help we can get. All parts of camp need some love from setting up tents to making sure the trails are clear. We’ll also have time in the afternoon and evening to enjoy the land. For more information and to register, click here.

Visit the CLN website for our Summer Sessions for Girls and our Community Programming information and registration. Mark your calendar now for All Friends Reunion and Membership Weekend: July 26-28!

We look forward to seeing you at camp and to speaking with you on our various Membership calls in the coming months. If you ever have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact us. We’re here to work for you.

And now, to the comments! What do you think about the beavers’ redecorating? Anyone out there live in the DC area and want to talk about this lovely, low-humidity weather we’re having?

Andrea Bachinski
Director at Large
andrea@friendsofcln.org

Letter from shay

Intro from Lindsay: As we continue to make Camp Little Notch a place where all people can practice living in harmony with nature, each other, and themselves, we'd like to pause and share a departure from the Friends of Camp Little Notch board. Effective as of February 1, 2013, shayden gonzalez has stepped down from his position as vice president. Below is a note from him about his departure. We wish him luck and thank him for his work and continued support of Little Notch. Please feel free to contact me at any time if you have questions or comments. - Lindsay

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From shay...

I clearly remember the first time that I saw Little Notch, I remember Sly Pond Rd sneaking off of Hog Town Rd and already feeling nervous. Remarking, “the GPS says we’re only 10 miles away, but it says it’ll take 30 minutes to get there, that’s weird.” Then watching my cell phone signal creep down bar by bar until it only read “searching.”

I was with Jules (and that was his first East Coast summer). We were anxious, excited, and anticipatory as we watched the paved road drop to gravel not too far from Miller’s Way and then change to dirt where the Keech’s family plot is. Finally, with a right turn we arrived at CLN. The clouds disappeared under tree coverage and I got butterflies that same way you do when your crush flirts with you for the first time.

Just a few months earlier Jo Lum had called me and asked me to join the CLN community as the “Community Building and Social Consciousness Coordinator.” There were no job roles exactly but I’d been doing work in the field for years and felt excited to be co-creating with others. However, when I got there I quickly found out that there was no foundation for that work and the community at large hadn’t been informed that this was the direction that their beloved CLN was taking. I’d love to write “and then SUDDENLY we were welcoming to everyone” but instead some of the most vocal members of the community did not welcome me (though they welcomed Jules) with open arms.

Briefly hurt, I reflected and realized that this community has historically been predominately constructed around moderate and liberal white, middle to upper-middle and owning class women coming into their identities, feminism, and convening with nature. I realized that when you meet me you see black man and not, a left of progressive, bi-racial transguy with experience as a girl, from a working class family, educated in feminisms, performativity, and manipulating language. I also realized that to some community members before I opened my mouth about social consciousness, my presence was already a threat to a women’s space.

Taking what I initially perceived as a community’s refusal to change and instead understanding it as a community’s act of resistance just like any amazing social change movement (think Suffragettes and Civil Rights), I admired the strength that came from the women I surrounded myself with at CLN (and their dedication to protecting what feels safe to them).

After working out my own feelings I was excited that this was our work! That beginning first with working these things out together could be good work for the community and is a part of social consciousness and community building, that it’s simultaneously: intergenerational, cross-class, cross-cultural, and gender inclusive!

That summer I honored the community’s dedication to self-protection with two-hour meetings about meals, answering invasive questions, and hour long one-on-ones about connection to the land. I hosted raffles, held space for a hundred people to mourn the loss of what CLN was, and still shopped for three hours to make sure Jules had everything he needed to cook a delicious meal.

A few months later, I was invited to join the Board and with great faith in the possibility of the mission, I did. We worked hard, harder than I expected and lost so many board members along the way due to unsustainable volunteer practices and inaccuracy about how much work we needed to do as an organization.

This past year we got a slew of new board members who are passionate about the work and host to a number of amazing skills but I do not see us actively utilizing those skills. I also worry that the work still falls on a few very number of active people. I also don’t think that we’re engaging the larger community in a way that feels fruitful. I want our engagement to be more than calling for money and occasional meetings, I long for our transparency.

And even more so, I would love to see an honest conversation about the top down decision to be an “all inclusive” organization and to see the membership share their dreams for the land. 

I am sure that Little Notch will get there and that in that process there needs to be dedicated people to get us there but currently the work of the feels, unclear, and passive aggressive with a resistance to conversations about sustainable ways to bring in: people with less money, engaging communities of color/actively identifying why we keep loosing people of color, and how we can logically be open to people with varying levels of physical ability.

I’ve never felt this more than during our major donor briefing where very few folks spoke to this elephant in the room.  There are organizations that grow monetarily and fundraise while doing this other very hard work, but does CLN want to be one of these organizations? The choice is truly your own.

I undoubtedly love the land and the spirit of the community but I do not see us going in way that feels fruitful or is in line with the work that I want to see happening in the world nor the work I understood us to be doing when coming into this venture.

It has been important to me to build a Little Notch Community concurrently with building a community in Philadelphia. However, I will be moving on to focus my personal, political, and work efforts toward building a home, business, and community that does actively transformative work.

As much as I want to, I don't believe I can hold Little Notch in that process right now nor do I believe Little Notch can hold me.

Because of this I will be resigning from the BOD active 2/1/13.

I am still going to continue supporting the organization in other ways and keep my ongoing donation.

Thank you for welcoming me into your community and please don’t give up the struggle, Little Notch deserves to happen.

With continued solidarity, 

shay

Dear Camp Little Notch,

I had never been to Camp Little Notch when I accepted the invitation to join the board. I didn’t need to, the magic of Little Notch travelled through all of the people I met, the pictures I saw and the memories that I knew I could make there.

Growing up as a young person camp was a key part of my life. Although I was never a camper at Camp Little Notch, I was a camper at Camp Scully, several Colonie Youth Center Summer Camps (including an amazing experience at adventure camp), modern dance camp, architecture camp and Egyptian archaeology camp. By the end of my teenage years I was convinced that I could either get into the Olympics for archery or camp crafts. I even recall the summer that I swam across the lake. It was the year that I had been struggling with severe scoliosis and was finally able to find an activity that gave me some relief.

Camp defined my youth, it was the most consistent part of life when school wasn’t in session and I give camp an enormous amount of credit with my personal development.

I joined the board because I know that a summer under the stars with other young people, making friendship bracelets, learning to manage adolescent stress, getting advice from caring adults and forging a bond with the earth, can change your life. At least it did for me.

By the time that I visited Camp Little Notch I felt as if I knew her like the back of my hand. Sitting in the crook of the mountain’s arm, looking over the lake made me proud of be a Little Notch Board member (and a thrilled participant in the 2012 Self Care Olympics.)

As I leave the board of Camp Little Notch to pursue other adventures, I’m extraordinarily thankful to Jo Lum, Ellen Tuzzolo, Shayden Gonzalez and the rest of the Little Notch Board (past, present and future) for their willingness to grow with me. I’m grateful to the membership for rallying together to raise money, clean buildings, maintain the grounds and for being willing to chart a new course and make new memories.

And above all else, I’m honored that the land chose me to be it’s advocate and shero.

Thank you Camp Little Notch, may you continue to inspire and keep us in awe.  

With gratitude,

Simone

From "Daily Practice of Sacred Reading & Meditation"

Submitted by Jo Lum:

"The very complexity of life ensures that no one person can explain what is going on to everyone else, or assume that their point of view is the right one. We can look at this complexity as a new Tower of Babel, where we can't hear each other because of so much diversity. Or we can look at it as an invitation to come together and truly listen to one another - listen with the expectation we will hear something new and different, that we need to hear from others in order to grow and survive. ... It would be more fruitful to explore this strange and puzzling world if we were together. It would also be far less frightening and lonely. We would be ... brought together by our differences rather than separated by them. When we are willing to be disturbed by newness, rather than clinging to our certainty, when we are willing to truly listen to someone who sees the world differently, then wonderful things happen. We learn that we don't have to agree with each other in order to explore together. There is no need to be joined together at the head, as long as we are joined together at the heart."

- Margaret Wheatley, from the article "Disturb Me, Please!"

In the Distant Line of the Horizon...Returning to Little Notch

I’m sure most of you know that diving down the camp road is not much different from riding down the camp road in a yellow school bus. I relived that experience this past year on the way to our membership meeting. When I pulled up to the big wooden sign on the camp road, I had to stop the car. I took a picture to send to my sister. I had the most vivid memory of that road, the sign, and the chalky, yellow lettering on it. I remember timidly walking with a buddy down the camp road, examining the sign to be sure we remembered where we lived.

I had the same feeling before the membership meeting, if you can believe it. I spent the last three years in Boston working on my law degree. Before that, I spent several years in North Carolina. I hadn’t been back to camp since the nineties. But more than a decade later, I decided that I wanted to come back to join the other people who thought that Little Notch was a wonderful place that should exist, quite literally, forever. When I saw an email calling for new board members, I contacted Jo. I wanted to contribute to the camp in some way and I thought serving on the board was a good fit for me.

So why did I feel like a little kid again before the membership meeting? Because of the many, many, many hours that the incredible coalition of members, volunteers, board of directors, and executive director had devoted over the last few years to make Little Notch a place for campers again. I became a member when my dad sent me a clipping from the Times Union that talked about CLN re-opening. I thought I could help, in a small way, even though I was miles and miles away and hadn’t been to camp in years. My tiny contribution seems like a grain of sand on the vast beach of money, time, and love that my fellow members have graciously donated to save this wonderful place.

Knowing that so many others had given so much of themselves to this place, I admit I felt a little like an interloper when I arrived at the meeting. It didn’t take long for that feeling to fade. I’m new here, and I’m here to contribute my newness. I have a past here, and I want to mine my past for its value.

I loved Camp Little Notch when I was a kid because I was an adventurous kid trapped inside a shy little person. Little Notch gave me a place where I could be independent, explore, and take risks. It was a place where I was free from the structure of school, the expectations of friends, family, and society, and my introverted nature. I learned to be the kind of person who could speak loudly and frankly at Camp Little Notch. That version of me blossomed when I was a camper and that’s why I want to help Camp Little Notch.

Little Notch is a place for all of us to have that transformational, transcendental moment—it is a place where we can leave behind the protective shells we develop to handle real life. It is a place where we can liberate our true and unexpected selves. That’s why I became a member of Friends of Camp Little Notch, and that’s why I wanted to serve the membership on the board of directors. I want everyone to have a chance to transform. I want us all to have that moment of coming down the camp road and remembering that little, unsteady kid who grew up to be something altogether different.

To that end, friends, please tell me what you need from me as a part of your board of directors. I work for you. I welcome your thoughts, requests, complaints, jokes, and all else at cmonjeau@friendsofcln.org.

Finally, a thought to ponder: When is the last time you had a transcendental moment?