Week 6
Each year, Cambridge Adventure Day Camp, (run by Cambridge Camping) invites their participants to sign up for a full week at Farrington Nature Linc. This year, 30 campers took part in Nature Camp.
This is a wonderful way for the campers to get a fuller, richer experience at Farrington. If a normal, 1-day visit to Farrington is a snack, a camper at Nature Camp has a whole meal!
Campers in the weeklong program get a chance to go from being a visitor to Farrington, to being caretakers for the week. Instead of just visiting our animals, campers take responsibility for feeding and watering all of our animals, as well as collecting eggs!
One short hike on a day visit becomes longer hikes to many different parts of our property, including our wetlands, ponds, and even doing a little bit of foraging (blackberries and wood sorrel are perennial favorites!).
In addition to their time at Farrington, they also take field trips to Walden Pond for some swimming time, and we finish our week with an animal obstacle course, complete with crab walking challenges, squirrel-like balance beams, and (ok, perhaps not animal related) a slip and slide.
After the obstacle course, campers dried off and came to the campfire for a s’mores break. Then, CADC staff member Jody led the campers in our Nature Linc bioblitz dance. We can’t share our version yet, but if you don’t know what that is, you can check it out here.
During the week we also provide a survey, as a means of reflection on their week. It transforms into a nature journal that they take home with them after working on it every day as a memento of their week.
Our staff looks forward to the weeklong camp as a highlight of the summer. They build relationships with the visiting campers, and at the end of the week, the normal 5 minutes to get onto the bus becomes 30 minutes as each camper and staffer high fives and hugs each other! Nobody quite wanted to do the week-end chores that day, hoping that perhaps if we forgot the week was over, everybody would come back!
Alas, until next year CADC-Nature Linc camp. We will miss you!