Life
The campers build their own kayaks, then paddle them on a three-week voyage along the coast of Maine. In the process, they learn how to cope. BY JENNY BENNETT
Teen teamwork—not a contradiction in terms at Chewonki.
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Lessons at CAMP
CHEWONKI
CHANGE DOESN’T ALWAYS come quickly at Camp Chewonki. Even after 90 years of educating and caring for boys from all over the country, there were a good number of people who needed convincing that anything needed to be altered at their beloved summer home away from home. But, like most truly fine organizations, Chewonki thrives on change when it comes to its approach to today’s issues. Whether about children’s needs or environmental and sustainability questions, the camp on Chewonki Neck is arguably one of the most progressive in the country. Chewonki began life in 1915 as Split Rock Camp on the New York state side of Lake Champlain, the creation of a young schoolteacher named Clarence Allen. Within three years, Allen had moved both family and camp hundreds of miles east to a remote peninsula jutting into Montsweag Bay on the coast of Maine. Chewonki Neck—400 acres of field and forest, salt pond and marsh, and 3.5 miles of spectacular coastline—has been welcoming boys to its cabins and halls ever since—thousands of boys. In its earliest days Camp Chewonki was much like any other summer boys’ camp—basic accommodations, wholesome food, a focus on outdoor exercise and education. But Allen also brought a love of nature study and conservation to his camp, and because of that Chewonki has stood apart from the crowd. In the early 1930s Roger Tory Peterson came to Chewonki to write his book, The Field Guide to the Birds of North America. The book was one of the first of its kind and revolutionized nature study for the common person. According to today’s camp presMAINE BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS
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images courtesy Camp Chewonki and Bill Thomas
Chewonki campers outfitted with lifejackets and sprayskirts for their kayak adventure along the Maine coast.
ident Don Hudson, before Peterson’s book, if you studied nature, “You were either quite exotic, or had lots of time on your hands.” Peterson and his writings had a marked influence on the American people’s appreciation of the natural world; for Clarence Allen and Chewonki, the influence was profound. “After Peterson,” Hudson said, “Chewonki just could not www.maineboats.com
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stop doing nature study—it became central to what we do, and who we are. It’s not extraordinary for the people who work here to have a strong interest in nature and science. I have a PhD in ecology and evolutionary biology. I’m not unusual.” For more than 30 years Allen guided Camp Chewonki through depression, war, and the subsequent social change. In 65
Chewonki paddlers build their own kayaks from kits supplied by Bill Thomas of South Berwick.
“I read about Chewonki in a magazine article about 15 years ago,” kayak designer Bill Thomas said, “and was blown away by the concept of kids building boats and going paddling.”
the 1950s he began his search for someone to take his place. A group of alumni came up with the idea of turning the camp into a non-profit organization. In 1965, when the change was made, Chewonki would be only the second camp in the United States to do so, the first being the Eagle’s Nest Foundation in North Carolina. In 1966 the first director of the newly organized institution, Tim Ellis, another schoolteacher, was hired. Four years later Ellis convinced the board that they should employ him year-round, and he began to plan better ways of using the property. During the change from private to non-profit, the board had bought a 25-acre farm on Chewonki Neck; it now became central to Tim Ellis’s year-round vision. His wife Margaret established a
Part of the campus on Chewonki Neck in Montsweag Bay
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Boatbuilder Bill Thomas works with a class.
Campers sometimes work into the night to finish their kayaks in time.
Student boatbuilders often make up in creativity what they might lack in finesse.
large garden, both to educate the boys in farming practices and to augment the camp’s fresh-food provisions. (In the new century Chewonki has become ever more interested in its own sustainability. It now has greenhouses to extend the growing season—annually they grow 10,000–15,000 pounds of vegetables for their own dining hall—and a new cabin, Gordy Hall, that is as energy-efficient as possible and includes photovoltaic panels that provide electricity, light tubes in the roof, and a seven-layer insulation system. Since 1992 a Sustainability Office www.maineboats.com
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has been the center of a range of programs and conferences.) By the 1970s Ellis, who understood how difficult it was to keep 15- to 16year-olds occupied with camp-like activities, and who had always loved being out on the water and hiking in the woods, had expanded the camp’s summer offerings to include an adventure program for older boys. The genesis of Chewonki’s now-renowned wilderness program, it started with hiking and canoeing, but before long the camp was looking to the sea. The thought was to
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sail in small boats along the coast. “Somebody suggested,” said Hudson, “that we could sail up and down the coast. Outward Bound was doing it, why not us?” Several O’Day sailboats were acquired but proved to be unsuitable for what the counselors had in mind. Ellis contacted the Bath Maritime Museum (now the Maine Maritime Museum), where Lance Lee was running the Apprenticeshop, a boatbuilding program. The Apprenticeshop was too busy with their own program to build boats for Chewonki, but Lee recommended a builder to help Chewonki build their own. First a group of campers built a shed; by 1979 campers were lofting boats. They built a series of six over three years; three of them—an Albemarle Sound boat, a Crotch Island pinky, and a Mackinaw ketch—are still in use. Two, the pinky and the ketch, are used together once a summer for a three-and-a-halfweek-long coastal voyage. Some have compared the Chewonki program to that of Outward Bound. “But,” said Hudson, “we don’t go at the same pace as Outward Bound, don’t have the same mission. I remember someone who owns an island up the coast once saying, ‘I always know when 67
Planning a kayak adventure is a group endeavor.
it’s the Chewonki boats going by because the kids are smiling.’ They still do a lot of work and cover a lot of territory, but I don’t think it’s quite so intense as Outward Bound.” In 1986 Tim Ellis introduced a new program that took Chewonki beyond sailing. Over the course of seven weeks, eight of the older boys would each build
a kayak—a Greenland-style boat that was designed specifically for the program—and then go paddling. For many years these kayaks took many campers to sea, with pride if not always with dry feet. They were not the easiest of boats to build, plus they had a reputation of, at best, leaking, at worst, slowly sinking. Many required emergency care after
launching. While the original kayaks were much loved, three years ago Greg Shute, the director of the wilderness program, introduced a new boat in the interest of revitalizing the program. Designed by Bill Thomas of South Berwick, Maine, the 17'8" Willow sea kayak was available in kit form, and, best of all, the kits
On most days Chewonki paddlers travel 8 to 14 miles, an accomplishment for neophytes.
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would come with the designer as building instructor. Bill Thomas was as excited as anyone about the new development. “I read about Chewonki in a magazine article about 15 years ago,” he said, “and was blown away by the concept of kids building boats, kayaks, and going paddling. I remember thinking it would be cool to be involved in something like that. Then mutual friends were connected, I visited Chewonki with my boats, and, well, they decided to take us on.” Recently, the length of the co-ed Boatbuilders Expedition program was shortened from seven to five weeks. Two of the weeks would be spent building; the other three would be given over to paddling. Afterwards, the boats would go home with the students. In 2008 five students and two trip leaders took part in the program, building seven Willows. Bill Thomas was there to guide them through their first week. The students ranged in age from 14 to 17, which caused Thomas initial concern. “The age gap,” Thomas said, “showed up in the levels of maturity, but it seemed to work. We only had one girl in the group, which I’m told is unusual (there are usually more), and since it’s a co-ed course there’s always one male and one female trip leader.” While the kayaks were under construction, both the students and the leaders lived in tents on the Chewonki grounds. At first they prepared some of their own meals. “Early on,” said Thomas, “they decided that making dinner in camp was taking too much time, so they went to the dining hall; towards the end they started going there for lunch, too.” After one week the boats were assembled. They had been team-built—everyone knew which kayak was theirs, but they worked as a team on all the boats; no boat was left behind or received less attention. When the hulls were finished, Bill Thomas left to go home. “The night before I left,” Thomas said, “I wrote out a very precise finishing schedule. They would call me every day with questions, and we’d check things off the list—I was almost right there with them…almost. The first few days they called a couple of times a day, and they knew that if they had any question, anything, they should pick up the phone.” In the end, said Thomas, they did a www.maineboats.com
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Berry King
“Happy camper” defined: Posing with friends at journey’s end in a boat you built yourself.
great job. “The boats were all built and, really, the only area of compromise was in the finish—with only two and a half days to paint and varnish, there simply wasn’t time to do it right.” The entire Chewonki community turned out for a ceremonial launching, then the boats were loaded on a trailer and driven to Brooklin. From there, the
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students paddled their kayaks back to Chewonki. On most days they traveled 8 to 14 miles—on the longest, 18 miles. It was a lot to ask of inexperienced paddlers. The route home involved a lot of zigzagging, which gave the paddlers options if the weather turned bad or if they became fogbound. They spent each night under canvas on an island; some
part of every day was spent exploring on land, recharging tired bodies, and resting paddling muscles. The five students had had some basic instruction before leaving Chewonki, but for the most part they had not paddled before. Certainly none had done any distance paddling. Trip planning, navigating, and the judgment needed for traveling on open water were among the important skills taught by the leaders during the three-week voyage. The students took turns working with the leaders, plotting bearings and courses, making plans for the next day’s paddle. In the middle of the trip, Bill Thomas, an expert paddler, joined them for a stretch. “I paddled out to Harbor Island in Muscongus Bay near Friendship,” he said. “I hiked with them, camped out, heard their tales, and I paddled with them, fine-tuning their boat skills. The kids were pretty hungry for tips.” While Thomas was there, one of the leaders asked if it was possible that one of the boats was taking on water because it was getting heavy, just like the old boats had.
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Thomas took a look: “One kid had been collecting rocks; he knew he wasn’t supposed to because of the extra weight, so he’d been putting them way in the ends of his boat—every time they carried the boats up above the tide line, this one was getting heavier and heavier!” The group finished the trip to Chewonki, but not all the way by boat. They were one day’s paddle from the camp when one of the students injured a shoulder, and the group elected to be picked up and trailered home. It was an unfortunate turn of events. To paddle back to Chewonki to be welcomed home by everyone had been a magical goal for
Young people with little or no prior experience built beautiful boats and then paddled them hundreds of miles along one of America’s most beautiful coastlines. all concerned. Chewonki is not about goals and accolades, trophies and applause, however. Chewonki is about life skills, interaction with others, recognizing the greatness of small triumphs—and those kayakers had surely reached the heights. Five young people with little or no prior experience had built five beautiful boats and then paddled them hundreds of miles along one of America’s most beautiful coastlines. Bill Thomas was back at Chewonki in 2009 with a whole new group. Improvements had been made since the previous year, including the building of a new boatshed with more space. “In 2008,” Thomas said, “we could barely move, and we couldn’t close the doors while we worked; there’d have been no building in the rain. But we got lucky—it didn’t rain! This year… well, thank God we had the new shed, because www.maineboats.com
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it pretty much rained the whole first week. The program was the same, but, inevitably, with new students and leaders, the dynamics were different.” One day, after the group had been working hard and were settling in with a well-earned evening snack in the dining hall, two alumni from the 2008 program came in to visit. “It was wonderful,” said Thomas. “They were so full of enthusiasm and just eager to share it with the new group. Over the winter they’d refinished their boats, upgraded their gear, and had all kinds of plans for future adventures.” The plan for the 2009 voyage was to paddle from Chewonki to Brooklin and then drive home. With no grand “homecoming” planned, the pressure was off, and they would be paddling with the prevailing winds. More time was also allotted for pre-trip paddling instruction. The students’ skills grew with experience. For example, one day was spent paddling around Pemaquid Point in the fog. One of the students planned, navigated, and led the whole day. The group was as prepared as they could be in the given time. The Chewonki paddlers arrived in Brooklin a day early. Bill Thomas was there when they arrived. “The last night they camped together,” he said, “we went for an evening paddle. It was a near-perfect experience. We came back in deep dusk paddling through bioluminescence; as it dripped off our paddles the water sparkled with a light of its own. They’d been paddling for three weeks but still didn’t want to come off the water; they were swimming and paddling and having fun; they just wouldn’t give the day up.” Thus had 11 young people been introduced to boatbuilding, kayaking, Maine, and the ways of the sea. They have memories and tales, new skills and life lessons to last a lifetime, and a boat to take them over many waters. Forever they will be able to call themselves alumni of Chewonki. It doesn’t get much better than that. Jenny Bennett is a freelance writer who lives in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Chewonki Foundation, 485 Chewonki Neck Road, Wiscasset, ME 04578. www.chewonki.org Bill Thomas Woodworking, 151 Ogunquit Road, South Berwick, ME 03908. 207-676-4049; www.billthomaswoodworking.com
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