Building a community: Boys in the woods
By Sara Bell Clifford
They trudged into Pine Alley ready for a little break, but that didn’t last long. “You can explore, but stay where you can hear me,” said hike leader Regan. With that, the boys of Raganeau were on their feet and spontaneously sorting themselves: some at work, others at play.
Ball games were started: one with a football, one with stick bats and pinecone balls. A senior camper pulled out a deck of cards and started dealing hands.
“Want to learn how to build a fire?” Regan asked. About a half-dozen kids did. They dug a trench, laid pinky-thin sticks over top, then placed tinder, kindling, and the bigger stuff. “Can we borrow your fan?” they asked a boy watching quietly from the outskirts, and he, too, was pulled in to help make it light.
“Let’s build a shelter!” someone said, and branches were dragged from the woods. They leaned them against a tall Loblolly Pine, and from that center pole, a 12-foot-tall tipi grew. “The front is good! Move to the back, people!” said a kid in camo who’d appointed himself foreman, and the construction crew moved with his orders. They stuffed the breaks in boughs with pine needles, making space for windows, the entrance, and a doggy door—“for a raccoon, if it wanted to come in.” The interior even had a hole for a bathroom, briefly. “I decided that that would stink and that would be disgusting,” the foreman explained, “so now I have to build an outhouse, about this high,” he mimed, making it sitting height.
Regan and Unit Leader Mikey were loving it all. “This is what I love about traditional camp,” Mikey said, especially for tween boys. It’s supervised but not overly structured, giving them time and space to do all this, all on their own: building a literal community where none existed.
Like any village that appears out of nowhere, this one couldn’t last, though; to Leave No Trace, the tipi had to come down before they hiked on. All the architects and engineers posed for a picture to remember it.
“This is the funnest thing we’ve done all week!” one boy exclaimed. And it was only Monday morning, with so much more to come.
