Turtle Tracks: 2022
We are pleased to announce that summer youth camp enrollment for 2022 is well under way. Click the title above to view the application with prices/dates. The uninterrupted wilderness experience of our program is so important for children now, more so than ever before!
Greetings from a seemingly hibernating Turtle Island. Though winter is traditionally a time of stillness and rest for our kind, we are working diligently below the frozen surfaces of winter’s cold embrace, plotting and planning warm adventures as the light returns to our valley.
Our 2022 season kicks off with our first Volunteer Work Weekend March 19-20. This event is a great opportunity for new volunteers to join the team and past volunteers to visit with old friends as we come together with ‘many hands making light work’. Generally, its the first human foot traffic of the new year, on trails and structures that the heavy hand of mother-nature was already well on her way to claiming back to the wild. We’ll prepare garden spaces, mend fences, clear-ditches and trails, and continue our ceaseless firewood operations - among countless other tasks both big and small. There are many ways to get involved with our volunteer team, even from right in your own home by sharing, liking, and commenting on our social media posts and online activities. Making donation of human food or animal feed, or donating funds using the convenient donate button at the top or bottom of our website are also wonderful ways to help. Both skilled and unskilled workers attend these weekends in person. Whether you’re a proficient welder or chainsaw wielder, or someone with mechanic or cooking skills, there’s many tasks even unskilled “indoor-cats” can help with as long as they’re in the spirit of service. The jobs, projects, and tasks we complete on these work-weekends are what makes the rest of our programs possible.
Most folks favorite day to visit is April 30 for our annual camp scholarship fundraiser: Families Learning Together! Proceeds from this event enable us to generate a scholarship fund for our summer-youth-camp-hopefuls that need financial assistance. This all-day event, offered at a greatly reduced price, is affordable for families and curious visitors to come have a first-hand nature experience here in our base camp. All our learning stations are open on this one day event, where demonstrators and educators set up hands-on skills demonstrations from open-fire cooking, blacksmithing, woodworking, horsemanship, blade, soap, and candle-making and countless other historic and self-sufficient lifestyle practices. There’s live mountain music, food and craft vendors, and even a demonstration with our founder: Eustace Conway. A small army of volunteers, ticket-sales, donations, vendor fees, sales from our open-fire kitchen, raffle-donations and tickets, and purchases from a small Turtle Island memorabilia shop, are some of the many contributions that allow us to sponsor multiple children in each of our four summer youth camp sessions.
Adult Workshops and Guided Tours are peppered throughout the spring for folks to come, spend an hour, a day, or a weekend learning a specific skill. There are several workshops to choose from, often with meals and rustic overnight-lodging included. Though our spring and fall workshops are geared toward adult students, exceptions can be made for young learners with accompanying adult chaperones.
Father/Son Camp is held annually over Father’s Day Weekend. Open to all ages, experience-levels, and backgrounds, this 3-day weekend is a rare and unique opportunity for boys, men and relatives to unplug and go wild for a weekend. Age-appropriate classes are sprinkled through outdoor adventures offered by our dedicated teachers, on our beautiful off-grid campus. For many guests that attend this weekend, its the only time in the entire year to be intentionally physically distant from electronics and screens - resetting to ancestral ways of the peace and calm only achieved through time in nature and the healing and restorative effects of uninterrupted time spent adventuring in the outdoors. * A camp ideal for Mothers/Daughters is held in May.
Summer Youth Camp is the highlight of the year. Many boys and girls eagerly await the one or two weeks they get to spend, restoring their hearts and minds in a total nature space. Our summer camp is unique and unusual, appealing to those children who long to go about barefooted and outside, free to explore, learn, and discover at their own pace and interest levels. Our activities and program offerings are unlike the many cookie cutter camps that serve hot dogs and soda, or those that focus solely on sports. Here, in a comprehensive approach to lifestyle and choices, campers cook in mud ovens, gather wild food and medicines, build and tend fires, learn to make and use knives - all with intentional undercurrents of self-awareness, gratitude and service. Away from electronics, social media, and internet distractions, campers come to understand the true and original world wide web - (of life.) Campers are led and taught by highly skilled, devoted counselors and educators through the vehicle of outdoor skills, to walk away from the experience more confident and more balanced in their overall lives. Many campers that grew up in our programs are now staff themselves, and many of our first campers from the 1980’s are now sending their own children, after the camp left such a powerful and positive impact on them, when they were children.
Given the uncertainties of this new year, we have decided to keep our finger on the pulse of an ever-changing world and scale back our programs to just what you see listed above. As warmer days approach with each setting sun, we are hopeful to be able to host even more events like the “On the Grass Contra Dance” that was so appreciated last year and even more opportunities to gather and learn together again. Thank you for standing with us as we host the events of 2022, and please check back often, as new dates and options will be posted here on our website. We also ask for special blessings on our current endeavor: Outreach Programs - ongoing right now in the southeast. - where we bring a little piece of Turtle Island right to you! If you know of any schools or home-school groups, or even an organization of adult-learners who might enjoy a class on their turf, please directly call or text our office manager Desere to get more details at: (828) 406 - eleven-ninety.
