Boys gone wild. Sound like a nightmare?

Not if they’re attending Night Eagle Summer Camp, a primitive all-boys nature camp, set on 140 acres a mile into Vermont’s national forest.

It’s nothing fancy. Visitors park at a dead end in front of a gate and walk a half-mile in, past two lakes.  A three-acre clearing opens with 10 to 12 tipis set up. This is camp.

There is no electricity, just solar power; the boys cook their own food over an open fire. And they sleep on the ground.

But as long-time camper and counselor, 17-year-old Cameron Shorb of Lincoln, will tell you, it is a very special community, “a community that includes the wilderness around us: the firs that we run through, the lakes that capture the sky, the moose that leave tracks on our trails and in our dreams.”

The camp, which was built from scratch 12 years ago by educators Bruce and Kelly Moreton, is based on simplicity and getting kids back to nature. “We talk about Native Indians and other earth-based cultures,” says Bruce, “and that people don’t need the kinds of things they think they need.

“It’s a romantic idea, and the kids aren’t sure they can do it. But once they do it, they see it’s not so big of a deal,” says Bruce.

Bruce and Kelly use the environment for the activities. “We use activities in the woods to calm people down and get to know each other and be respectful of each other. There are trails throughout, old logging roads for day hikes. We have a marsh for swamp romps.”

A typical day at Night Eagle begins with a wake-up call, staff blowing into a conch or beating a drum. Everyone staggers out of his tipi to circle up to say good morning before breaking for 30 minutes of chores. Then there’s breakfast, teeth brushing and cleaning up before Bruce leads morning reflection.

Bruce, a  high school English and history teacher of 30 years,  typically tells a story of an American Indian or historian. After, campers are quiet, all 40 of them, sitting in reflection for 15 or 20 minutes. “Imagine all these kids who are ‘ADHD’ or  ‘ADD’ and they sit there and think,” says Bruce, “Everyone gives a hug and then we announce the morning activity.”

Campers decide in the morning and in the afternoon what they want to do, choosing from a list of activities as the program is very much decentralized to allow for camper input. “Maybe a trip is going out to look at the beaver lodge and they get hung up picking wild edibles and start to make tea. One camper might say, ‘Where’s that trail go?’ and we’ll say, ‘let’s go see.’ Campers are part of the democratic process,” says Bruce.  

Days and evenings are filled with quiet crafts, active games, meaningful discussions, homemade music, storytelling, and a hundred other activities including carving bows and arrows, paddling canoes, creating birch bark baskets, throwing darts with an atlatl, making moccasins and rattles, mastering the art of tracking and camouflage, identifying wild edibles and learning to build fires with flint and steel and bow drills.

“I kept coming back for the skills, the actual activities taught at Night Eagle,” says Cameron who has attended camp for seven years, since he was 10 years old. “I had always loved nature, always wanted to learn how to survive in it and live in harmony in it.”

Bruce will never forget Cameron’s first visit with his mother when he was 9 years old. “He had a smile on his face the whole time.” His mother told Bruce that Cameron’s passion for nature was so encompassing that her son would get excited just walking on a gravel road.
 

Kelly says, “Cam is interesting because this was very much his thing and not his family’s. He knew he belonged from moment one. Fortunately he has a family that supports his individuality.”

Yet Cameron stresses that you don’t have to be a  “nature kid” to attend Night Eagle. “You don’t have to know a thing about the outdoors or American Indians,” says Cameron. “Whatever boxes you fit into at school—computer geek, jock, whatever—simply don’t apply. If you think you want to go to Night Eagle, then that’s enough. It’s a different kind of place, to be sure. It takes a lot of adjusting, sometimes even dealing with discomfort or fear. But the result is certainly worth it.”

Bruce says “A lot of them who come to us don’t have a lot of self-esteem or aren’t great in sports, and it seems that that’s how kids are measured in our society.” Night Eagle builds self-confidence and empowers young boys.

However the camp is a magnet for all types. Campers include two Swiss hockey players who prefer to travel from Switzerland for their Night Eagle experience than attend their typical hockey program.

Highlight for First-Time Campers
 

Perhaps one of the most significant and moving traditions for a first-time Night Eagle camper is the Naming Ceremony where staff gives campers a Native American name which reflects who they are as a unique individual. From this point on, campers are referred to only by their Native American name at camp.            

Ryan Baxter-King, age 17 of Lexington,  remembers being called to sit on a rock, “Grandfather Rock,”  where a counselor addressed the camp for a short time (“It felt like forever,” says Ryan).  The anticipation for the then 10-year-old mounted as Ryan was about to participate in a camp ritual based on building self-confidence and fostering a better understanding of native peoples and their relationship with the earth.

“I remember feeling excited; receiving your name is one of the most important events, if not the premier event, of the first year at Night Eagle,” says Ryan, whose description of the Naming Ceremony sounds a bit like a Harry Potter Sorting Ceremony (but more magical!).

Sometimes it takes days for the staff’s “naming council” to come up with the camper’s name. Ryan was dubbed “Share the Stars” as a tribute to his generosity. His two brothers, also Night Eagle campers, were named Hawk Spirit and Rainbow Spirit.

Bruce, who is known to his campers as “Arctic Arrow” explains,“We sit around the campfire at night, and everyone starts talking about the camper who is going to be named, saying something positive about him. The counselor who is doing this will explain the name, and then he’ll announce it.”

Cameron, who was named Sun Spirit, says he had just finished the morning routine and about to start a normal day at Night Eagle when four drumbeats shook his ribs. “A pause.  Then the drumming continued; this time, fast and even.” He describes the sound as the most mystical, primitive thing he  has ever heard. “Everyone sat down where they were, and, transfixed, I did the same.  Then two people came running out from the woods, so covered in paint that I didn’t recognize them at first... Suddenly they stopped, gave a bead to a camper and led him away. They did this again and again, until finally their eyes were staring straight into mine and a bead was put in my hands.”

What Cameron describes is a Naming Quest, a reflective journey into the woods with camp leaders, which precedes the evening’s Naming Ceremony. Once all of the “Questers” are selected, campers retrieve blankets and are led deep into the woods.  They are then asked to find a place that calls to them. “Mine was a tiny spit of land sticking out into a pond, upon which an even tinier tree grew, starting to make its place in the world, just like me,” says Cameron.

Cameron remembers, “Sitting there, we were all equals: men and boys just became shifting shapes of orange glow and black shadow. One by one, the Questers were lead up to Tunkashila¸ Grandfather Rock. For each one, a counselor would stand by him and call out ‘Who speaks for So-and-So?’ Then the hands would go up and the words would come out. That was the first time I got to see the true magic of Night Eagle. Everyone had the warmest things to say; they truly bared their hearts to show their love for their brothers. After each speech, the community affirmed it with a resounding ‘Washte!’ (‘It is good!’).”

Cameron was so moved by speaking for others that he almost forgot that he was going to be named himself. “My heart was pounding as I walked up to Tunkashila, my eyes down because the honor was too much. The next few minutes were a blur, with clarity returning only once I heard my name for the first time.  I was surprised and honored and overjoyed and so many other things at once.”

Participating in the Naming Ceremony and watching other first-time campers receive their names continues to be the highlight of Cameron’s summer each year.

Camp Beginnings
 

This character-building camp is credited to its director, Bruce Moreton, the man campers describe as a natural leader, smart, funny, inspiring, infectious.

“Bruce provided a role model for me, what I thought of as the perfect combination of maturity, an easy-going nature and work ethic,” says Ryan. “Aside from running a camp where I could mature as a person, he also gave me someone to look up to.”

Mississippi-raised, Bruce spent his boyhood living outdoors in the bayou and the creekbeds.  He also was a Boy Scout. He started working in camps in 1977 and even started his own travel camp which he ran for 8 to 10 years before he married his wife, Kelly. His work eventually brought him to Nantucket, Maine and Vermont. It was in Vermont that he saw an ad for the 160-acre property he and his wife fell in love with and own today.

Bruce and Kelly had two young boys at the time, Wyatt, 5, and Tripp, 2, but as a family, they created the whole camp: cleared the land, worked with the state to get the necessary permits, built everything by hand, identified funding, laid out all the advertising, recruited staff and campers, etc.

“In Vermont, this was the first time in over three decades that someone had laid out a residential camp from scratch,” says Kelly.  Through the Moretons’ hard work, Night Eagle earned its accreditation from the American Camp Association in its first season, a big achievement for any camp but especially for two working parents.

The couple decided on a single-sex camp. Bruce says, “It wouldn’t be helpful to have the girls there because boys act differently around girls. We are trying to nurture boys and teach them how to be respectful to one another. Once you put girls into the equation, they start to one up each other.”

Today, their boys, age 14 and 17, are homeschooled by Kelly and involved in camp.

“We pride ourselves in being a family-owned, family-operated and family-friendly business,” says Kelly who emphasizes their commitment to keep Night Eagle affordable for the average family.

Changed Lives

“I would have given anything to go to a camp like this,” says Bruce,  who is proud of what they provide: the level of instruction, the “soft teaching” by excellent counselors and the experience of living in the woods.

Campers communicate with their families during their two-week stay (campers can stay for up to six weeks if they wish), the old-fashioned way. “Parents come up when they drop their son off and come back in two weeks when their son is leaving,” says Bruce who adds that if they want to communicate, they can mail a letter.

“They come back at the end of the program and see a different kid,” he says. “I had a parent come up to me one time because we had 15 boys doing bead work and the parent couldn’t believe it. It was like stepping into Never Never Land back in history to see all these boys sitting stringing their beads.”

Cameron, who says he tries to avoid cliches and superlatives when describing Night Eagle, cannot resist saying that Night Eagle is the best thing that has ever happened to him. “It took my dreams of native-inspired living in the wilderness and made them into a reality. The legacy of the American Indian and the power of the wilderness will never leave me.

“Most importantly, Night Eagle gave me hope for the world. The strength of the community there amazed me, and continues to amaze me.” Because of his experience, Cameron is deferring his college acceptance for one year to continue learning at a wilderness living school for adults. 

Ryan, who is in his junior year of high school, will continue as a Night Eagle assistant counselor  because “I don’t want to let it go, and I want to give back in some way.

“Night Eagle is a special place. No one judges anyone else and by the end of the summer everyone knows everyone as if they are family. That dynamic can be incredibly difficult to find, and once one finds that it is hard to let it go.”

“It must be magic,” says Cameron, “because the math doesn’t add up:  friends made in a few weeks at Night Eagle will feel closer than friends you’ve had for years in ‘the real world.’  And this connection, this togetherness, is something we are very conscious of at Night Eagle. For one reason or another, society sets up a lot of barriers around boys: there are these ideas about manliness, there are stigmas around showing emotion, there is the pressure to perform and impress. We talk about these barriers and actively try to break them down, and the result is incredible, something I’ve never seen anywhere else.

“Night Eagle gives boys the freedom to find out who they really are. Sometimes they’re surprised with what they find, but they’re never disappointed.”

Carrie Wattu is editor of baystateparent.

Night Eagle Wilderness Adventures
A unique primitive camp for boys,
ages 10-14
P.O. Box 374 Cuttingsville, VT 05738
802-773-7866