User:TheYellowMole/Camp Nebagamon

Camp Nebagamon is a high quality, traditional, comprehensive boys' camp on the northern shores of Lake Nebagamon, Wisconsin with alumni in every state and around the world. The lake is located in northwest Wisconsin about 20 mi southeast of Duluth, Minnesota. The camp offers a wide range of in-camp activities, including archery, canoeing, sailing, tennis, swimming, riflery and CNOC (Camp Nebagamon outdoor center), and a full wilderness tripping program. Boys can attend for either four or eight weeks, following their third grade and through their post-ninth grade year. It's the birthplace of "Wannado's." Its senior cabins are Throck, Voyageur, Weyerhaeuser, and Hodag. The camp driveway is well marked with the "flashing light on county road B".

History
Forty-four campers attended Camp Nebagamon in its first summer (1929.) Max "Muggs" Lorber and his wife, Janet, purchased the 70 acre site a year earlier. Muggs had been a counselor at another camp in northern Wisconsin, and he wanted a location close enough to canoe areas in Minnesota so that Nebagamon campers could have unique wilderness experiences. Muggs and Janet's daughter Sally and her husband Bernard "Nardie" Stein continued the Nebagamon tradition. They built up the camp's program offerings during their long tenure of directorship from 1960 through 1989. Roger and Judy Wallenstein led Nebagamon from 1990 through 2003 before passing it onto Adam Kaplan and Stephanie Hanson, Nebagamon's current set of directors. It's noteworthy that across 80 years, there have been only four sets of directors. And in any given summer, the staff offer literally decades and decades of summer camp management experience.

Program
"Camp Nebagamon is the greatest place in the world," as many of its thousands of alumni from every state and many foreign countries will tell you. Staff include not only cabin counselors, but specialists in various activity areas, specialized trip staff, village directors and many more. The point is that there are enough staff to provide tremendous levels of safety, flexibility, and leadership. While this is a boys camp, nearly 25% of the staff positions are open to women; it is not a single-sex environment.

In-camp activities are supplemented by an amazing tripping program where boys can cycle, canoe, backpack, sail and more on trips from a few days to a few weeks. In fact, a typical summer will see more than 90% of the kids on at least one trip; and as many as 90 trips take place every summer.

The camp enjoys a beautiful setting, four age-grouped villages with rustic cabins, and a waterfront with just about every water craft imaginable. In the Rec Hall, the place of fun, food, and fantastic antics, the walls are lined with memorabilia from past trips, camp awards, and the names of second and third generation campers.

Different Kinds of Summer Camps: Defining Nebagamon
In the 1920s, camps began to open for boys and girls all across the nation. Over the years, camping has fallen into perhaps 4 categories. First, are the day camps and recreational programs that are located in every community in the nation. These focus on limited activities, conducted with a set schedule, at low cost. Second, are the sleep away camps of one to two weeks. Kids love to get away from their parents and siblings, and these camps keep their costs down by prescribing a set schedule for their operations. Most are well run, although quality can vary significantly. Third, are the special focus camps of one to several weeks or more. While these camps generally offer a range of activities, their primary focus is on a specific topic of skill such as tennis, or football, or computer programming, or theater. The point is to offer young people an intensive opportunity to advance in a particular area of expertise. Kids attend this kind of camp because they want to focus exclusively on a particular skill.

Then there are the fourth kinds of camps--the few like Nebagamon. These generalist and comprehensive camps are rare and hard to describe. Nebagamon is a place where it is just as acceptable to focus on a special skill (such as sailing), as it is to try dozens of new or different activities as you wish. In fact, because of the resources expended on staffing, there is enough flexibility for the kids to choose what they want to do as every day begins. Think of that for a moment--a summer in the sun, and you can wake up each morning deciding only then what to do. (And of course on the other hand, the counselors will guide you through more intensive tracks and ranks as you wish which require more planning.)

Nebagamon is run by professionals who have spent a great deal of time (and literally across 80 years now), working to understand the needs of growing boys, and how to create an environment that builds true confidence, self-reliance, maturity, and respect for self and others. It does this with a powerful dose of fun and joy, and from that base of well grounded development, it sends young people out into the world mature and balanced.