It’s that time again! This year I’m going to visit camps in Michigan to perform and plant bee-friendly gardens. Last year in New England was a lot of fun and I’m excited to find four or five camps for this second annual tour.

Submit your Michigan camp here: http://bit.ly/CampsAndBeeGardens

Dar

This was one of the camps that started it all, because I went there as a kid.  Our family headed up to Fairlee, Vermont in the morning, stopping at a nearby nursery for our bee plants. By now I felt like an old hand, looking for bee balm, Russian sage, obedience plant, and anything that had bees on it, like the one with an unattractive name like scrofulous which is a real bee winner.

And then we got to the camp, with white buildings on green lawns next to a shining blue lake, a postcard of the Vermont camp. Michael and I snuck the plants out to the site while we heard laughter ringing from the dining hall. We got a full-on wave of campers heading off to rest hour, plus a hello from MJ, the camp director, and Laura Gillespie, who’d gone to camp with my sister and who I always thought was SO cool. Okay, back to being a grown-up;  we pretty much sacked out ourselves on the main building’s wraparound porch during rest hour, and then we all started planting an hour later.

It took about 10 people, two hours, and a small raid on the perennials from another part of the camp to finish the job, but the results of this fifth and last bee garden, planted around a line of five flowering shrubs (cinquefoil?) were very impressive. Like actors on a set, the bees arrived on cue and got to work. Many thanks to Cara, the gentle guiding spirit of the whole project. 

After dinner we headed to the Hale, the assembly hall, and I sang some songs and fielded questions, some about bees, but most about music.  My daughter couldn’t take her eyes off this group of lovely, sparkly, singing girls. Actually, in her yellow dress, she looked a little like a bee in a field of flowers. Very lucky her. We sang goodnight in a camp tradition, and then I hung out and did a concert for the counselors while my husband headed off with my son to rough it in a platform tent. People started telling him to REALLY put on plenty of bug spray, and he shot me a look. I was heading off to a hotel later that night.

In the morning, Patty, Taya (my daughter) and I headed off to the younger girls’ camp, Aloha Hive, and our experience was nothing short of idyllic. After performing with and for the cheerful, energetic (and so early) campers, three counselors walked me through their raised vegetable beds and took me out to their farm area to meet the animals. They make Chevre and mozzarella from goat milk, they go on berry-picking expeditions and make jam, their chickens are so free range that sometimes they visit tents during rest hour, and they’ve been dying wool with beets and golden rod. Since when did my little camp go so Farm and Wilderness? Since Cathy, their director, made it her mission, that’s when. I was so excited to see how this camp had evolved, looking into the future that seems to be, paradoxically, a very pre-industrial awareness of where food comes from.  So exciting.  Farewell, Camps Aloha, hello tired husband and son who thinks he’s got the coolest dad…

Camp Howe was full of wonders for all of us. For me, I loved seeing the kids on their tree-high ropes course (our family chickened out en masse), for my seven-year-old it was holding, and later herding, a Guinea fowl, after which he was given an exquisitely small egg, for my daughter it was the sheep and FULL immersion girl attention, and for Patty R., it was just enough signal in the deep woods to find out the Connecticut Sun had won their game.

Terrie and Catt are the innovative directors who are constantly finding ways to make Camp Howe exciting and transformative while still affordable and open to all abilities. One of the highlights of my whole trip was getting to perform at the camp’s talent show, complete with back-up guitar and dramatic re-enactment on The Babysitter’s Here, plus, later, a cameo in Justin’s performance of Hey Jude. It was a short visit, but an excellent one.

So we jumped out of the truck, which was fueled by vegetable oil left in New Hampshire for us by our friend Mike Conner, in Plymouth, Vermont and had a tour of Farm and Wilderness wonders: costumes! Knife skills! Baby goat feeding! Daily silent meditations…and this was for the youngest kids at the day camp!  My son was a little shy, but in truth I couldn’t blame him.  It’s like full-on 1972 in the middle of 2011.  I, of course, felt completely at home.  I was a Quaker, back in the day, and the beautiful benches for their after lunch meeting in the woods was a familiar sight.  After our tour, we loaded into a golf cart, passed the beautiful day camp garden and a boy wood working in a dress, and drove to Indian Brook, the girls’ camp, by way of the biggest garden, where I met Chantalle, the master gardener, who talked to me about their BEES.  

Here’s some stuff I learned: they’ve had a hard time establishing a stable colony that can over-winter.  They’ve been trying for a few winters and feel like this year’s the charm. They grow fields of buckwheat for the bees (like my dad did for his bees!).  They have an ELECTRIC FENCE around their bee boxes, because bears like honey (I know, right?  So Winnie the Pooh, but a fact.). They love bees for the same reason I do. They really are kid friendly.  They have a fascinating civilization and they are integral to ours.  And, of course, there is the encouraging confirmation that I got: YES, summer camps CAN WELCOME BEES and even have bee boxes. 

At Indian Brook, Stephen felted sheep’s wool and was mesmerized by camper Martha’s drop spindle.  I snuck up and checked out Indian Brook’s huge garden (and got some beans for Stephen), which overlooks their lake and old apple orchards.  Yes, it really was the Vermont version of Eden.  

After dinner, the campers sang songs they knew, written up on song boards. They sang two of mine.  I was thrilled.  Well, a little overwhelmed, but mostly thrilled!  

Then I sang with/for/to the campers, over three hundred of them, ending in a big musical free-for-all.  Despite my proximity to the composting toilets (you go, girls), it was a magical experience.  I told the campers that as the world is leaning towards more gardens, farmers markets, CSA, and farm-to-table institutions, they can be the ambassadors of the future.  I neglected to say that the rest of world might be a couple decades behind on the composting toilets, no matter how noble they are. 

Many thanks for our maple syrup, beans, and wool, Farm and Wilderness! And thanks for all the amazing, musical, visionary, fun things you shared with me and my family.  Special thanks to Spice, Chantalle, Amy and Lily. 

What was it that made us feel right at home as soon as we reached Runoia? The goats? The chickens? The beautifully groomed horses?  Pam and Lani, co-directors, greeted us, and after lunch and a tour from charming Ela and Kate (Katie?), we were led through the woods down to Belgrade Lake, which is enormous and looks like something out of a Maxfield Parrish painting.  Taya got in the water and decided she really didn’t want to wear anything, and so, amidst the impressive swimming lessons, windsurfers, and kids making sock owls next to the beach was a naked two-year-old, which the campers handled with aplomb.

At 5:30 we gathered for a ceremonial planting of the bee-friendly plant I’d brought (lavender), since they’d gone ahead and planted their own bee-friendly garden in the spring.  I spoke about the importance of bees and then fielded some questions, thus learning how little I know about bees, like how high they fly. 

After dinner, my buddy Patty Romanoff set up the mic stand…again, three paddles and duct tape. I sang and was sung to by Runoians young and old, and I loved every minute of it. Apparently my son, who’s 7, was breaking through the Electric Girl Barrier during the concert. Girls “who go to camp” are apparently okay.  Perhaps it was getting to see how good they were at riflery?

Pam presented me with a camp songbook, a t-shirt and a gorgeous batik bee and flower wall hanging made by an art counselor.  We loved our whole stay at Runoia (including Lani making us coffee in the late afternoon— thanks).  

We arrived at Arcadia Camp in Oxford, Maine in the middle of lunch.  We had just come up from Portland where we had breakfast at Local Sprouts, a collectively-owned locavore-leaning cafe that saved our hectic morning.  And on we stopped at Maine Biofuel and filled Michael’s truck with biodiesel from recycled waste oil!

The moment I jumped out of the truck at Arcadia I smelled pine and balsam fir needles, and we glimpsed a bright blue lake in the distance. After a great camp tour and a canoe trip that brought me right back to my canoeing counselor days, I raced up the hill and found my planting crew at a big pile that I called “mulch mountain”.  Not only were these awesome girls already well-versed in plants and planting, they were also experts at climbing “mulch mountain” and springing down.  

It was after dinner that things got interesting.  They had borrowed a soundsystem for me but the camp that lent it to them had not sent a mic stand, so they improvised one with canoe-paddles and duct tape.  I sang in front of the lake and next to a small campfire that kept the bugs away.  For me, the highlight of the concert was getting to play guitar while the campers sang “Barges” and “House at Pooh Corner” complete with their own harmonies.  After the concert we took pictures against the idyllic backdrop of the sun setting over the lake behind a small stand of pinetrees.  Our family slept in a cabin in the cool Maine air.  I read some Harry Potter to my son before we went to sleep, and felt just like a counselor.

Thank you Camp Arcadia for such a beautiful day!

We got to Camp Kinderland in the morning and were greeted with open arms and a distracting array of peace posters. I said, “Oh, you’re THAT kind of camp.”   Wow. They really are that kind of camp.  I loved performing for these hip, People’s History savvy kids who after my performance sang an international labor hymn and a three-part round that included “Miners, farmers, auto workers, and sanitation workers.”  The theme of their “Peace Olympics” this year is labor.  The banners of previous Peace Olympics adorned the walls of the hall where I performed, including El Salvador (“their bird cannot live in captivity, neither can they”), Gay Rights (“are civil rights”) and the Stonewall Riot (“You never know when what you do will become history”).  The cabins are named for progressive heroes. I’m thinking that “I live in Pablo Neruda” is quite an effective pick-up line.   

After lunch we headed over to the stone wall enclosure built by Dennis, including a stone wheel whetstone they found on the camp property decades ago.  Cindy, the talented gardener and groundskeeper, had filled the whole thing with potting soil, so the kids got to go elbow deep in soft, spongy black dirt.  They oohed and ahhed. 

One counselor pointed out that she was planting something called Gayfeather, and there were nods of approval.  The kids did all the planting and mulching and were excited to spot the immediate arrival of about three bumblebees. The Gayfeather was particularly alluring.

We left smiling. Special thanks to Tessa (6 years old) for the sign that welcomed me and my son, who would have loved the camp but might have hidden from this striking little redhead.

Hole in the Wall Gang Camp was a pretty extraordinary place.  They have bee friendly gardens galore, flowers everywhere! There was no lack of “bee forage”, as it’s called.  However, this was one of the first times that this group of kids had planted flowers themselves, so the discovery of a first ever earthworm amongst our group of nine eight year olds was a big deal. I decided not to tell them it was half an earthworm. 

The theater, which is a smaller scale replica of the artist-loved Westport Playhouse, was gorgeous and the kids were even more gorgeous and totally good-natured about the fact that their surprise guest wasn’t Justin Beiber. They still rattled the rafters with their singing, especially the Red Unit, I mean Purple! No, Yellow, Blue, Green…

As I headed off to Hole in the Wall Gang Camp, I checked a list of bee friendly plant suggestions that Michaela Medina sent me.  Michaela has been an anchor in conceiving these bee gardens at camps.  I found her through her blog on the Honeybee Conservancy.  I loved that she was so knowledgeable and called herself a “horti-maniac”, and she seemed to be about my age (you know, between 20 and 60).  She writes a beautiful and informative blog called The Gardener’s Eden.  When I asked her if it was true that bees like single blossom native plants and if their favorite color is actually blue, she explained that this is true for honey bees but not all bees.  The world of bees turns out to be many times more complicated than I had thought when I set out to create small oases for distressed pollinators.  The honey bee is still our focus, but I’m discovering there are plants that all bees like (not just blue ones), so my search has broadened a bit with Michaela guiding the way.

“This past Sunday night, I felt as though my dreams came true — well one of my childhood dreams at least. Folk artist (and HuffPost blogger) Dar Williams played a private concert at Habonim Dror Camp Moshava — the social justice oriented, Jewish summer camp in Maryland that I attended and worked at for 15 years.

Effervescent and charming as ever, giggling at herself onstage, the 44-year-old Dar captured the undivided attention of the entire camp audience — which included all current campers and staff as well as dozens of alumni and parents.

“This [camp] is a very reflective place. There’s a lot of places that I see where you can walk and really think about how you are in this world and what this world is and what you want this world to become. A lot of this camp is perhaps, I think, what we would like the world to become,” said Williams to the crowd as she opened her hour and a half set…” READ MORE