About Us
In an age in which camps are getting bigger, less personal, and stressing electronics and athletic competition more and more, there is a need for camps that offer a genuine camping experience and an opportunity for our children to live in harmony with themselves, others, and the environment.
Night Eagle exists to introduce the youth of today to the wonders of nature and to offer them that rare moment in which they can slow down, escape the modern world of cell phones, television, and video games, and discover new aspects in the meaning of life.
“Teach your
children what we have
taught our
children - that the
earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth, befalls the sons of the earth.”
- Chief Seattle
Living Simply
For over twenty years, Night Eagle has encouraged boys to examine the natural world through a simplified lens. In our primitive setting Night Eagle introduces campers to a slower pace of life without modern conveniences that can distract them from a socially organic experience with their peers.
Allowing Time to Unplug
Night Eagle celebrates the opportunity to detach from modern conveniences, put cell phones away, and live more closely with nature. Living in tipis, our campers learn to start fires with flint and steel or a bow drill, to understand the time of day as sunrise or sunset, to reconnect with their friends face to face, and to love the person who they are in the quiet moments.
Building Community
Night Eagle is a different kind of camp based on mutual responsibility and cooperation. Boys lean heavily on their fellow campers for support in meeting the challenges of every day life. Things may not be as easy or convenient as at home, so it's essential that everyone do his part.
Wood must be gathered and chopped, fires must be tended, and meals must be cooked. By working together, campers learn that everyone's help is necessary to keep the community strong, and the line between work and play fades into an exciting cooperative group spirit.
Through community living and group decision-making, we believe that boys can learn to live and play together in a spirit of cooperation rather than competition.
We hope all campers will have the opportunity to recognize their strengths as well as their weaknesses, exercise the ability to lead and to follow, discover their own ability to help and to ask for help, and respect others for who they are as they grow into responsible and caring adults.
Letting Boys be Boys
Today, perhaps more than ever, boys need a place where they can have adventures of their own, real adventures, not the kind you find on television and computer games.
Boys need to have a place where they can spend the night in a sleeping bag rolled out on the bare ground and wake up covered with dew just in time to hear a loon, or witness a great blue heron flapping high overhead, or watch a bear as it slips silently into the forest.
They need to have a chance to fall asleep staring into the glowing embers of a fire while trying to imagine what it must have been like 500 years ago when boys their age looked into similar fires.
They need to be allowed to shed their clothes, leap feet-first into a cool, pristine lake, and then stand shivering uncontrollably on the shore as they watch the goose bumps and the water on their skin slowly disappear in the early morning sun. Night Eagle offers all this and more!
Respecting the Earth
A major element of Night Eagle’s philosophy focuses on giving boys an understanding of the interconnection and value of all life, a deep respect for the land, and the skills to live competently in the wilderness.
We teach our campers to minimize their impact on the wilderness, to appreciate the outdoors, and to leave the environment exactly as they found it.
Night Eagle is an active member of the Green Mountain Club and, in that role, adopted the Little Rock Pond Shelter on the Long Trail in the Green Mountain Forest in 2007.
Celebrating Coming of Age
After having been treated as a boy for 10 or 11 years, it's difficult for a camper to see himself as a young adult. Rituals at Night Eagle are used to formally mark rites of passage and are powerful experiences in a boy's life.
When a camper demonstrates he is ready to take on new responsibilities in the community, he prepares himself for a one day solo. When he returns, the entire camp is there to welcome him back and offer congratulations. Later that evening at a celebration held in his honor, campers and staff speak of the strengths of his character, and he is given a Night Eagle name that represents those strengths and is worthy of his new role in the camp community.
Experiencing Growth
You'll never be the same after a summer at Night Eagle Wilderness Adventures. You'll go home with a quiet self-confidence, pleased because you can take care of yourself in the wilderness. You'll probably have a few calluses on your hands to show that you really learned something about work, and of course you'll have a variety of new skills, knowledge, and a better understanding of others. You'll be stronger and more rugged, independent, and self-reliant. But more importantly, your horizons will have been stretched to include people and important issues you may not even have known before, and you will have embraced a set of values that will change your life.
Encouraging Diversity
According to Lakota tradition, there are four directions and corresponding colors. Among other things, these colors represent ALL races of people (red, yellow, black, and white). To show disrespect to any of these races is to show disrespect to the Creator who placed them on the earth. In keeping with this teaching, Night Eagle does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, creed, religion, or national or ethnic origin in any of its practices or policies. We offer unforgettable, enriching summer experiences to boys of all ages, backgrounds, and interests.