I strongly believe that everything that happens in a person's life is meant to be. Years ago, I visited a good friend and his wife in northern Mississippi, arriving at their house on a Saturday afternoon. That evening they were preparing to attend the opening of a play and invited me to join them. I thanked them for the invitation, but declined, saying that I'd rather find a book to read and just relax.
After they left for the playhouse, I wandered over to the bookshelves that must have contained over two hundred books, both hardbound and paperback. Eying the covers, I saw a book titled, As Sparks Fly Upward. I slipped it off the shelf and, as I usually do when selecting books, read the first paragraph. Instantly, I was drawn into a captivating history of a group of Quaker camps in Vermont. One of those camps really intrigued me -- Flying Cloud.
The story behind the founding of the camps begins with Ken and Susan Webb, Quakers who believed in the "light within" and "simplicity." I'm told that Ken was the dreamer of the two, but it was Susan who was more practical and turned the dreams into reality. In 1939, they founded Timberlake (first known as Mehrlicht), which would become a large boys’ camp, and two years later opened Indian Brook, a large girls' camp.
Prior to establishing those camps, Ken had long believed that "A really fine camp could be set up with only one small building and a place to store the campers' city clothes," and dreamed of starting such a camp. However, he had to wait over twenty years before he could see his dream camp, Flying Cloud, finally become a reality in 1964.
Like many sleep-away camps in the 1940s -1970s, Timberlake had established a fine Indian lore program that was led by Wakio Rassenes, a Mohawk. Boys were enthralled with the program and learning about the Northeast Indians. Often, wearing only a breechclout and equipped with just a knife, they would disappear into the woods for days at a time, listening to stories about the American Indians and acquiring knowledge about the forests around them as they grew closer to the earth. It was from this group of boys that Ken drew the campers for what would later become Flying Cloud.
That first year, 1964, the camp was advertised simply as the "Indian Encampment" and would accommodate twenty boys (ages 11-15) from July 12 to August 8. Its goal: "So modern American boys may catch some of the spirit of the Indian at his best -- reverent toward all life, self-disciplined, courageous, generous, with an amazing democracy from which we can still learn." They would live in tipis and build a council ring, a kitchen, a sweat lodge, trails, a dam, and a playing area for American Indian games. After a successful summer, the following year the camp emerged as Flying Cloud, adopting the name given to Rassenes by the Mohawks after he had become a pilot in the Air Force during the Korean War.
Fast forward to 1986. Having read As Sparks Fly Upward, I applied for positions at both Flying Cloud and Timberlake. In the spring, I was contacted and hired by the Flying Cloud director. In June, I eagerly packed my Subaru and headed to Vermont, where I could see and experience firsthand how Ken's dream had turned out. Boy, was I lucky!
After I arrived at Flying Cloud, I learned that there had been a few problems at the camp the previous summer, leading the director to hire a more seasoned staff in 1986. Apparently, the camp's focus on the American Indian had become blurred in recent years, and someone (I don't know who) recommended that the director hire Allen Flying By, a Lakota from Standing Rock Reservation in South Dakota, to get the program back on track. I had hit the jackpot -- a wilderness camp where I could live in a tipi in the Vermont woods while learning more about the American Indians from a relative of Sitting Bull.
By the time I arrived on the scene in Vermont, Flying Cloud had been in existence for twenty-two years. The directors and leaders from the early years of camp had moved on with their lives, and succeeding leaders were not as knowledgeable about the American Indians and their culture. Boys still wore breechclouts and lived in tipis, but things had changed somewhat. Campers and staff continued to participate in ceremonies, but I could see that the ceremonies had been bastardized. People were not sure why they were doing the things they were doing, or even if they were doing them correctly, but they continued doing them nonetheless.
Allen must have been cringing inside, but he watched quietly and patiently for a few days before suggesting some changes that, in his view, needed to take place. The campers and the new counselors were supportive of the changes and wanted to learn about Allen, his people, and their culture. I had an amazing summer, learned a lot by hanging out with Allen, and made many good friends, campers and staff alike. I looked forward to returning to Flying Cloud in 1987 and was happy to see that Allen would be back to pick up where he left off. Allen and I even had an opportunity to take a group of campers on a four-day canoeing adventure in the Adirondacks that summer.
In 1988, Allen again returned to Flying Cloud but had to leave before the camp season ended. Near the end of that summer, the Flying Cloud director took me aside and told me that he would not be returning in 1989 and encouraged me to apply for the position. Some of us had worked hard to remake Flying Cloud, so in order to maintain the enthusiasm in camp, I decided to apply for the director’s job.Â
In the fall of 1988, the executive director offered me the position, and the first person I contacted was Allen to see if he would return to Flying Cloud that summer. He agreed, and we worked together to bring about the remaining changes that he thought should take place. The following year, Allen was unable to return, but the changes we had implemented had taken root, and campers were totally immersed in the program, as evidenced by the fact that Flying Cloud was the first of the Webb camps to be fully enrolled before Christmas.
When I first arrived at Flying Cloud in 1986, I had six years of sleep-away camp experience under my belt and had been operating Quest, a travel camp I had established for boys in Mississippi who wanted to backpack in the mountains of North Carolina, where I had spent several summers backpacking in the Pisgah Forest. It had been my dream to own my own sleep-away camp some day, and after nine years at Flying Cloud, I knew exactly what kind of camp it had to be.Â
In 1994, before I left Flying Cloud, I stopped at Brooks End (Susan Webb’s home in Plymouth, Vermont) and met with Susan. We chatted for a while, and I told her that I had really enjoyed my time at Flying Cloud, but I was stepping down as director to look for some land of my own in North Carolina on which to start a primitive camp similar to Flying Cloud. She knew what a daunting task I faced, but she was extremely supportive and wished me well in the endeavor, saying if she could help in any way to let her know.
My search took me through several states and lasted five frustrating years. I have to admit, by that time that I had pretty much given up the search. Then on a trip to visit some friends in Vermont, out of habit I picked up a real estate magazine at a country store and began looking through it. To this day I don't know what caused me pick up that magazine, but in it I found the perfect piece of property that I had been looking for, not in North Carolina as I had hoped, but in Vermont, just 14 miles from Flying Cloud.
In 2000, Night Eagle Wilderness Adventures welcomed its first campers, which included a van load of Lakota boys from Standing Rock Reservation driven to Vermont by Allen and his Uncle Gerald. This past summer in August, 2024, Night Eagle celebrated its 25th Anniversary. It still amazes me to think that I owe it all to a book that I stumbled across at a friend's house.
I never had the pleasure of meeting Ken Webb; he had passed away in 1984, the same year that I learned about his camps. However, I believe he would agree that everything that happens in a person's life is meant to be. Maybe he even had a hand in it!
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