Camp Nebagamon

By Adam Kaplan

One need only go through a few years of archived Arrowhead articles to find repeated and passionately argued positions on Nebagamon’s view of technology. In several articles, I have made the case that technology unplugs us from each other, unplugs us from our surroundings, and unplugs us from nature. It is for those reasons, among others, that Nebagamon (and most other camps worth their salt) makes the very conscious decision during the summer to require that those around camp unplug from their increasingly plugged in world, shelve their iPhones, and put away their laptops. We ask that you spend your summer engaged not with Facebook, but with real faces (and an occasional book at Rest Period). We ask that instead of Tweeting, you listen to the tweets of real birds. We ask that instead of Snapchatting, you grab one of our old school cameras and snap some shots of the beautiful Nebagamon landscape, that YOU WILL get to develop in a real darkroom. We ask that instead of Instagram, you…well, I cannot come up with a clever campy thing that plays on that word. Just don’t Instagram at camp ok?!

While it has long been a game for the boys to try to get around this self-imposed technological blackout, the truth is, one would be hard pressed to find a soul at Nebagamon that does not believe that we should do it precisely as we are doing it. In fact, just a couple of summers ago, when a rogue cell phone was discovered in a Lumberjack cabin, I called a large group of the older boys together and took a calculated risk. I basically said, “Ok, you win…You guys seem to want phones and technology at camp, so let’s put it to a vote. If you guys think we should change the rules and allow all of these things at camp, let’s do it.” The vote was Everyone to Zero in favor of keeping technology out of our camp experience. They play games…but they get it…and they believe in it.

Now, having said all of that, what I really wanted to do in this article was to extol the virtues of technology when it comes to summer camp in the off-season. When I was a boy at Nebagamon, I loved the guys in my cabin, and I loved the friendships I forged outside the cabin and all around the place. But the reality was, when camp ended and I got on the bus to head home, that was pretty much the end of my contact with my camp friends until the following June. Sure, there was the occasional letter every now and again, but in truth, my tendency to write marathon letters and essays did not really come to the surface until well into adulthood. In reality, camp friends were at camp, and when camp ended for the winter, the friendships were put on hold.

Today, all of that has changed. Through technology, be it email, phone texting, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, or Twitter, these boys stay connected throughout the off-season. Their camp friendships are extended. There are Facebook pages set up for specific cabin groups, email chains that involve large numbers of campers, and cabin texting groups are the norm. Some even have used social media in a silly way to keep the camp community connected during the winter. There is the A.K. Agikamik Facebook page. Who knew that the Yo-Yo Islands even had internet?! There are Camp Nebagamon Staff Facebook groups. There is even a Facebook group for campers in L-5 of 2008! And there is a host of other technological ways that these guys stay connected that, I have to admit, I really don’t understand at all….Tik Tok?

The electronic world has become so pervasive in the camp community that we have even developed some of our own little abbreviations. Many folks my age are turned off and dumbfounded by the shorthand world that the technology has spawned. LOL, BRB, IMHO, R U there, and ROFL are mysteries to most of us, and those that know them often find them to be a bit annoying. But they are ubiquitous and pervasive. So too, this shorthand has hit our crew. Virtually any email, or texting conversation, or Facebook posting done within the Nebagamon community ends with KTFB…..Keep the Fires Burning. Everyone knows what it means and virtually everyone does it. We have a shorthand way of saying to each other “I am here, and will always be here.” I kinda dig it…

Not only is it just plain fun to stay connected year round to your best friends on the planet, you boys are so in touch with each other that you know what is happening in each other’s school years. You know about sports triumphs and defeats, you know about romantic triumphs and defeats, you know about vacations…and sure, maybe every once in a while you know about interesting things that you have learned at school…occasionally. Let’s face it, school life, academic life, and middle school social life can all be really tough worlds to navigate. There will undoubtedly be times when it goes badly. But who better to take your mind off your woes, or understand what is getting you down, or make you feel better about yourself, than the guys you sat at a campfire with sharing your biggest dreams and secrets? Or the guys that helped you, and cheered you on to fight through that really difficult portage that you were absolutely sure you could never make it to the end of? Or the boys that you sat at the Council Fire Ring with all of those Sunday nights and threw your arms around singing together? These are the guys that you can count on like no one else.

And technology has made it easier….

So, while we will still adamantly stick to our philosophy that at camp, we unplug from our electronic world, it seems fitting to give credit where credit is due here. Those friendships forged through face to face contact in the Northwoods can continue to deepen and grow when we are apart through the internet machines and email boxes that we all seem to have these days. As a thank you, I have offered Mark Zuckerberg a job as a junior wilderness trip leader this summer….no word yet.

TTYL and KTFB