By Adam Kaplan
Over the last few months I have watched every season of Ozark, all of The Good Place, the full run of Westworld, and every episode of Battlestar Galactica. With the exception of season 3 of Westworld, this has been some really quality stuff and I am glad to have cultural literacy in these areas. I had expected that when I got to Camp in June that my content consumption would taper off and while I have certainly been watching less…the bit taper, never really came. I will admit that the emptiness of camp has been really hard to take and I have found myself retreating too often to the distraction of the screen.
And it is not only me. I have watched as the same thing has happened with my kids over the past few months. They too have become more and more absorbed by their screens. I know that at the beginning of the pandemic many experts told us to allow for this and to pull back on our screen restrictions for our kids since the situation was so novel and challenging. But still…it seems like it has been a lot.
All of us had become digital people.
Enough was enough.
A week ago, we all piled into a camp pick-up truck hauling a travel trailer and set off to explore the south shore of Lake Superior. On the itinerary were places that campers have travelled to for years that most in my family had never seen before. We planned stops at the Porcupine Mountains, Copper Falls State Park, and Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. In each of these places, we walked for miles in the woods and along the coast of Lake Superior.
Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore
At some point someone mentioned the idea of Forest Bathing, which made us all laugh. The idea of this clearly new-age California-y notion was positively silly to all of us. It takes a pretty goofy person to buy into the idea that people need to metaphorically bathe in the forests to maintain their mental and physical health…Sure hiking in the woods is nice. But the necessity of Forest Bathing? A bit much to buy into!
And then on our fourth day, when walking on a short trail near Pictured Rocks, my son, Ben, shocked us all. “You know what? I actually do think that Forest Bathing is a thing. And I am totally down with it.” And even more shocking was how quickly all of us agreed with him. We all felt it. Our previous few days of being out of cell reception, without wi-fi, and only able to focus on the natural world around us and each other, had been enormously restorative and fortifying. We all were feeling better. Forest Bathing is a thing….and we all need it!
When we arrived at our campsite that evening, we discovered that we all had excellent cell reception. And…sadly…that meant that very soon afterwards, we all found ourselves buried in our devices. At some point, I looked up from mine to see all of us sitting at a picnic table overlooking among the most beautiful lakes on the planet and not one of us noticing it. It was….gross. I asked everyone if they felt like the trip was better or worse when we had no cell reception. We all agreed….it was far better when we had no reception.
Then we put down our phones for the duration of the trip.
So….I have two items for all of you to walk away from in this first ever August Arrowhead. First, is my standard self-congratulatory extolling of the virtues of Camp Nebagamon. You see, at camp, we don’t do cell phones and we don’t do Netflix. We Forest Bathe for a month or two. We soak up nature and soak up each other in ways that our modern world make so difficult. We all need Camp. And we will all get it again…My second bit for all of you is to urge all of you to do some of your own Forest Bathing. You don’t need to have a travel trailer to do it (and believe me, you are missing out on nothing by never having to empty five people’s sewer tank through a flimsy plastic hose), you just have to have some ability to put your devices on the kitchen counter, jump in the car, and head out to someplace natural. Then find a trail, and just start walking. It may take some coaxing as we have become used to our current digital existences. But make it happen. Get out there on a trail and start walking. Don’t feel guilty about making fun of Kaplan and his hippy-dippy Forest Bathing for the first part of your hike. That’s totally fine…Poke all the fun at the idea that you wish to. Laugh together. Allow yourselves to talk about whatever comes to mind….even if it is sharing what you thought of all of the content you absorbed on YouTube yesterday. Talk a lot. But at some point, just be quiet as you walk. Look up at the trees. Listen to the birds. Soak it all in….BATHE in it.
You’ll see.
Literally “Forest Bathing”!
We’re hosting a Chef’s Cap Competition at Home on Friday, August 7th! Chef’s Cap is camp’s outdoor cooking competition, and just like at camp, we’ll all cook a classic camp meal together. We’ve selected the Axemen Village Chef’s Cap menu below and are releasing it now so everyone has time to grocery shop this week. We think the menu has components appropriate for all ages, and hope Chef’s Cap can be an activity for the whole family to get involved in. Don’t worry about sticking exactly to our menu below, as it’s optimized for outdoor cooking with kids, and not family cooking indoors. You are welcome to put your own spin on things! Of course, while Chef’s Cap is an outdoor competition, you do not need to cook over an open fire (although bonus points if you do!). And while we won’t have official judges, we’ll be giving out superlatives on our social media pages on Friday night. So, get your ingredients ready and on Friday night, share your finished dishes with us on 
We have been doing our best to take advantage of this strange non-ending off season at camp by taking on some projects that we never seem to have enough time to get to in a normal off season. The Lower Diamond is getting a major grass overhaul. The grass of this heavily used gaming field has always had a “bad” patch that refused to grow grass on a strip from what would be the pitcher’s mound into what is often home plate. Additionally, with the big renovation of tennis courts #1 & #2 a few years back all of the heavy machinery used did some major damage to the field that has never completely recovered. With some soil testing and advice from a local college extension program, we tilled up the problem zone from the backstop all the way down through the volley ball court. We had 34 yards of good quality top soil trucked in and laid down what the extension agent called “starter” fertilizer along with a generous amount of grass seed topped of with some moisture retaining straw for cover. Adam Fornear has been diligently watering the field each day as needed and things are starting to green up nicely! You may be wondering about how the field endured the “big” rain we had – well Fornear was on top of his game and though the ground was ready for planting he held off when the forecast called for rain that week and we didn’t lose any seed to the big storm. The storm did reveal some low spots in the top soil that we spread and he was able to address those areas and got the seed planted without major disruption. The Lower Diamond is greening up nicely and with this summer’s lack of heavy foot traffic we are hopeful that by the start of next year’s camp season the lower diamond will have a deeply rooted and dense crop of grass.
18th – Max Yarbrough