Camp Nebagamon

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.

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.