The Arrowhead Archives

The Arrowhead

Camp Nebagamon's Monthly Newsletter

Volume XCI

Number 9

December 2019

Return to Our New Style

All That We Send Into the Lives of Others

By Adam Kaplan

Camp Nebagamon has many traditions that are worthy of recognition and pride: spaghetti on the first night of camp, Paul Bunyan Day, Wednesday afternoon trips to the Dairy Queen, our always moving and poignant Keylog Ceremony every Sunday night at Council Fire, and many more. We Nebagamites (not sure that is the appropriate term!) are creatures of habit.

An often overlooked yet absolutely defining tradition within the Nebagamon community is the tradition of giving that the camp family has nurtured for many years. Nebagamon and the camp family have a remarkable track record for generosity. The most obvious example of this is the fact that we actually pay our staff a salary to get to come up to camp and play with kids for an entire summer! What could possibly be more generous than to actually give someone money to spend a summer in paradise!?!? (Ok….a bit of a stretch I know….but, after all, this is the summer staff recruiting season!).

This tradition of giving also manifests itself in the two charitable organizations most prominent in our community, The Camp Nebagamon Scholarship Fund and Camperships for Nebagamon. Occasionally, there is some confusion about the two organizations so I thought I would take some time this month to talk about both of them.

In 1948, Muggs and Janet Lorber founded the Camp Nebagamon Scholarship Fund (CNSF). The fund is intended to provide money and scholarships to agency camps around the country. Whether it be a camp for families in financial need, a camp for children with emotional struggles, or a camp for kids with physical challenges, the Camp Nebagamon Scholarship Fund has been doing this great work for over nearly three quarters of a century! Historically speaking, one of the more special facets of CNSF is the focus that has been placed on inviting current campers to participate. Every summer, just outside the Big House, we erect and tarp a big board that explains not only what CNSF does, but different ways in which our campers can contribute to make a difference in the lives of other children. Whether by earning money raking leaves, contributing some of their allowance, or creating their own fund drives, campers are shown that THEY can participate in Nebagamon’s culture of giving.

The second charitable organization that is important to the camp family is called Camperships for Nebagamon (CFN). Founded in 1995, CFN has raised well a tremendous amount of money with the sole purpose of sending kids to Nebagamon, and other independent camps like Nebagamon, who would not otherwise be able to attend. To date, over two hundred kids have received some sort of scholarship from CFN. There are several great aspects of this scholarship fund. Most obviously, the boys that come to camp on a scholarship benefit tremendously from their experience. Children who normally would never have gotten a chance to experience the growth and magic of Nebagamon (or Nebagamon-esque) summers are given that opportunity. Secondly, the first-year scholarship comes with an assurance that, if everything goes well, the scholarship dollars will follow the boy through the entirety of his years at camp. It allows for a complete experience. Third, this continued support of a camper also makes it more likely that he will then return and share more of himself as a staff member in the future. This completes the giving cycle.

Finally, let us not overlook the positive impact the CFN scholarship program has on the rest of the camp community. The scholarship is not intended simply to improve the life of the individual recipient of the scholarship. The scholarship is intended to improve the camp experience for everyone at camp. I cannot tell you how much I believe camp as a whole has benefited from the addition of scholarship campers throughout the years. These campers enrich, broaden, and add to our family in so many ways. There can be little doubt that Camp Nebagamon is a better place because of Camperships for Nebagamon and the kids that CFN has helped send to us since 1995.

Oftentimes folks don’t give camps enough credit for the lessons they teach and the gifts that they deliver. In this month of giving, I think it is appropriate to acknowledge, appreciate, and even consider giving to one (or both!) of these truly special organizations that are genuinely making a difference in the lives of children through camping….

Happy Holidays all…

News of the Camp Family – December 2019

Compiled by Adam Fornear

It’s amazing how fast the off season goes…where did November go?! This month has been a busy one. Outside of my Nebagamon responsibilities, I have found myself swinging a hammer and doing a bit of chain-sawing on a friend’s hobby farm. The work on “80 Mile Farm” has been a project for the past couple years that I’ve been able to devote a fair amount of free time too. The farm has 120 acres, about 40 acres of it are designated agricultural, and the other 80 are forested with oak and popple trees. Currently there are two main projects that we are working on to bring this neglected farm back to life. We are working on making it a healthier forest by thinning out many of the popple trees so the oaks can get more sunlight to flourish. While we did our fair share of chain sawing, it’s now in the phase of real loggers. The difference though is that the loggers themselves are not 20 feet tall like Paul Bunyan, but the machinery they use is gigantic. Those of you that grew up with Tonka Trucks back in the day would really dig this machinery. Sadly, they won’t let me drive the skidder so I just have to pretend. The second project that’s in full swing down on the farm is rehabbing the farm house that was built there in 1908.  We gutted the entire inside of the cabin (that was home to every bat, pigeon and feral cat in Pine County), and have been slowly rebuilding it in our vision. Amazingly, it was a log building and after sandblasting and staining it has really come to life. It’s been an interesting process how this farm house has taken shape. “80 Mile Farm” comes from an old sign found buried in a junk pile on the property… and that’s it.  Much like our 9th graders naming a big trip… it’s something simple that happens on their trips and it just feels right to name it after that. Anyhow, we’ve been harvesting materials from old, non-standing buildings on the land an using them inside the house. Not to brag, but the finishing work on the inside is really sharp! 80 Mile is now about fifty percent done, but it is livable, even during a harsh Minnesota winter.

80 Mile, lookin’ spiffy!

There is something satisfying about construction. Taking raw materials, having a vision, and seeing it to the end. When that project is done, you step back and look at the finished product…and just smile. Making the cuts with the saw, hanging tin on the ceiling, and just being exhausted at the end of the day. It’s rewarding. It’s an end of one project and the beginning of something new. You see it down at our craftshop, campers focused hard on the lump of clay on the wheel, bracing wood legs on tables they built. If you watch them closely enough you can see them processing what is before them and seeing those thoughts come to life in the form of whatever they’re working on. It’s quite magical to watch.

Soon I will be joining Adam Kaplan on the East Coast for the second reunion tour of the season.  Hopefully you can join us in your respected city and share loads of those great camp memories with us.  Till then, send me some news for the next publishing of the Arrowhead and have a great day! Email me (Fornear) at fornear@campnebagamon.com.

Mayhem crushing it on Paul Bunyan Day

IT MAY INTEREST YOU TO KNOW that in Chicago, Jack Gordon place in the top 12 for his cross-country conference. Myles Rontal (Detroit) is playing basketball and his team recently made the playoffs. Eli Zelvy (Cincinnati) is swimming for a year-round club team and his school. While, his brother, Aaron “Mayhem” Zelvy is on a diving team. Mayhem is also crushing it in lacrosse.  He scored seven goals in his last game.

IN THE WHERE-ARE-THEY-NOW DEPARTMENT: Zach Sullivan (Chippewa Falls, WI/Duluth ’16,’18) is the Program Director for the Duluth Folk School. Sully is responsible for creating and implementing classes with both children and adults in Duluth.  Next week he is running a canoe paddle making class. Zayla Asquith-Heinz (Haines, AK/Duluth ’17-‘18) is a Tax Site Supervisor for Community Action Duluth in Duluth, MN.

CONGRATULATIONS ON THE RECENT ENGAGEMENTS go to Peter Soroko (Los Angeles ’02-’06,’08-‘09) and Kristen Kalkin (Los Angeles).

BAR MITZVAH CONGRATULATIONS go to Rafa Posen (Los Angeles)

The Road Show Rolls On!

This year’s roadshow powered by horse and covered wagon

Adam Kaplan and Adam Fornear are traveling the East Coast for December’s leg of the 2019-2020 Camp Nebagamon reunion circuit. Listed below is the schedule, which, as usual, is subject to change. A few weeks prior to each reunion, we will email invitations to members of the camp family in the communities we’ll be visiting. Please be courteous and RSVP to the host families.

City Dates Reunion Details
D.C. December 5th 6:30 PM
New York City December 8th 4:00 PM
Katonah, NY December 10th 6:30 PM
Twin Cities January 8th 6:30 PM
Chicago January 12th 2:30 PM

Heller Nature Center, 2821 Ridge Road, Highland Park

Los Angeles January 27th 6:00 PM
San Francisco February 1st 3:00 PM
Denver TBA

Caretaker Joe Sends Up a Weather Balloon

By Joe Crain

It was an interesting month of weather here in the forest lands of northeastern Wisconsin. The colder than average trend we had been passing through continued with the first half of the month descending into January like temperatures. Next we had a sudden reversal in the colder than normal trend that put us into spring like temperatures. And finally the month wrapped up with a week of near normal temperatures that brought us two big snow storms that made it seem more like the month of Christmas rather than that of Thanksgiving.

Snow – I mean leaf blowing!

The taste of January we received started on November 5th when our already 10-degree-below-average temperature trend turned into a 10 day stretch of 20-to-30 degrees below average! So instead of waking to the expected upper 20s or lower 30s, we were starting our days in the lower teens and single digits! The highs during these ten days were even harder to take with the mercury never rising out of the mid-teens. On the twelfth of the month the temps hit the lowest and most January like when we experienced a morning low of -1 degrees and a day’s high of 18 degrees. This burst of January was almost enough to give us one of the earliest ice overs of the lake ever recorded, which would have really been something considering that the lake had no ice at all at the start of the month and was ¾ covered by that cold morning of the twelfth. It was so close that I actually found myself cheering on the cold snap that was making our annual week of wood splitting a rather uncomfortable test of our ability to tolerate cold! Unfortunately the extremely cold nights were also joined by a steady breeze that kept the main body of the lake out from camps waterfront from freezing over completely, and kept this year’s ice over from being a record.

Strangely our temperatures took a huge swing to above average territory for the first time in about 3 months on the 16th when we suddenly found ourselves in a stretch of 40+ degree weather. The sun which we hadn’t been seeing much of also made an appearance and our false spring continued long enough to deice the lake almost completely. The two bays out from Lorber point went from completely iced over to nearly 80 percent open by the end of that week! And the main body of the lake went from ¾ covered to just some clinging shore ice. This rapid ice over/deicing was a first for me in my 24 year history with Lake Nebagamon. I have seen the lake completely iced over and then open up a bit before refreezing but never such a rapid freeze up followed by an almost complete deicing and all in a 2 week period in the month of November to boot, just wild.

Somebody get Paul a coat!

Well, the month wrapped up in just as wild a manor with 2 December like snow storms in the span of just 4 days. The first dropped about 10 inches of snow on us in about 24 hours on the 27th, disrupting my travel plans to the St. Paul, MN area to spend Thanksgiving with my family. It was a wind packed, lake effect enhanced storm that dropped two inches each hour. The second storm has been promised to be greater than the first according to the local meteorologists. It is predicted to bring us 12-18 inches of snow over the next 2 days. Fortunately this morning we did not wake to the predicted 2-inches-per-hour snow fall of the first half of the storm and the howling winds predicted have barely reached the level of a breeze. The real radar images are nothing like the “future radar” imaginings of the “modals”, European or American. It seems that all of the dire predictions and stay in place warnings have been premature, at least for day one. Things are looking pretty dicey over the Dakotas currently on the radar though, so who knows, maybe tomorrow will be a real blaster and we might get the 12-18 inches predicted. I hope not, because that much snow all at once won’t allow me to get the trails in camp groomed for skiing because the “Miracle on Snow”, my 1975 Artic Cat Pantera snowmobile, can only handle about 8 inches at a time!

Keeping an eye on the weather radar to see if this storm will boom or bust its Caretaker Joe, At Camp.

Congrats to our December Birthdays!

December 1st – Jack Rivkin

2nd – AJ Filley Brown, Asher Corndorf, Will Livers

3rd – Noah Lambert

4th – Santi Lozano, Alerto Martinez Trevino, Ron Gaare

5th – Raymond Tolentino Santana, Hank Pulitzer

7th – Ollie Gray

8th – Max Kenedy

10th – Ori Radwin

11th – Ivan Becerra, Carlos Ramirez-Deida

13th – Zack Troeller, Ben Platt

16th – Ben Hanson-Kaplan, Landon Denker

17th – Anthony Gutierrez

18th – Sam de la Garza, Pierre Chevalier

19th – Charlie Cohen

21st – Steven Weeldreyer

23rd – Kase Atkinson, Nathan Massel, Lucy Stephenson

28th – Billy Galpern

29th – Henry Freilich, Mickey Silins, Lawson Weeldreyer

30th – Fowowe Onigbanjo, Jake Finkelstein, Alex Fuller

31st – Corrado Mosconi

2020 Enrollments Start to Arrive!

Summer 2020 registrations continue to pop up in our inbox! If you haven’t registered yet for this summer, we encourage you to do so soon! We are also excited to welcome new campers to Nebagamon for a fun-filled summer.  Listed below are all campers who are currently enrolled.

2nd Grade Campers: Rafi Thacker

3rd Grade Campers: Jude Alderman, Chase Barnett, Jacob Carlin, Judah Gladstein, Digby Karsh, Elliott Kleiman, Holden May, Kane Moscoe, Lazer Rosenbloom, Solomon Wasserman, Max Yarbrough

4th Grade Campers: Zander Aronoff, Jake Finkelstein, Gabe Fisher, Evan Friedman, Milo Gilman, Ryan Glickman, Will Grant, Nathan Massel, Eli More, Max Saul, Sagiv Siegel, Jacob Solomon, Zach Weiskopf

5th Grade Campers: Jack Agran, Ben Bernstein, Ace Burvall, Sam Cohen, Tate Gell, Will Gray, Miles Hall, Liam Hdez. C. Haack, Charlie Heist, Ari Held, Eli Hoffman, Logan Hoffman, Aidan Huberman, Namon Jones, Gibson Kapp, Gus Karsh, Chase Kornblet, Lev Lippitz, Avi Maidenberg, Coulson McConnell, Linus Quinn-Pasin, Matan Radwin, Danny Schottenstein, Seth Starhill, Judah Thacker, Tanner Toback, HJ Walberg, Dax Winegarden, Aaron Zelvy

6th Grade Campers: Austin Abeles, Brooks Coyle, Emmet Felner, Levi Gladstein, Charlie Goshko, Nicholas Kallos, Milo Karsh, Nathaniel Kehrberg, Sy Kessler, Jonah Kleiman, Ben Laytin, Cameron Louie, Ryan Mack, Liam Mann, Mason Pedroza, Myles Rontal, Sebastian Rorsted, Micah Rosenbloom, Syd Rosenbloom, Jonathan Schiff-Lewin, Dylan Scissors, Benji Solomon, Ian Soutiere, Asher Toback, Levi Whalen Stewart, Jorn White, Eli Winkler, William Wyden, Charlie Zeeck

7th Grade Campers: Sam Apple, Atlas Barnes, Judah Callen, Adam Cohen, Jacob Gonsky, Matthew Gordon, Jack Hughes, Ryan Kessler, Isaac Kilimnik, Michael Kotcher, Luca Ladner, Ezra Maidenberg, Sam Montag, Auden Osburn, Ori Radwin, Zach Riven, Jacob Rolfe, Wesley Schwartz, Kobi Silver, Rush Slivjanovski, Milo Solomon, MIcah Stone, Leo Susser, Eli Terman

8th Grade Campers: Alexander Averbuch, Jasper Braunschweiger, Addison Burvall, Landon Denker, Willie Dupont, Levi Gell, Mark Gingiss, Gabriel Heller, Chase Herbert, Jack Krupnick, Jacob Lutsky, Hudson McConnell, Sam More, Will Needlman, Milo Peterson, Ben Polonsky, Jonah Rontal, Owen Rosenthal, William Schwarz, Griffin Scissors, Matan Siegel, Lawson Weeldreyer, Josh Wells, Eli Zelvy

9th Grade Campers: Sebastian Alderman, Michael Cohen, Andrew Condrell, Charlie Duncan, Adam Eberhard, Emmitt Gerstein, Jacob Greenwald, Ben Hackney, Jacob Laytin, Josh Marcus, Nelson Mendels, Asher Mendelson, Henry O’Connor, Jake Paderewski, Nathan Starhill, Jack Tierney, Steven Weeldreyer