Camp Nebagamon

By Joe Crain

As we put camp to bed for the 2019-2020 off-season, I couldn’t have imagined in my wildest fantasies that it wouldn’t be until June 2021 that there would be campers back at camp. We spent the fall of 2019 filled with memories of how great the summer season went and started thinking about what we would be doing during the upcoming off season to address the things that needed attention before the summer of 2020. As I always do each fall, I had started making plans and lists in my head and on paper of the things I saw while putting camp to bed that needed attention or repair over the winter months. Additionally, I started going over the ever-running list I keep in my head of the Wan-a-Dos that I think would add some fun and whimsy to the camp grounds if I could just find the time to do them. On that mental list, I keep things like new trails I want to add or whirly gigs I have had visions of in my head, as well as bigger projects we have talked about but never quite seem to find the time to get to.

As the 2019-2020 off season got under way and we began work on the Have-to-Do list, a couple of my Wan-a-Dos started to nag at me and force themselves to the top of my list. One of these projects was a whirly gig that I had envisioned for years of a large fish chasing a school of smaller fish. Another of these fantasy projects that really started to nag at me was of a trail that I had planned in my head that would snake through the woods from the Range to Lorber point. The goal was to have the trail wind its way through the original Weyerhaeuser mill foundations that are still sitting out in that part of the camp’s grounds. That fantasy project was a big one and would take some major time, and so I had only gotten as far as naming it and making the entry signs. The name I had come up with for the trail was “Mill Ruins” and a few years back when I was routing other signs for the trails I had completed, I made and painted these signs as well. I put them on a shop windowsill, waiting for the off season that I would be able to scratch out enough time to get the trail flagged and cut through the woods.

As we started to hear about the first waves of COVID hitting Seattle and New York in January of 2020 we still had no clue of what was coming. All our planning and time management was aiming at the summer of 2020 season and I had decided that if this fish whirly gig was going to ever actually be seen by more than just me in my head, I had better go for it before the season of 2020 Have-to-Dos swallow up all of our time. After having a quick reality check with head caretaker Andy Mack, and concluding that yes indeed there was time to get this “school of pursued fish” chase scene out of my head and into the real world, I went to work on it. I kept the project just between him and me thinking it would be a great surprise at the start of the season of 2020. I finished it up and, if I do say so myself it turned out great, I couldn’t wait for the big reveal at the start of the summer of 2020. Well things started to get serious with COVID for us here in March, the essential workers only orders came to us in Wisconsin and the Midwest. As Caretakers, we perform maintenance and maintenance was deemed essential, so we were able to keep working. The office crew was all working remotely from their respective homes already so they kept chugging toward the 2020 season as well. In order to follow distancing guidelines, we agreed that it was a good time for me to work on a long-term project I had started some years before, and got to work putting new screens in camper cabins. Caretaker Andy stayed working in the shop on the projects we had collected for winter work that off season. At this point we started having weekly group phone meetings about what was going to happen for the upcoming season and if there was going to be a season! I started to replace every screen in Lumberjack-1, and with the growing uncertainty about what was going to be possible with the season moved on to Lumberjack-2. Well, you know how the rest of this story goes, and at about Lumberjack 4 (Weyerhaeuser), it was clear I’d have enough time to re-screen the rest of the LJ village — 7 cabins in total.

As for my sweet fish whirly gig, I had a small reveal for the skeleton crew that was at camp for the season of 2020. Well as you can imagine the work list quickly went from have-to-dos to Wan-a-Dos, most of which I wrote about in the summer 2020 Arrowheads At Camp. These “silver lining” projects, as I came to call them, included the new mountain biking skills track down by the bike shack, tons of rail road tie replacement throughout camp, as well as a few deferred maintenance projects throughout the grounds. Well, with so much time spent on so many projects through the “summer season that wasn’t,” I decided there was time to flag and cut the “Mill Ruins” trail. Though I had to work through a few much-too-early snows last fall, I was able to rough in the trail. The snow kept me from doing the stumping that’s needed to smooth the track, it is a sweet windy trail through the old mill sites foundations and remaining wall chunks. It is a great addition to the Camp Nebagamon Bike Trail (CNBT), and brings us to a nice, round number: a total of four miles of trails all through camp.

Well mass vaccination has COVID on the ropes, the pre-camp crew is working hard to get things ready for the summer, and we here on the grounds are so excited for the 2021 season to get started!!

Excited to hear the reviews of the new waterfront “school of pursued fish” whirligig, it’s Caretaker Joe At Camp.