For one day each summer, Camp Nebagamon forgoes its usual lumberjack theme to fill the shoes of another long lost legend of the Northwoods: the voyageur. Today is The Grand Pursuit, our second session all-camp competition day, when our campers don a sash around their wastes in their teams colors and compete for their fur trading company. (For 18th century fur traders, their sash helped prevent hernias… For our campers, the sash helps signify their team’s color!) We really embody the spirit of the voyageurs today. Instead of the bell, we have drummers assigned to beat a distinctive rhythm at the beginning of each period. During meals, we pipe in period accurate French paddling songs on repeat that your camper will surely still be singing deep into the offseason. And it’s a feast today, from raspberry croissants and sugared cereal at breakfast, to cream puffs for dessert to end the day, with wild rice, a Northwoods staple for the voyageurs, featured in all three meals.
The Grand Pursuit is one of the more unique events at camp, as the victor is determined by more than who wins the most games and sports throughout the day. In those events, campers earn contribute pelts (points) and game moves on a giant voyageur themed board game, designed and exclusively played right here at Camp Nebagamon. Throughout the day today, each village plays a solo round of the game, before they gather after dinner as a whole camp to play out the final rounds all together. Whoever can explore and control the most portages on the map will be crowned the winner. The competition today is fierce and spirited, and for many campers it’s the highlight of their summer as they practice their planning and strategizing skills. So, as much as the day is voyageur themed, it’s strategy themed as well.
The event actually began last night with an opening ceremony. Returning participants joined their trading company from previous summers, and gave the new campers a warm and rowdy welcome as they were sorted onto their new teams. Each team had a barbeque to bond as a team and make their plans for the board game, and we ended with a round of human Stratego tag on the Upper Diamond to determine the starting move order for the board game. Each camper is given a card with a role on it, and when they tag another camper, they compare cards – the higher card gets the lower card out, unless they tag a trap, etc. etc. etc. It’s a complex set of rules that the campers master and manipulate to outlast the other teams, and boy have they mastered it. Campers were dismissed to yet another strategy session for their team that only ended because the jop-up bell rang for the youngest campers to go brush their teeth, and reluctantly, the campers made their way to bed, still chattering about the big day tomorrow.
Events began this morning, and are geared toward both athletic ability and puzzle solving prowess. From the jigsaw puzzle race and the speed coloring contest, to soccer shootout and spikeball, campers have spent the day giving it their all. In nearly every moment of downtime, between plays on the field, between bites of wild rice, and of course, between moves at the game board, campers are talking about their strategy. They hold paper printouts of the game, comparing moves on the map and debating whether this lake or that is the better stronghold for their team. They walk around with four colored markers to try and simulate what they think another team might do. And they build and break alliances like you wouldn’t believe.
This afternoon, just after lunch, I saw a group of tightknit Swampers all from the same cabin pouring over a map. One camper represented each team, and they were negotiating what moves they might make in their round that would begin in just minutes. They made their plans, and soon the drums began beating from the Council Fire Ring, signaling it was time for the Swampers to play their round of the game. They trotted down the Hill and took seats in front of the board with their teammates. The game master began gameplay, and maybe a move or two into the round, the alliances that had been so meticulously planned not 10 minutes before had dissolved. The campers had to regather as a team, decide on a strategy, and plot a new course through the lakes and portages to find a way to connect two sides of the board. I heard one camper shout across the ring to his cabinmate, wondering what had happened to the treaty formed prior to the round, and his friend simply shrugged in response. And so, he and his team drew up a new plan, one that involved ensuring the former ally wouldn’t be able to surround their lake as they’d hoped to. All’s fair in The Grand Pursuit!
The Swampers handed it off to the Axemen, who played a round of the game, and then the Loggers, and all the while the rest of camp was out and about competing in events that will determine moves in future rounds of the game. After our barbeque tonight, the whole camp will gather once again at the Council Fire Ring to play the final rounds of the board game, and we’ll reveal the big twist. Every year we introduce a new rule or game mechanic, both to keep things fresh, and to ensure that the team in last place has a fighting chance to win the day. This year, the game has been winter themed – the map was repainted as snow and ice, the costumes added a layer of scarves and flocking, and the speeches were rewritten to refer to dogsleds and blizzards. I don’t quite understand the mechanics of the game rules that will be modified this evening, but I’m confident our campers will pick it up quickly to exploit the new rules to their team’s advantage.
The planners of our day were thrown a twist as well. As you probably know, the air quality throughout the midwest has been impacted by the Canadian wildfires. With smoke in the air, the event leaders reworked the normal athletic events that we’d typically run today. We wanted to limit the amount of high intensity and long-duration outdoor activity, so our fantastic planning committee, led by our Program Coordinator, Nora, drew up some new games that allow for more breaks in the action and lower cardiovascular demands. We were a little hesitant to break the news to our campers, as they look forward to many of these camp classics, but ultimately, we shouldn’t have been. The new games the leaders introduced and invented, like tag-team mini-soccer and ultimate frisbee golf, were received with incredible enthusiasm, so much so that there’s already talk of some of them sticking around in future years as Grand Pursuit staples.
Tonight, we’ll head up to the Upper Diamond for a bonfire and fireworks to announce the winners, and campers will head back to their cabins tuckered out of both energy and scheming. Cabinmates will gather once again on their bunks, both to discuss how each team played the board game, and to congratulate each other on cunning and crafty gameplay. As the banner says in the Rec Hall, “Win or lose, be a good sport.” That idea isn’t just a slogan – it’s the guiding compass for our voyageurs all day long. Throughout The Grand Pursuit, on the field and at the board, campers cheer not just for their own teams, but for clever play, creative strategy, and honest effort by their opponents. Tomorrow morning, they’ll wake up as one camp again, and the alliances formed and broken will fade away into the fond memories of the grit and grace of another spectacular Grand Pursuit.