I was lucky enough to spend 10 days at Pemi this July, and one of my most memorable experiences while there was this: I was walking by the Nature Lodge when some campers called out that they were caring for a baby bird, while supervised by Wayne Scott and Deb Kure. It turns out that the bird had been rescued by Julia Kerr, who saw it fall from a tree after being attacked by what looked like a red squirrel; she picked it up in the interest of keeping her household pets away from it.

It was a Northern Flicker, a type of woodpecker, and over the next few days Wayne (an ornithologist) and the campers cared for it. The bird would hungrily guzzle down bits of worms that Wayne would feed it, easing the food down its mouth with a pair of tweezers. Its strong woodpecker claws would grip tightly onto Wayne’s hand, and all the while it made the most adorable squeaky “feed me!” calls. Its temporary home in the Nature Lodge was a small cardboard box with paper towels in it, which sat within a metal cage to keep any would-be predators away. (Click here to watch a cute video of Deb Kure feeding the bird in July.)

Wayne weighed it each day, and we all watched it grow and develop from a slightly injured baby bird that seemed like it might not survive, to a vigorous-looking woodpecker with brown and gray feathers and a splash of red on the back of its head.

Eventually, Wayne dropped it off with the able people at the Squam Lakes Natural Science Center. We wish it well– may it have a long, happy life, filled with lots of delicious critters for supper!

-Rob Verger

Editor’s note: We thought we’d explain with a little more detail the process behind caring for the Flicker and then bringing it to the Squam Lakes Natural Science Center. Pemi’s Head of Nature, Larry Davis, explains: “The flicker was brought in and we immediately began to look for a rehabilitator while we gave the bird the care that we could. We did get the list [of rehabilitators] and started calling. Several were already ‘full’ and we finally found one in Madison, all the way across the state. She could not commit to taking the bird for two or three days, at which point we were able to ‘contract’ with the Science Center to keep the bird until the rehab person from Madison could pick it up.”

Upper 2 on the summit of South Twin. July, 2008.

A Pemi day has a great, busy rhythm to it. But one of the most rewarding parts of the camp season comes when that routine is replaced by a trip into the mountains, whether it be a quick scramble up to the bald, brisk summit of Pemi’s neighbor, Mt. Cube, or a four-day trip through the Franconia Range.

Pemi has a long tradition of taking trips into the woods—the Appalachian Trail even cuts through a corner of camp property—and it’s always been one of my favorite parts of the camp experience. I can still clearly picture sitting on the warm rocks of a White Mountain summit on a Pemi trip, taking a sip from a water bottle and refueling with cheese and crackers. As both a camper and later, a trip counselor, I hiked up countless White Mountain trails.

Mountains in the Whites offer striking environmental contrasts. At the lower altitudes, just a few minutes away from the trailhead, the forests are quiet and stream-filled, and clusters of Goose Foot Maples line the trail. From there the trail usually steepens, and the group might become quieter as the climbing begins up a packed-dirt and rocky trail. As you gain altitude, the trees generally transition from deciduous to coniferous, and just below the tree line, the trees are usually compact, sturdy little evergreens. Then there are the summits and ridgelines of the Whites: these are breezy places where on a sunny day in the summer everything is warm and wide open and expansive: if the visibility it good, you can see for miles, with rolling mountain ranges receding into the distance. And when it’s windy or stormy on these ridges, you feel grateful you packed a bomb-proof jacket.

Things change on trips. Far from the comforts of camp, Pemi boys are challenged on the trails, and are spurred out of their daily routines into a new world. Boys on trips find themselves tested, in a good way. You carry your own water, and learn to take care of the needs of your body. If it’s raining, you use your rain jacket, and cover your pack with a pack fly, or line it with trash bags, or both. You learn the importance of keeping your sleeping back dry. At night, the trip counselor and the assistant counselor cook food over a WhisperLite stove, which produces a comforting little roar and an efficient blue flame. Dinner might be macaroni and cheese with tuna, which I think is delicious (but hunger is the best sauce). At night, you sleep in a tent, just a sleeping bag and pad and tent floor between you and the earth. Breakfast might be instant oatmeal, eaten quickly before hitting the trail.

With all these changes in routine and environment, hiking trips can be some of the most memorable experiences a boy will have during a season at camp: while days at Pemi blur together happily, trips have a way of drawing out the day and becoming bigger, more luminous experiences. Conversations on the trail and jokes over supper become all the more memorable, because there are no other distractions. Even your thoughts might seem stronger, more focused, in the woods and on the trail.

I have plenty of vivid images in my head from Pemi trips: dipping a Nalgene bottle into a cold stream and then dropping an iodine tablet in it to purify the water; eating dinner out of a plastic cup and then later eating oatmeal out of the same cup the next morning. Or, as a counselor, waiting until all the campers are in their tents at bedtime, and then making the rounds once more, double-checking that the tents are pitched properly and will stay dry in a storm, tightening the stays and stakes, saying goodnight to each group of kids.

Then there’s perhaps the sweetest part of the trip: emerging out of the woods and then hopping in the van or bus to go back to Pemi, and stopping on the way back for rare treat: candy and a soda. Rolling back over that bridge, coming back into Pemi, even just from a day trip, might be the best feeling of all: it’s a feeling of coming home after an adventure.

My experiences on trips with Pemi were incredibly formative in producing who I am today. What memories do you have? If you went on trips as a camper at Pemi, or led them as a counselor, what was the experience like?

-Rob Verger

The Pemi West group in 2006 in Olympic National Park. From left to right, back row: Christina Demetro, Daniel Pfeffer, Duncan Fisher, Jamie Andrews, Tim Billo, Emily Blackmer, and Hayley Daniell. Front row: Matt DeCaro, Corey Fauver, Anne Carman.

In 1997, when I was 18, I traveled out to Crested Butte, Colorado, to take part in Pemi West’s inaugural season. We had a base camp at 10,000 feet in the Maroon Bells, and spent almost a month living in the mountains. I still have vivid images in my mind from that summer—the tall conifers that surrounded the base camp, the fields of wildflowers we hiked through, the drama of the vast, snowy mountains that were our home. And the Pemi spirit, so distinctive in New Hampshire, was with us out in the Rockies.

The next summer, after my first year of college, I returned to Pemi in New Hampshire and worked as a trip counselor for the summer in the White Mountains. (We’ll have more about the trip program at Pemi in New Hampshire in a forthcoming item here.) Then, in the summer of 1999, I traveled back out to Colorado to work as a staff trip leader for Pemi West, co-leading a group with Scott Morgan.

Pemi West in 2006.

My two summers out in Colorado built upon a love of hiking and the outdoors that I’d been nurturing for a long time, and vastly improved my technical skills and sense of confidence and independence in the wilderness, to boot. In college, I was a Mountain Club guide, and later, the president of the Mountain Club, and the fact that I arrived at Middlebury and felt ready to tackle anything in the outdoors has a lot to do with my training both at Pemi West and with Pemi in New Hampshire.

Since 2005, Pemi West has been located in Olympic National Park in Washington State. When I asked Pemi West Director Tim Billo to tell me some about the current program, he wrote:

“This setting offers all the challenge and beauty of Colorado, but also offers a superior wilderness experience. With one million contiguous acres of federally designated wilderness, Olympic National Park is one of the largest road-less areas in the Lower 48. It offers an unparalleled trail system, as well as extremely remote and challenging off-trail travel. Though the elevations are less lofty than Colorado, the Olympic Mountains have all the characteristics of some of the world’s highest peaks, including some of the largest ice fields in the Lower 48. Lower elevations have the added advantage of eliminating time spent for acclimatization. Pemi West is a great place to join your old Pemi friends on an adventure that will teach you how to become completely self-sufficient in any rugged mountain wilderness. The trip traverses some of the many distinct ecosystems that Olympic National Park encompasses, from temperate rainforest, to ocean beach, to alpine meadow, and glaciated peaks. Glacier travel is an awesome bonus experience in the Olympics that was not available in Colorado. Navigating the rivers of ice on Olympus, while roped to your teammates, is an unforgettable experience, and a skill needed for mountaineering in all of the world’s great ranges. To prevent the need for returning to civilization, and to lighten packs for a day or two, Pemi West in the Olympics also takes advantage of a backcountry re-supply by llama.”

(That last detail makes me jealous. We didn’t have llamas in Colorado.)

Find more information on the features and history of Pemi West, and information on how to apply. (Note that this year’s program is a two-week course, as opposed to the usual three weeks. The shorter course will cover all of the same skills in a more compact, but equally intense wilderness experience.)

The ranks of Pemi West alumni are constantly getting bigger, and there is usually a good number of people who participate in Pemi West as a camper or leader and then migrate back to Pemi in New Hampshire, their teeth cut on the bigger mountains out west. Some have moved on to work for other organizations, or have led gnarly personal trips of their own. If you’ve been a part of Pemi West, either in Colorado or Washington, what was the experience like? Did you come back to Pemi in New Hampshire and join the trip program, or was it “just” a once-in-a-lifetime experience for you?

-Rob Verger

Photo by Rob Verger

One of my favorite parts of being a camper at Pemi was the mornings spent in occupations, hustling from one activity to the next. “Occupations” is the word Pemi uses to describe the organized activities that occur every Moday through Friday and some Saturdays; each activity is 55 minutes long. Campers sign up for new occupations each week, giving them the consistency of five or more days in a row of doing the same activity, but also a change each week, too. This allows the instructors to develop lesson plans that build day-to-day; occupations are where the most structured teaching happens at Pemi each day.

As a camper, I loved any occupation on the water: waterskiing or canoeing, for example. Lower Baker Pond is more than big enough to host lots of activity on it simultaneously and feel far from crowded. I’ve also always loved the chance to take a canoe or kayak under the bridge into camp and explore the quiet lily pad and reed-filled lower lake, or “swamp,” as it’s sometimes called, with a group of campers and staff. (All campers at Pemi are always very closely supervised by staff on the water, both on the lake and lower lake.)

But most of all, when I was a camper, I loved taking sailing occupations. I loved time on the water in a small Sunfish sailboat, and later, in a larger boat called a Puffin. (Now, the Puffins have been upgraded to more modern multi-person sailboats called Capris.) In my years on staff at Pemi, I taught sailing more than any other activity, and I liked the circularity of it: as a camper, I learned how to sail, and as a counselor, I taught it.

Pemi offers all the occupations you might expect: baseball, soccer, tennis, basketball, wood shop, music, and nature occupations galore. If you were to drive into camp on a busy morning, you’d see the fields and the lakes alive with activity, and maybe pass a fifteen-passenger van driven by Larry Davis for a quick outing to the nearby butterfly field. But there are also occupations you might be surprised to hear Pemi offers—night photography, for example, and other arts occupations, like rock painting.

What were your favorite occupations to take or teach when you were at Pemi, and did any of them influence the direction your life took? I know that I can’t pass a sailboat now without thinking happily of Pemi.

–Rob Verger