August 21st-27th
A Day in the Life: Survival Camp August 21st-27th
We ended our summer season with an exciting new program: Survival Camp. This camp featured a close knit group of participants who soaked up a good deal of knowledge about and appreciation for the outdoors. The camp focused on teaching a variety of survival skills with workshops in fire building, shelter construction, knife safety and carving, camouflage, stealth and more. It was amazing to see the focus and dedication our participants brought to these new skills.
Holmes is a beautiful land, and for many of our participants it is the first place they went to an overnight camp. For these participants the week was a homecoming, having spent the past two summers away from the land. Along with survival skills the camp featured some wilderness appreciation in the forms of hiking and nature inspired art.
Both of the Adventure Games had a survival theme as well. The first Adventure, The Year King by new staff member Devon Brinner, was the tale of a small Yorkshire town in the 1700s in the midst of a famine. At the yearly harvest festival, a group of fairies arrived in town and entreated the townsfolk to help them in their quest to bring back the health of the land, ending the blight. The townsfolk provided this help but the cost was great.
The second Adventure, Nevena Loop by the Sets & Props master Ruby Lavin, took place in a not so distant apocalyptic future, in which the survivors made new lives for themselves out of the rubble. With water being scarce, gangs formed and fought each other over control of the precious resource. Little did these groups of ruffians, scientists, and survivalists know that they would take the creation of this world into their own hands and end the existence of gods once and for all.
Even with two epic Adventures and time set aside for learning new survival skills we still managed to fit in a good deal of fun. Each morning the bunking groups would have a goofy team base survivor challenge pitting them against each other. From scavenger hunts to making wacky human obstacle courses to complete, these morning challenges were the highlight of my day. We also had time for some Wayfinder classics such as Mask Workshop, where we saw some amazing examples of “go with the flow,” and Ninja the Flag, where we used our new camouflage skills to make that game even more intense.
It was a great end to our summer of adventures.
The Adventure Game, Til Your Legs Give Out, was run by the illustrious Kate Muste. In this alien filled science fiction scenario, a human military base fought against a spreading forest full of alien monsters, relying on small teams of runners entering the woods and dodging attacks to retrieve fuel to hold back the monsters. When they discovered a threat coming from inside their ranks they had to race against the clock to figure out who they could trust, and how they wanted to make their last stand.
The Adventure Game, “The Order of the Archons,” by Dylan Scott, was a tale of seasoned adventurers heading to a retirement celebration in their honor. But lo and behold, the King had been kidnapped and the adventurers had to go on one more epic quest to rescue him from a lich queen (who was once part of their adventurers guild). In the end they slew the lich and brought the king home. It was a delightful and classic adventure.
We love to play here at Wayfinder. At Sudbury we showed this a couple different ways. First in the way we interacted with the weather. Almost everyday (we caught some sunshine on Friday) we were outside in the rain. While many activities may be cancelled due to rain, we tend to view it as more of a set dressing. This was on full display all week as campers left smiling each day despite having run around outisde in rainfall.
Have you ever wanted to be a sneak thief? Or a highly trained master of disguise? How about a crafter of special potions or purveyor of magicks? Well in Assassin Town at week 2 of Wayfinder at the Unison Arts Center participants got to do just that. Assassin Town is an Adventure Game written by long time staff member JJ Muste in which there lives a town full of assassins. When the king stops in for a surprise visit the assassins must attempt to hide the truth of their village and pretend to be simple townsfolk. Needless to say after many mind wipes and goofy adventures the king, the very same one who banned magic, figured out what was going on. It was up to the assassins (participants) to figure out what to do with the king. In a beautiful twist they convinced the king that magic isn’t evil and started to train him in their ways. 
There was an abundance of excitement in the air at both camps as we started our first week of camp this summer. We ran around and laughed in wacky games, played capture the flag with swords (with 83 kids!), and learned about the worlds we would venture into later in the week. It is always a joy to see familiar, yet much older, looking faces on the first day; as well as the new faces of soon to be friends. At lunch I saw more than a few Magic the Gathering games take place.
This summer the blog is featuring a new series called A Day In The Life, with stories and pictures of all the fun things going on at camp. There may even be character drawings and stories from our participants! We’ve got camp running until the end of August, so there’s a lot to look forward to as we go through the summer.
ready to go into the summer’s programming. We ran an advanced version of the programming that we run at our regular camps, featuring everything from trust to capture the flag. Camp wouldn’t be camp without an Adventure Game. This year we played a Game written by the illustrious Chase Spearance. The Game centered around a fairy tale world with staff taking on the roles of woodland creatures trying to reconcile their relationship with a fairy queen after they had accidentally killed a member of the royal family. As with any camp, Staff Week both filled us with joy and left us ready for the next experience, excited for the coming opportunities to share our programming with the community at large.
While there has been a lot of discussion of “creating space” on this blog (and generally is at any Wayfinder event), little focus has been given to what kind of space Wayfinder is to begin with. It may seem kind of strange to try and diagnose a space which has no connection to a specific location (our office and storage facility notwithstanding, there is no one place which contains the Wayfinder Experience), but for the purpose of discussion space refers to whatever space we occupy together as a community and not the land itself. Wayfinder exists as a transformational space. The nature of this movement, combined with the variable make up of community members (both staff and participants) at any event, and the type of personal, introspective work we do allows transformations from community members to go unquestioned.
Trine is a graduate of the New School: Eugene Lang College where they received a BA in The Arts: Theater. Trine has been teaching and director theater for all ages since they were 17, and working for Wayfinder in every department, including director since age 18.
Judson Easton Packard graduated from Kansas State with a Bachelor’s degree in English and from Rutgers with an MFA in Creative Writing. They have been involved with the Wayfinder Experience since 2003 when they first came as a camper. They were on the Rules and Regulations board from 2013-2018. Before that they served the community by serving on the Hiring Board, and working every event they were given the opportunity to. They believe in hill trolls and LARP because the costumes bring out their eyes.
Lee is an artist, writer and musician born and raised in the Hudson Valley. When he was eleven years old, Lee attended his first Wayfinder event and was enchanted by the magic of play and the joy of creating fantastical worlds. Lee has worked as staff for Wayfinder for since 2013, relishing in the ability to help bring dreams to life and the opportunity to be a part of the community he has come to call home. He now serves on Wayfinder’s Community Concern Committee and as our warehouse manager.
