I returned yesterday from an awesome week at Camp Widjiwagan on the shore of Burntside Lake, way up north on the edge of the Boundary Waters.  I was one of the teacher/chaperons for 35 seventh graders.  Highlights included:

• Cold!  Snow!  Daytime highs were just above zero for the first few days.  (At 7 am Wednesday, the air temp was -24 as I walked to the washhouse to brush my teeth.)  Snow off the trails was often thigh deep.  Remarkably, it was pretty easy to adapt to the temperatures.  The staff gave a great presentation on how to dress, and I never even used my heaviest down coat — I preferred multiple layers of long-johns, fleece, and a wool sweater (with a windbreaker layer on top).

• Cross-country skiing. My first time, and I really enjoyed it.  I joined the kids Tuesday morning for a beginner lesson.  On Wednesday I went on a longer ski with the adults.  I generally did alright on the flat trails and climbing hills (awkward, but successful), but going down hills was tough.  I still don’t quite understand how to control speed and direction on a narrow trail.

• Snow-shoeing. We went out for a fairly long snow-shoeing hike and my legs are still sore.  Next year I think I’ll bring my own snowshoes which are lighter than the ones at the camp (I plan on taking them out for a long walk tonight to see how they compare).  This hike included a spectacular stop for lunch at the top of a bluff overlooking a frozen lake.  We met up with a group of students up there and had lunch around a fire in the snow, with a truly stunning view.

• Bonding with the kids.  From a teacher’s perspective, this was such a rare opportunity to really get to know kids outside of the classroom. This was especially valuable for me because I teach eighth grade, so not only were most of the kids new to me, but many of them will be my students next year.  It’s heartening to see students surprise themselves when they are pushed out of their comfort zones.  Moreover, I love seeing kids who struggle in the classroom excel in a different setting.  This always makes me think about how I can push myself to make my classroom even more inclusive of different learning styles and aptitudes.

• Storytelling. The boys in my cabin were super excited about hearing bedtime stories (scary ones, in particular).  On Monday night we all shared whatever quick ghost stories we knew from memory.  On Tuesday they asked me to come up with something for them.  This was a real treat for me, because I love stories and I especially enjoy the art of storytelling.  I began with a retelling of the 1902 classic, “The Monkey’s Paw” by W. W. Jacobs.  I changed the setting to reflect our surroundings (a cabin in the northern Minnesota wilderness), but otherwise kept it largely the same.  On Wednesday we moved on to one of my favorite horror authors, H. P. Lovecraft.  I retold “Pickman’s Model,” but again moved it to Minnesota and narrated it as if the artist had been real, and I had known him personally.  (When it ended, and I pulled the door shut, a student called out nervously, “Wait, Mr. Roy, did that really happen?”  Yay!)  For Thursday I sketched out a story based on the Native American Wendigo legend, but after the sauna experience (see below), I was too tired to do real improv.  I offered, instead, to read one of the all-time classics, Lovecraft’s “The Call of Cthulhu“.  The story, alas, was too long (and the vocabulary too obscure) for a single night’s reading, so I stopped about half way through, with most of the kids asleep on the floor around the wood stove.  As we drove back to Saint Paul on Friday, one of the kids came up to the front of the bus and asked diffidently if I would finish the story for them — they had saved me a seat at the back of the bus!  So, driving through a snowstorm, with faces peering over and between the seats, we all finished the masterpiece together.  (There was a moment in the reading — one of the kid’s foreheads scrunched up, trying to parse Lovecraft’s baroque vocabulary — when I felt a sense of rightness, like this was exactly what I was supposed to be doing with my life.)

• The Sauna / Dip in the Freezing Lake. This is the legendary culmination of the Widji experience: a hot sauna and a plunge through a hole in the thick ice of Burntside Lake.  I was nervous about it all week, truthfully, and in the moments before the icy plunge I considered it a very real possibility that I would be the first person at Widji to drop dead upon hitting the water.  (I have never managed to outgrow this sort of mental melodrama.)  As it turned out, my first shocked words upon rising above the surface were, “Oh, this isn’t so bad!”  And, really, it wasn’t.  (Some people make the whole experience significantly more painful by jumping in the water before going into the sauna, but that seems excessively masochistic to me.)  Heating up in the sauna first was, naturally, wonderful.  My muscles relaxed and sweat was literally pouring off of me.  After ten minutes or so, I was ready to rinse off, and the icy water was a perfect way to do it.  I wouldn’t want to lounge around in the water, obviously, but it was truly invigorating.  Afterwards I felt almost euphoric, and my body temperature was still high enough that the freezing wind over the lake felt like a warm breeze.  Sitting by the fire afterwards, my body felt as relaxed as if I had just had a luxurious massage.  I wouldn’t hesitate to repeat the experience.

In summary, it was an incredible week!  I’ve told my principal that she can count on me to volunteer for this every year.  (They actually have a hard time getting teachers to go.)

One sad thing: I didn’t bring a camera!  I don’t know what I was thinking, because it was utterly gorgeous up there.  I took a few photos on my iPhone on Friday morning before getting on the bus (and found another one on Google images) just to give you a sense of the place.