On a summer morning at Hildene, The Lincoln Family Home, a line of campers makes its way down the path from the youth education building toward the pond, nets and buckets in hand. An hour earlier they were inside, learning about what might be living below the surface. Now they are finding out for themselves. Before long, a kid who has never held a pond net is pulling one out of the water and shouting, "I got one!"
For Lisa Maggio, Hildene's Youth Education Director, that walk from the classroom to the pond is the whole idea.
"Education is at the heart of Hildene," Lisa says. "What better way than to immerse kids in a week-long camp where they're getting hands-on experience? True learning happens by doing."
School programs are wonderful, Lisa notes, but a field trip is a snapshot of a school year. A week of camp is different. Campers have time to ask questions, to wonder, and to go back the next day and look again. "We want curious kids," she says. "They ask questions, they wonder, and when they ask these questions, they understand more deeply. And they begin to care."
They also start to feel like the place belongs to them. Some campers have gone through all eight weeks of camp over their years at Hildene, moved on to Youth Corps, come back as volunteers, and eventually joined the staff. Several of the young people working down at the barns today got their introduction to Hildene at summer camp.
The connection to the Lincoln family runs through all of it, and it starts with the simple fact that this was a home where people lived and played. Robert Lincoln and his wife Mary were dutiful grandparents, and there is a letter at Hildene from Mary about a birthday party she hosted here for one of the grandchildren. With a hill like the one at the house, a birthday party means rolling down it. Afterwards, Mary told everyone to send their laundry back to her to be cleaned, since the kids all went home with grass stains. "Playing with abandon - that's part of the experience here," Lisa says.
The camps share what the Lincolns fell in love with, well beyond the view. "Being able to understand our place a little bit, and not just the beauty of it, but the other creatures that live here," Lisa says. "The whole cycle of it, from the soil to the little mini macros in the pond. All of it."
That depth is why the camps fill almost as soon as registration opens. "Our camps offer something deeper," Lisa says. "These are camps providing a learning experience. Our instructors are all experienced educators." During The Wild and Wonderful World of Plants!, a week led by Ann Ogden Hausslein, campers started each day with a plant on their table. They researched it, tasted a tea brewed from it, then went out and found it growing on the property.
Farm Camp is the most popular week of all, and the only one that runs twice each summer. At the start of the week, campers walk the gardens to see what will be ready to harvest. On Friday they "go to the grocery store," which means digging, picking, and washing what the gardens have to offer, then cooking a farm-to-table meal to share. A recent session turned out kale chips, pesto, an herb cake, and a rhubarb dish. The August session will cook from a different menu, because the gardens will be offering different things.
Plenty of campers are local kids. Plenty more are from second-home families or staying with grandparents for a stretch of summer, and some of them have never dug for a carrot or a potato - never mind a worm or dragonfly larvae. The first steps off the path in the woods can come slowly. By the end of the week, they are all in. "It's a great type of peer pressure," Lisa says. "Everyone else is doing it, so they join in. They see the fun." As for the squeamishness adults might expect around worms and pond bugs, Lisa doesn't buy it. "That's when we put our adult perspective on it," she says. "Is there anything better than looking and touching a critter?"
For kids who age out of camp, which runs through sixth grade, there is Hildene Youth Corps, a two-week program for kids entering seventh and eighth grade, built to bridge the gap between summer camp and Hildene's first jobs for teens. Mornings are for a work project which the students have steered toward construction: they have built bridges, boardwalks, and rail fence across the property. This year's session, Creating Animal Enrichment, has them building a climbing structure for the baby goats. Afternoons look more like traditional camp. The third piece is philanthropy. Youth Corps members learn how nonprofits work and volunteer with several cooking at Grateful Hearts, or pulling invasives with the local watershed group, and getting a firsthand look at conservation lessons like the importance of flying squirrel boxes. A year after one session, a mother told Lisa her family was still sending a donation to the land trust every month.
Lisa's advice for parents is to be ready for what comes home. "Be ready for your kids to talk deeply about these topics," she says. After a week of Nets, Buckets, and Boots, one mom reported knowing more about beavers and pond fauna than she ever expected to. The family has been reading about local critters ever since.
Camp is one season of a year-round youth education program. Hildene welcomes about 3,000 students on school programs annually, from more than 30 schools across Vermont and over the New York line, with 22 different programs for elementary students that shift with the seasons. The pond program is the most popular, along with programs built around the goats, sheep, and chickens, the greenhouse ecosystem, and, come winter, animal tracking and winter adaptations. Lisa regularly hears "Do you remember me?" from returning field-trip students, sometimes the same kids she met at camp.
Cost is not meant to stand in the way of any of it. Camp scholarships are available through Lisa, and Hildene is continuing to build out that support. "We are never going to turn away someone who is engaged in learning based on cost," Lisa says. "We want everyone to get that chance."
For families hoping to join in, there is still a little room this summer: Fabulous Forests, a week of forest ecology for kids entering fourth through sixth grade, runs July 20 through 24 and has space, and a single spot is open in Bug Bonanza, August 10 through 14 - a week devoted to insects for kids entering second through fourth grade, with stream wading and insect motels on the schedule. Every other week is full, with wait lists open for the rest of the season. For everyone else, registration for next summer opens to Hildene members in February, with public registration following in early March. Given how quickly the weeks fill, that head start matters.
As to whom these camps are made for, Lisa doesn't hesitate: "Curious kids that want to wonder and ask questions." And when it comes to the mission of Hildene, isn't that really all of us?
* * *
Summer camps at Hildene are part of Hildene's year-round youth education program, serving campers and school groups from across the region. Visit hildene.org to learn more.
