Mennonite Weekly Review

When rural Iowan Ken Bontrager moved to New York City to serve at Camp Deerpark, he learned camping near the city is very different from camping near a cornfield.

Campers receive orientation while enjoying the clouds above and the cool grass on their backs. — Photo provided by Camp Deerpark

Bontrager, camp director, said urban kids tend to be surrounded by crowds, live in big apartment complexes and go to cramped schools.

Since the goal of camping is to expose kids to experiences different from home, small-group settings better serve urban campers.

After several years of interacting with urban youngsters, Bontrager envisioned something different.

To develop a program shaped around these needs, Camp Deerpark — located 80 miles northwest of the city in the lower Shawangunk Mountains — is planning to build a Children’s Camp Village by 2012.

In the new Village, 10 campers and their counselor will share a cabin and do many of their activities as a small group, in contrast to the current large-group setting.

The sleep-away campers — mostly from the city’s 15 Mennonite congregations and spanning ages 8 to 17 — currently live and eat in the main lodge. The lodge is an old farmhouse that was part of the property purchased in 1969 by the New York City Council of Mennonite Churches, which owns and operates the camp.

“The camps I attended as a kid were centralized, just like Camp Deepark is now — everyone goes to chapel, to the swimming pool and to the dining hall as one big group,” said Bontrager, who has served at Camp Deerpark since 1986.

“But I soon discovered that relationships are key in urban camping in a different way and require different methods. The Village will help us build strong relationships fast. Establishing trust with our kids is paramount to everything else we do.”

The Village is one project — estimated at $915,000 — to be completed in the camp’s $3.5 million capital campaign, “A Time to Build.” The campaign, launched in 2008, has raised about $1.35 million and includes other projects in the main lodge.