To celebrate making the front page of the Bangor Daily News, I’m publishing the first chapter of A Bad Case of Moosepox. Of course, if you’d like to get your own full copy of the book, Chris may still have a few that he might be able to sell.

Chapter 01- The Diagnosis

I suffer from a debilitating and incurable disease. No research foundation or national charity is dedicated to its eradication; and the disease has left me, and over a thousand other victims, facing increasing pain and suffering as the years progress. However, before I enlarge farther on the agonies that befall our small group, let me assure you that we collectively enjoy every moment of our affliction. This has become part of our lives, and it gives us strength as we face many of our problems.

We have not been attacked by an ordinary virus, but by a very special virulent type, which we have picked up over a long period of years as a result of our association with a small camp for boys in Maine. The disease is lingering, and in my case has done much to limit, and at the same time, expand my life over a period of some 60 years, with no end in sight. I refer, of course, to the scourge of Moosepox.

I can explain my exposure to this rare disease in one short sentence, but I will need the rest of this book to explain that sentence. The sentence is: “When I was eleven years old I was sent away to summer camp.” The explanation and results are more complicated.

The camp had the improbable name of Flying Moose Lodge, and almost the moment I set foot on its turf, I was hooked. Three years as a small camper infected me with a serious case of Moosepox, which can only be described as a growing infatuation with the camp and the way of life it engendered. Seven years after my camper days, I attempted to find relief from the pangs, which increased with each succeeding year, by returning in the role of a counselor. Things only got worse. They got so bad that in 1940, when the camp came up for sale, I bought it. For me to take this step with our country facing world war, and myself just out of college, may sound foolish, indeed; but we sufferers are prone to make rash decisions. Be that as it may, that was one of the best decisions I ever made.

Directing the camp since that moment has eased some of the discomforts of Moosepox, but others have developed. The continuing desire to maintain the camp’s original philosophy, and at the same time provide for an extension of opportunities for future generations, developed into a time consuming job. Don’t mistake what I am saying, I loved every minute of it, Moosepox and all. I am sure that the family has felt from time to time that the camp was consuming all of us, for Alice and the children were developing the disease at various levels as we spent our summers in that magical environment. Now grandchildren share with us, each infected in his or her own way by the pox which is upon us.

It is a rare month that doesn’t bring a letter from a distant camper or counselor, which, when you read between the lines, indicates that others suffer as well. Occasionally, I will receive packages of old camp mementos, which were probably sent on at the insistence of a long-suffering wife who was finally determined to clean out that closet or desk once and for all. I have been sent old camp newspapers, yellowed with age, which have been saved for all these years. They send me old photographs, and even old camp awards which go back to the 1920s. I often wonder how many times those pieces of Flying Moose have crossed and re-crossed the country, and have been packed and unpacked, just to preserve a small piece of a wonderful past.

I suppose that it is inevitable that anyone who works at one thing for some 50 years, will have stashed away many memories of those days so well spent. Personal and interesting as all those memories may be, it is too much to expect that any one other person will have exactly the same collection, even one as close to all of this as one’s wife. However, there should be a considerable number of people who can remember along with me at least some of what follows; and having once lived in the intimate circle in which all of this took place, can well imagine how the rest could have happened. Those who have never heard of Flying Moose Lodge can, perhaps, find amusement as these recollections touch on parallel situations at other places and in other times. If you have never been to Maine, and if you have never been associated with a boys’ camp, some of this may seem strange, and at times childish. Rather than feel sorry for you, I would like to share this different world, and show you what you have missed.

I certainly never realized during my camper days that I would some day own and operate Flying Moose. The idea never occurred to me; but if it had, I am sure that I would have relished it. Good things evolve slowly, and so did my association with the camp. When I decided that I wanted to become a teacher, the possibility of becoming involved in summer camp during vacations seemed only natural. What started out as summer employment, soon began to fill the days between vacations as well, and my case of Moosepox became more acute.

Directing a camp for two months, and teaching school for the remainder of the year, may at first seem like an effective way to split the year into two completely separate parts. I was soon to learn that the two were intricately entwined. In the summer I found myself away from the classroom, yet constantly discovering new approaches to old problems, approaches that could make me more effective in the academic world. Even more so, I found that although I might be in Pennsylvania or New Jersey with the family between summers, that I was never very far from Flying Moose, and consequently not very far from Moosepox. There was plenty of time for brainstorming. There was plenty of time to think through difficult situations. There was also time to work out carefully the design and detail of new projects as they came along. On top of all that there was the challenge to present our program to a growing audience, in hopes that enough campers would enroll so that the summer would pay for itself with, perhaps, something left over for mortgage payments, and for four struggling college nest eggs.

What follows is not arranged chronologically, for chronology has very little to do with Flying Moose. That is why campers from the distant past can return in the 1980s and feel very much at home with the same buildings, the same attitudes, and the same philosophical outlook. That is why old campers can enjoy current copies of the camp newspaper; and present day campers can derive an equal amount of interest from the old copies in the files. That is exactly as it should be. Very little changes at Flying Moose except the length of boys’ hair.

The summers I spent in Maine as a camper, a counselor, and as a camp director, have meant much to me personally. They have given me golden opportunities to make my own decisions, some of which were good, and some of which were not quite so good. I feel strongly that the events of those years, as well as the people involved in those events, should be recorded in some fashion, in hopes that they may bring even a fraction of the enjoyment that is mine, to all those who have shared those great years at Flying Moose. My children seem to think that I am approaching the age when I will forget all that has happened, or what is perhaps worse, lose all sense of proportion. Now is the time.

Place yourself in the role of a fly on the wall, or if you prefer, of a mosquito in the tent, and see if you can understand a little about Moosepox. See if you can understand how the interactions of hundreds of people at this small camp have meant so much to so many. Yes, Flying Moose has touched the lives of scores of men and boys; or more appropriately, scores of men and boys have touched Flying Moose. Each has left his mark, some more indelibly than others, but nonetheless marks. In what follows some names will appear again and again. The story can be told no other way, for some contributions were so uniquely personal, that to mention them anonymously would do them an injustice. Of course there is much that I have left out, for not every moment can fit conveniently into 22 limited chapters. Above all, remember that the camp itself had a strong personality of its own. It almost seemed that it recognized how important that personality was to so many of us; and it worked tirelessly to keep it so. I have felt during many trying moments that the camp took over and kept things on an even keel while I fumbled and bumbled in the wings.

Wild Moose (Martin, 2005), and Mitchville (Martin, 2006) were both AR games that used GPS equipment and a handheld computer to mimic a communication device, which relayed up-to-the-minute information to the trip to help them in their task (Martin, 2008). What happened was that the game narrative motivated campers to move beyond the ease and safety of trail hiking. The difficulty of actually hiking off-trail, coupled with the uncertainty of what one might find there, challenged the campers, and pushed them to move slightly beyond their comfort level.

Here’s a description of what was done in the past:

Towards the end of each summer, while the older boys were doing manly things on the Allagash or at Katahdin, we others took part in the wild pursuit of thieves, kidnappers, and other nefarious individuals.

That first summer of mine, quite unexpectedly, as we were about to set out on our regularly scheduled trips one Tuesday morning, we were all called together and the cold facts were put before us. Something terrible had happened; I am sure that I don’t remember what. Plans had to be changed at the last moment, and all our energies were to be devoted to helping the local authorities, whoever they were, hunt down the criminals and bring them to justice. At the same time we would uphold the honor of the camp, and in all probability bring fame and fortune to ourselves and our counselors.

Assignments were quickly made. For the sake of expediency, the original trip groupings would be maintained, but we would travel unexpected paths. All of this had been well arranged beforehand; and I can visualize the counselors now constructing the complicated plot in the evenings after we had gone to bed. Now they were ready to play it out.

I can’t remember much of that first Mystery Trip except that it rained. It rained all the time. The villains, whoever they were, had left clues and trails as they challenged us to track them down. Coded messages were found and deciphered. The net was slowly tightening. In tracking those undesirables, we learned more than we at the moment wanted to know about following trails in the woods. I clearly remember looking for stone cairns on the mountain side under what were certainly not the most favorable conditions (Price 1986).

Here I discuss a structured learning activity, in the broader curriculum of canoeing, that allows for a range of skill levels to engage in, and be challenged by.

Gunwale paddling

At Flying Moose Lodge, after campers have had some experience and instruction on how to do the basic C- and J- strokes, and have a few hours of practice (and maybe a trip, or even a previous summer of trips) they begin to have a surface understanding of what it means to canoe.

We still haven’t covered things like initial and secondary stability. I do this by taking campers out and having them lean without tipping. The goal is no longer to tip, but to come as close as possible to tipping without shipping water. It’s fairly easy to do on our camp-built cedar/canvas canoes that have an arched bottom (and thus good secondary stability), but quite difficult to do in the Old Town Trippers, which novice canoeists prefer because they’re so stable when lightly loaded (initial stability). Of course, there’s much flipping in this lesson, but because they already know how to flip and rescue, they can still have fun with it.

Of course, when they’re precariously leaning over in a canoe is an ideal time to also teach bracing, where they get introduced to the idea that control of a paddle-in-water can play a very big part in keeping them from tipping. (This idea —one’s connection to and reliance on one’s paddle — is a point that I think we need to emphasize/convey even more, and I’ll discuss it in a future article, “A Boy and his Paddle.”)

As I mentioned, some of the campers may have already had a summer of trips, or are already comfortable in a canoe. If campers get to the point where they’re stable on the gunwales, we challenge them to paddle in that position. If they can maneuver a canoe with one gunwale kissing the water, chances are they’ve got a deep understanding of the canoe, and probably have deeply-embodied skills as well. At this point, we’ve got better canoeists than 95% of camps with canoes.

The ability to skillfully and competently maneuver a canoe on its edge allows paddlers to make quick turns easily, and in addition to looking cool and being a great indicator of canoeing prowess, can be a great asset in playing Dead Fish Polo.

Educational Implications:

Broad-range activities, activities that can be approached at different levels of understanding and skill, have been around forever. Example are abundant in our lives, but schools largely try to segment their populations so that any group of learners are learning the same skill or concept. This is unrealistic, especially when considering the narrow constraint of age-segregation that the current system is based on. The exceptions in this system — those who are held back or who “skip” grade levels are often ostracized because they don’t fit the system. Rather than force them to fit the system, we should change the system to allow for more range in learning groups.

One of the underlying assumptions in the above canoeing activity is that the learners (“leaners” in this case) are at different skill levels and different ages (though all between 10-16 here). As it turns out, the mix of age and abilities results in a great deal of formal and informal modeling and mimicking between them, as well as considerable volunteered tutoring as the more adept try to explain to those who aren’t getting it what they’re doing (and in the process re-thinking and restructuring it into terms that they’ll understand — this alone is a significantly deep learning method for them!)

I’d love to see age and skill levels mixed up more in classrooms, allowing for multi-level learning and teaching of content by the students themselves. If we are to move from the teaching paradigm of “teacher as expert” to “teacher as guide,” we need to allow students themselves to develop their own islands of expertise (Crowley and Jacobs, 2002) by experiencing and understanding concepts and skills from more of an interdependent standpoint, where they can cooperate and help each other learn rather than only compete with each other (e.g. for the grading “curve”).

There’s a certain structure to learning any task. As educators, we are often cognizant of  ”inefficient” moves, or the “wrong way” to do things (that we may have gone through or done ourselves when learning), and we often try to squash guide learners around these moves. I argue that sometimes it’s better to allow the “errors” and let the learners (safely) figure it out for themselves when they’re ready — with the appropriate guidance, of course — allowing for and respecting (and even speeding the learner through) Vygotsty’s (1980) Zone of Proximal Development.

At Flying Moose Lodge, after campers learn to flip, we teach them to do the C-stroke and the J-stroke, and we emphasize how bad it is to “rudder” (dragging the paddle in the water to steer; often part of a beginning or lazy J-stroke) — this is, in my opinion, a wrong-headed strategy on our part.

First, let me explain why ruddering is considered bad (in canoeing on a lake). The longer the paddle is in the water, and not being “pushed” through it as propulsion, the more it contributes drag that slows down the canoe and counter the effort of paddling forward. But to turn a canoe with a J-stroke, the stern paddler has to put the paddle in the water and push it away from the canoe. Any lingering of the paddle in the water causes drag, even though it may still be turning the canoe. So a good J-stroke will involve a strong forward pull, and a strong, smooth push to the side.

The problem is that it’s awkward and difficult to do this efficiently —especially for new paddlers. So there tends to be a lot of excess ruddering, because the paddlers immediately recognize that ruddering is an effective way of turning the canoe. What it is not, is an effective way of maintaining forward momentum. I argue that the primary thing to learn here is how the paddle position affects the direction of the canoe. We should explicitly teach them to rudder because in ruddering one learns, in a very physically compelling way, how the paddle can affect the canoe.

Once the new paddler has a good understanding of how to turn the canoe effectively by ruddering, we can (and should) emphasize that ruddering slows down the canoe and is an inefficient way to maintain forward momentum while steering the canoe (on lakes, whereas in whitewater the current takes care of momentum and keeping the paddle in the water aids in balance; it’s a good thing). Eventually good paddlers will learn an efficient J-stroke. But to condemn it early on ignores a natural learning curve, and discourages campers from developing at their own pace the embodied understanding one gets from  ”simply messing around in boats” (says Water Rat from Wind in the Willows).

Broader Educational Take:

Kolb Experiential Learning Cycle (1975)

People learn at their own pace, depending on motivation and access to environments where they can learn. A good overview on motivation here: Huitt, W. (2001)). They are very adept at mimicking and adapting ideas and methods that they recognize as working well enough (peer pressure is one instantiation of this). When they try something that seems to work for others, if it promises to work for them, they adapt and adopt it for the specific strengths, weaknesses, and constraints that they face in their circumstances. Essentially people follow Kolb & Fry’s (1975) Experiential Learning Cycle for much of their learning.

What I argue is that, as educators, we need to respect their processing of this learning cycle, and not guide with too heavy of a hand. The trick is find the right balance of course — if they head down the “wrong” path for too long, we need to address their choice with respectful challenges. But if we direct on too soon or too heavily we risk crushing their:

• willingness to seek out their own answers
• develop their own hypotheses
• do the work of customizing according to their own circumstances/abilities/constraints.

To respect a learner’s natural tendencies and processes requires a lot of flexibility in teaching methods — especially in situations where learners are grouped more by age than by ability. The simple truth is that people catch on to different skills and concepts at different speeds and times. Structures for learning must then take into account and allow for these different paces.

At Flying Moose Lodge, we do this whenever we can. I’ll discuss a few examples in upcoming posts — “Playing on the Edge” and “Rapid Prototyping.”

I believe we are failing in teaching our students how to fail. We learn quite effectively through failure. When we remove failure from learning, we have to rely on other ways to get lessons across. Here’s one way we teach failure at camp.

One of the first things we let campers learn at Flying Moose Lodge, is how to rescue a canoe (we call it “airplaning” but it’s the standard T-rescue). Why?

• the biggest fear in new paddlers is flipping
• in order to be rescued, they have to flip
• it’s fun and safe when supervised
• in purposefully flipping, they get familiar with the stability of the canoe and subconsciously develop “canoe legs”
• it takes away much of the fear of flipping, simply by making it a “known” entity (“it’s no big deal, I’ve done it before, there’s nothing to fear because I’ve practiced and know how to rescue/be rescued”)

Essentially they’re learning how to fail, how to have fun with failure, how to pick themselves up after failing,  and that failure isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes they learn this particular skill (flipping) so well, and have so much fun with it that they flip at times we don’t want them to (at end of game, before meals, when we’re trying to move to the next thing), but all in all, I’d suggest that this out-weighs not learning how to flip. You can see the difference between someone who is comfortable in a canoe and one who isn’t. If you’re not, you flinch and stiffen at every wobble — and stiffening makes the canoe less stable, which in turn makes you stiffen more. It’s a downward spiral that often leads to a panicked flip (which only reinforces the “badness” and scariness of flipping, and makes you less comfortable in a canoe).

Bringing classic back to FML.

My first summer, in 1993, at Flying Moose Lodge, Harrie 4 gave me the dubious job of “taking care of tents” which I thought was something of a ridiculous task. But throughout the summer, I inspected, fixed, assigned, checked-in, and maintained all the Eureka tents that the camp used on trips. It *was* a ridiculous task, but at the end of the summer he gave me a bonus and said that “the tents have never been so organized!” Yes, that could simply be a nod to my OCD, but it also was a nod to simply caring about tasks assigned — as ridiculous as they might be.

Consequently, in the 15 summers that I’ve worked there, I’ve always had *some* hand in taking care of the tents — whether as the guy who takes care of them or as the guy who orders them and shows someone else how I took care of them (to get them started — most deviate according to their own personality and style). Given the age of the old Eureka Timberline 2 and 4 person tents that we had, we ordered new ones, and tried out other brands that were simpler to assemble, free-standing domes, lighter weight, etc.

This year, given the input of the guy who “took care of the tents” we decided to go back to the Eureka Timberline Outfitters. But we’re going to try to get smarter about it and get the 6 person versions. Our average trip size is 1-2 counselors and 3-5 campers. In 2 and 4 person tent terms, that meant that we sent 2-2 person tents (counselors get their own tent), and some combination of 2 and 4 person tents for the campers. We find that the younger campers prefer to be in a tent with others, and in crappy weather the 4-person tents are piled into for a game of cards, or just to talk and joke around. Add to this, that a few of the places we stay will limit the number of tents, and the argument for 6-person tents increases. Also:

• larger tents means fewer needed for trips
• fewer tents means less time to set up
• fewer tents to take up space on the drying lines
• fewer parts to lose or get mixed up with other tents
• better quality for less cost

The downsides are that the Eureka is heavy.  Over 18lbs. In a world of ultralight tents, that sounds like a lot, but if you think of it as only 3 lbs per rated person, it sounds much more reasonable — especially if you factor in the extra durability (the zippers and screens on even the high-end lightweight tents we’ve used don’t stand up well to young campers).

So we’ll get a few of these to use on a few of the trips, and keep the lightweight (more delicate) tents for the older campers to use on their backpacking trips, where weight matters more and the kids are old enough to care about taking care of the their tents. We’ll see how it goes…