One in Ten in The Boston Phoenix, July 1998

"Into the Woods"

By Christopher Muther

In many ways, ‘Camp’ Camp follows all the traditions of conventional summer camp. Located in remote Kezar Falls, Maine, it features two lakes to swim in, arts and crafts, talent shows, tennis, and, of course, the nightly campfire. But this isn’t camp for kids. There’s Starbucks coffee every morning, gourmet meals, a hot tub, and, occasionally, some clandestine behavior in the bunkhouse. In other words, it’s summer camp for adults.

Last year, nearly 100 lesbians and gay men from 17 states and Canada, ranging in age from 19 to their “late 60s,” shelled out $685 per person for a week of organized activities and group bonding. This year, camp organizers are expecting even more people to attend. ‘Camp’ Camp was the idea of long-time camp enthusiast Bill Cole of Princeton, New Jersey. Cole, 51, the former director of a children’s day camp in Virginia, came up with the idea for ‘Camp’ Camp during a “boring committee meeting” for the American Camping Association. “We were talking about camping and I started thinking, ‘I really love camp. I wonder if there’s such a thing as a camp for gay adults,’” Cole recalls.

Recently out (Cole is married, but he and his wife are separated), Cole views camp as “a very healing, great place for kids” and figured it could be the same for adults. After spending a “single men’s weekend” in Provincetown, where he attended a workshop on achieving dreams, Cole decided to forge ahead with his own.

Q: What else motivated you to start this camp?
A: Another part of it is that when I was leading a straight life, I would make these subterranean, deep, dark missions into gay parts of town at night. I never felt that what I was witnessing fit me. I’m a pretty gregarious guy, but I don’t enjoy bars. I’m not really athletic, so gay sports didn’t really appeal to me. I was trying to create an activity that appeals to me that might also appeal to others. I was trying to create a place for myself in the gay world that I didn’t see out there.

Q: Did you have any reservations about making the camp mixed-gender?
A: I was too ignorant to have reservations. I would if I were doing it now. But I don’t anymore, so it’s too late for that. I think there’s some advantage to being a virgin, as it were. Going in and not knowing all the political baggage. Having a mixed-gender camp diffused some of the sexual tension. Lots of people who called in about the camp were essentially wondering if this was sex in the woods. We had decided that it was going to be a sex-positive camp, but not a sex-focused camp. That’s a distinction we felt was important to make. Having both men and women evened it out more. I think men are more sex-focused than women, but having both men and women gave people a chance to get away from that for a while – the constant cruising – and just enjoy their time together.

Q: Did people strike up relationships?
A: There was one couple who, when I last saw them in January, were still a couple. If you’d asked me on the last day of camp if people had had sex, I would have said, “No, there’s no time.” But over the winter, I’ve gone around to cities where we had campers. It was like being the father of a teenager and hearing what the teenager was really doing. I was dead wrong: there was a lot going on, only it wasn’t out in the open. It was pretty discreet.

Q: Were campers more into group activities, or were they more into relaxing and sitting by the lake?
A: Very few people sat by the lake. People surprise themselves. Nobody did what they signed up for. We sent registration forms before camp asking people to sign up for what they wanted do so we could plan staffing. On opening night we had each of the instructors stand up and talk about the activities. There was this woman from England who was teaching stained glass, and she was just utterly charming, so stained glass was full. People who said they wanted to spend all day playing tennis decided they wanted to go mountain biking because the guy who taught mountain biking was beautiful. Then there were people who made friendships, so they wanted to do the same activities their friends were doing. Totally unpredictable. A number of people who planned to come and read or paint, they just didn’t. There were too many things they wanted to do.

Q: What elements from traditional children’s camp did you carry over to ‘Camp’ Camp, and what did you do differently?
A: The food’s very different. We really make food a priority at camp because people’s morale is really food dependent. Another thing that’s different: at kids’ camp, you assign a kid to a cabin and the kid stays there. There was a lot of moving about from cabin to cabin last summer. Initially it was based on the snoring quotient. Counselors and instructors were already working at the camp site that we leased, and we kept them over for our camp because they knew the site, they knew they equipment and materials. We had a real mixture of gay staff and straight staff.

Q: Are you hesitant about returning to Maine after the voters there repealed the state’s gay-rights law?
A: I have reservations about it because I feel torn. We had such a great experience there last year, and it’s such a great site. The camp owner is very friendly to us and bends over backwards to make it a great experience for us. At the same time, I want to make sure the state is safe and make sure we’re not going to be invaded by homophobic people from Maine. Although I really don’t believe that’s who the people of Maine are. I think that referendum was an overzealous campaign, and it’s not really reflective of the people who live there. I’m not really concerned about safety. We’re so secluded, there’s nobody else looking at us on the lake. It’s like our own world.

Q: Are you thinking of eventually opening a chain of gay camps?
A: Yes. What I’d really like to do is have people who so love the idea that they would love to run different sites around the country. I’d love one in Minnesota, Oregon, the Southwest, and maybe the mountains of Georgia or North Carolina. I’d like to have different kinds of camps. We have chosen this year not to have children at camp, but I think it would be wonderful to have a family camp where gay couples could bring their kids along and we could have two tracks of activities, one for the adults and one for kids. It would be great to have a camp where we could have gay men’s choruses come for a week of singing, or Dignity groups come for meetings. Or an all-men’s week, or an all-women’s week, or an all-bear’s week. There’s a lot of interesting possibilities.

>> back to list of articles