No longer adolescent at 25 now, our camp has grown slowly to its mature form. From our original sessions designed as individual groups exploring separate, alternative environments, the camp's curriculum of environmental education has developed into a self-sustaining culture, absorbing and passing down the best of what each camper and staff member contributes.

The result is a rich curriculum propelling campers to independently explore the land around them even as they learn to live cooperatively with others. Campers learn how to overcome prejudicial fears of the unkown, and ­ by sharing experiences and deepening understanding ­ to respect and care for each other and their environments.

As per-session enrollment inched upward from a dozen till we clamped the lid at thirty-two, our grasp of what we were doing broadened and deepened, and our concept of the sessions changed. Though we offered them at first simply as alternative environments, we have come to see and stage them as a sequence, moving on from a gentle introduction to cooperative camping in Big Sur for 8 to 10 year-olds, to more-wide ranging exploration in Mendocino, to more-ambitious hiking in the Sierra, leading now into a full backpacking session for ages 13 to 17. Along the way, our campers' knowledge develops similarly -- not simply by learning new facts and skills, but by practice in putting them in relation. From the start, they engage the basic questions:

What is this place made of, and how has it come to take its shapes? What plants live here, and what creatures, and how do they live and relate? How do we relate to them, and how should we? What is safe to eat and do, and what is dangerous? How do I befriend a stranger? How can we play inclusively? How can I express my frustrations to a friend or a group without hurtful words?


Each time they return, whether to the same site or another, they engage this pattern of question again -- learning not only more and surer answers, but something deeper and subtle, the very ability to come into a new landscape and a new community, seek to know it, and to feel at home. Though one may quiz them about hurtful words or how many plants they can identify, there is no way to measure this deeper learning other than by how it plays out in life. Only on faith can we seek to educe it, and at heart only by our own examples.

Our camp's slow transformation has been due in large part to the simple fact that campers keep coming back. Though a fair number still come only for one year, most return for a second year, many now for three or four years, and some for more. Last year, even the Sur session was composed one-third of veterans, and the older sessions were two-thirds so. Their fidelity has made the camp's culture extraordinarily stable and continuous from one year to the next; and has deepened its familial character, for returning campers do much to familiarize newcomers with its context and ways. Having campers return so regularly has prompted us to understand and develop what the camp has to offer as an extended curriculum, spread over several or many summers -- a survey of the richest biotic environments in California, a progression from just learning to camp through self-contained backpacking, individual paths of development in personal and social skills. In grasping these sequential and cumulative dimensions, we have come also to appreciate how useful repeated sessions in the same environment and broad age-group may be for a camper's individual stage of social development, and for deepening familiarity with a special place.

Camp Chrysalis's sessions are conducted in the richest natural environments we know in California, with many of the most interesting young people we have encountered in many years of students. For us, that diversity has provided curriculum for a lifetime. We shall never grasp more than a fraction of what they offer, replenished and changing each year. The places we visit were the vital environments of our own childhoods, and doing the camp has given us opportunity and cause to keep on learning about them, in the course of sharing our attachment and lore with other children. "This land is your land, this land is my land," we sing at campfire, marking our sense of passing on a personal and vital heritage -- which too figures deeply in the familial character of our camp.

For us, a vital step of preparation for camping anywhere involves a visit to a bookstore and some reading, to learn more about what we may encounter in the field. We hope families will use this occasion to introduce young campers to this perspective and practice.

Among many good relevant books, those below are particularly interesting for their various purposes. All are in paperback; none are expensive, and some are quite cheap. All and more will be at camp; we use them and encourage campers to consult them. But a book of one's own is something else again. We suggest a visit with your child to a good nature-oriented bookstore as a way of staking a claim in areas and subjects that he or she will continue to explore over the years.

Rocks and Minerals, Herbert Zim, Golden Press, 1953.
Seashores, Zim and Ingle, Golden Press, 1955.
These stalwarts of the little "Golden Nature Guides" series remain the most convenient, attractive, and informative introductions for children of any age.

Plants of Big Basin Redwoods State Park, Cooney-Lazaneo & Lyons, Mountain Press, 1981.
Excellently-illustrated in color, this guide covers the flowers, trees, and
ferns of the coastal mountains. Worth having well beyond the Big Sur trip.

Pacific Intertidal Life, Russo and Olhausen, Nature Study Guild, 1981.
A small, short, clear, well-illustrated guide, indispensable to any child visiting California tidepools.

The Intertidal Wilderness, Anne Wertheim, University of California Press, 2002
Gorgeous photographs, with dense, instructive captions. Used copies of the '85 Sierra Club edition are available via bookfinder.com for a hamburger's price.

Between Pacific Tides, Ricketts and Calvin, Stanford University Press, 1992.
A classic, as well as the essential reference work for our coast, rich, rambling, detailed, and loving. Extensively modernized in this fifth edition.

Discovering Sierra Trees, Steven Arno, Yosemite Association, 1973.
Magnificent pen-and-ink graphics illustrate the best brief accounts of the major Sierran trees. An inexpensive treasure, particularly recommended.

Discovering Sierra Mammals, Russel Grater, Yosemite Association,1978.
Discovering Sierra Birds, Beedy and Granholm, Yosemite Association, 1985.
Discovering Sierra Reptiles & Amphibians, Harold Basey, Yosemite Association,1976.
Fine guides to their natural history, with beautifully detailed illustrations.

A Sierra Club Naturalist's Guide: The Sierra Nevada, Stephen Witney, Sierra Club, 1979.
Recent comprehensive volume, an excellent introduction and field guide, useful from age 10 on.

Pacific Coast Tree Finder, Tom Watts, Nature Study Guild, Berkeley, 1973.
An excellent, pocket-sized guide -- and a good introduction to the concept and use of keys.

Animals Without Backbones, Ralph Buchsbaum, et. al.; University of Chicago Press, 1989.
The classic introduction to invertebrates, updated. This third edition has so many splendid illustrations that it'll delight a third-grader, yet serve as a lifelong reference.

Roadside Geology of Northern & Central California, Alt and Hyndman, Mountain Press, 2000.
This great introduction to geology, and to how our own land here was shaped, uses what's seen from the highways to illustrate, and belongs in the family car. It covers our Mendocino and Sierra trips, and much more.