Farm Camp is hiring now

Dan Weir, our fabulous Director of Camping Services, has asked me to reach out to you. At our Farm Camp (located in the East Neversink River valley - what we call the "East Valley") we are looking to hire up to four people immediately to fill various roles.

We need someone to help in the kitchen, perhaps several people to work as counselors, and one person to work at a Village Chief level ("program director"). Farm Camp runs at between 60 and 80 campers, as range of ages and both boys and girls - and is located on a gorgeous site.

The kitchen job is probably not what you're thinking. The cooking over at the farm is collaborative and has a lot to do with the program mission of raising and cooking local food. The kids get very much involved in the gathering, preparing and serving of the food.

If you are interested in applying for one of these position for the remainder of the summer, we'd be glad to hear from you. If you want to try to "come back" to your old beloved Frost Valley for just one two-week session, let us know that too.

If you are interested, contact Dan Weir and Andy Szymczak at:

Dan Weir: dweir@frostvalley.org
Andy Szymczak: aszymczak@frostvalley.org

hoopla after lunch

Lakota at today's post-lunch "hoopla."

Susky at rest hour

Rest hour. On a nice but somewhat warm day like today, rest hour is heaven. Up on "the hill" (the old cabins 41-50) it's mostly shady and there's a breeze running through the windows on each side of each cabin. It's nice up there, and the kids are in their bunks, reading, writing letters. In the case of cabin 49 of Susky today: I gave them a mid-day devo (devotion or, as in the old days, "devotional"). I told them about a friendship I'd made when I was a camper, and gave them each a chance to talk about the potentially deep friendships they're already making at camp this summer. Meantime, outside around the CQ fire, the Susky staff was convened by VC Sarah Boyd, and met about upcoming activities and a few issues that needed resolving. Such a young group and yet so professional about listening to each other and making suggestions and planning to improve. By the way, Sarah Boyd, who has been mentioned in this blog, is one of the FV daughters of Peter Boyd, who was an LIT with me back in '73.

Kirk Fleischauer, rest in peace

I just got off the phone with Mark Fleischauer, who hasn't been in touch with Frost Valley for many years. His mother Mary came with Bill Hettler from Wisconsin, and, as a camp nurse, helped inspire the "wellness revolution" at Frost Valley from the mid- to the late 1970s. Two of her sons, Kirk and Mark, grew up here, and both of them became counselors. Kirk also worked at the horsebarn, I believe.

I just learned from Mark that his older brother Kirk died a few months ago. Mark wrote: "You might recall that Kirk biked out to Frost Valley from Wisconsin for two summers in the '70s across the Trans-Canadian Highway. Those journeys and his time at FV were a coming of age for him, and Frost Valley has always been a cherished memory in our family." And Mark plans a visit here in August so that his family can see the place he and Uncle Kirk talked about so much.

Click on the image below for an enlarged view of an obituary about Kirk:

Frost Valley'ers in France

This morning I receive this wonderful note from Frost Valley'ers in France:

Shirley Kay and Norm Gurfinkel (who met at FV in the 70’s and are still happily married after all these years) toured France in June and I was thrilled they agreed to rest chez moi for several nights. Besides sightseeing, endless meals and discussions on French culture, we looked at old photos and talked about Frost Valley friends and adventures late into the evenings. What an incredible trip down memory lane it was! It seemed like only yesterday we were all together at Frost Valley creating the stories that have lasted a lifetime!

I wish everyone at FV a wonderful, memorable, summer of 2012.

Love,
Rebecca White
Tournefeuille France

so many of our children are here

I mentioned the other day that David (Dave) Neu, now living with his family in New Hampshire, a counselor from the '80s, brought his daughter Amalia to FV for the first time. Needless to say, a big moment for Amalia - but, as I could easily tell, a big moment for dad too. Don't we all want our kids to fall in love with this place in their own right? Anyway, here's Amalia, at right, at breakfast yesterday - sitting next to Lily, who happens to be the daughter of one of my own closest friends. Just complete serendipity that the two girls would be in the same cabin and would become, already, such camp companions.

In the same village - Susky - we have Jennifer Mittelman, daughter of Jon Mittelman, a long-time staffer from the late '70s and maybe early '80s (someone, maybe Jon himself, will correct me if I'm wrong about that). Jon has two kids in camp, both for the first time. With Jennifer is our fabulously fun and talented counselor, Monica Robles - herself a lifer. I met Monica when she was herself a Susky camper! She always loved camp and was (and maybe still is) a big fan of my stories.

Finally in this very partial - ridiculously imcomplete - round-up a children of former staff in camp this session: here are Del Giannotti and Ceci Giannotti. Del, now a CIT, is the son of John Giannotti, who needs no introduction to readers of this blog! And Ceci, a first-timer but already a natural, is a Lakota camper. She is the daughter of John and Karen Giannotti's son, the late and much much much much missed Oran Giannotti. John's wife Toni and Oran's wife Dara and super-proud aunts Keara and Dani (Keara came along to drop off Del and Ceci) are all thrilled to pieces back home in South Jersey....the next generation of Giannotti family has arrived at Frost Valley and we all have a feeling they ain't going away very soon.

I'll try to get some pictures of - or word on - some of the many other children of alumni here this session. Forgive me if I can't get to them all. It's amazing what a serious percentage of our campers come from the FV community itself. Rebecca Tucker-Smith (we knew her as Tucker - sister of Josh Tucker) has brought her son Owen to camp; he's in Forest and couldn't stop playing Geronimo yesterday - after 1.5 hours wanted more. Rebecca thought it was cool to be "on the other side" of the "rope" at check-in. Lillian Rountree's son Cooper is here, all the way from Pittsburgh. Olivia Tilles is back (Peter's daughter), as is, of course, counselor Amanda. Debbie Reich (Susky counselor 1976) has a daughter, Elizabeth, here in Windsong. Kyoko Honma's two kids are in camp; they just love it here: Kazumi and Keizo. Jody Davies Ketcham's niece Katie Wiemeyer is at camp for the first time in Mustang Village (horseback riding village of girls in main camp). Philla Barkhorn's daughter Adelaide is here too! And Adam Gold, who used to come (with his brother Steven and Mike) as a camper all 8 weeks every summer, has his son Aidyn here again - himself an all-summer kid. I played Geronimo with Aidyn yesterday; he's gotten pretty good at that game. I feel honored to be in a position to watch the children of my former colleagues and (to be frank) "charges" and (as Dave King puts it) "my kids" - thrive here. I see their parents in them, for sure. The wonder in their eyes when someone does something unbelievably silly in a skit, or when a story is just that good that it makes you look up at the stars and thank them (the stars) that you're here in the middle of nowhere, which is very much somewhere.

gladly give a summer

Sven Grotrian wrote this to me today: "I would hazard to say that if you polled all staff alumni regarding your comment below about 'give up a summer to work this hard, so continuously, for so little pay,' most would say it wasn't hard to give up a summer because it never felt like we gave up anything! It was probably the most rewarding times of our young lives! I know it was for me!"

morning at the western entrance

6:30 AM this cool - nay, cold - morning at the western entrance to Frost Valley, looking from east to west toward Wildcat Mountain). Yes, I did say "cold."

staff photo 2012

alumni show up at session 1 check-in

David Neu came with his wife and daughter from New Hampshire; Dave's been waiting for years for this moment - when his daughter was ready for camp. She's in Susky cabin 49, happily settled into the top bunk opposite from the door. Here's Dave and me in the dining hall. Dave was a counselor in the early to mid-80s, when I was the director.

Rosemary (Roe) Balchunas and her brother David were here too. David's daughter has been a camper her for several years now, and they were all excited to be back.

Then, from nowhere, literally off the street (well, road), we see Bob and Michael Miller, who were campers here in the 70s. They'd been driving nearby, thought they'd see the old camp, and it just happened to be check-in day and thus a day when a visit could be possible. They waited for me in the dining and then we had quite a reunion, remembering all the details of being a camper in those days. With them and me are Peter Tilles (center), Sandra Shapiro Bohn (to my right).

John and Chris Vescio, also campers from around that period, were here to drop off their children - and we had great talk about, among other things, how I used to tussle their hair and how I helped Chris in particular with his major case of homesickness. John is a state trooper now and Chris is an accountant, and they are eager to be back in touch with us and to get involved.

2012 staff lip dub

This summer the FV staff have created a fabulous lip dub - as a YouTube-ish way of reaching out to campers who are on their way to spend a few weeks or more with us. What a wonderful welcome. Gee, if as an anxious 8-year-old, the night before camp, I'd had a chance to watch something like this, I'd have been a whole let less nervous!

staff dedication

Tonight the summer 2012 staff wound it up - with a dedication banquet, followed by four moving talks by various counselors; they were asked to speak about why they do this - why give up a summer to work this hard, so continuously, for so little pay. Then, after a break, everyone gathered at CIT Point for a candle ceremony. The theme for the summer was set - "be present" - and then everyone silently walked around the lake, lit their candles, and produced an amazing effect. Okay, then: the thing is truly begun.

And now: a final full night's sleep. For tomorrow 701 campers arrive.

talking camperships

it's different up here

Well, certainly different from the city I've spent almost every day of the last 9 months in. I love that city - and all cities - but, ah, to wake up in late June and feel the 58 degrees, hear the stream (High Falls Brook in my case), make coffee, sit on the porch at 6 am, and just stare at this scene....? What could be more therapeutic? I'm here. Okay, so: I'm here.

staff training 2012 & Jenna Ostrow is here

Day 4 of summer staff training 2012 and it happens that alumna Jena Ostrow is here with a small group on a retreat. Not a very good pic of us in the dining at lunch yesterday, but at least you get a sense she is here. Not sure she realized that her retreat would coincide with staff training but she says that it has made her return to FV all the sweeter: watching these young people go through training brings back very specific memories (for her as for me).

'Should I Be Sending My Children to Camp?'

In a recent article, Michael Thompson writes:

I know that many young people do not really know how strong they are, how competent they are or even who they are until they get away from their parents and test themselves in a new and challenging environment. Many children told me the best thing about camp was, "I can really be myself here." What do they mean by that? I am pretty sure I know the answer. When children are away from their parents, they do not have to view their own life and achievements through the lens of my-athlete-father-standing-on-the-sidelines-watching-me or my-mother-is-worried-that-I'll fail. When a child is on his own, the experience is his alone, the satisfaction belongs only to him and he does not have to filter it through what his parents think and feel.

For the whole article: LINK.

your 2012 staff!

The summer camp staff arrived yesterday! They're not all at FV quite yet, and not everyone is in this picture, but you get a sense of the size - and even, though from this distance, the enthusiasm and rarin'-to-go-ness - of your 2012 FV staff!

lax stars got their start at Frost Valley

Rick Cobb writes: "I was in Montclair this weekend for hte 50th anniversary of the lacrosse program (1962-2012), and saw a couple of alumni who I taught to play lacrosse at FV.  On the left is John Dudley, who went on to play lax at Navy, and now coaches a scholastic lax team in Newark.  On the right is Ross Wimer, oldest of four brothers who all ended up playing lax at Montclair (or Cherry Creek HS in CO after they moved), and all played at Yale.  Just goes to show you never know how the seeds planted at FV will grow."

last chance to have your name inscribed in the Alumni Cabin in our new CIT Lodge

Dear Frost Valley alumni friends:

Our new home for the CITs is nearly finished. In less than a month, our 2012 CITs will arrive and move in and start their life-changing adventure at Frost Valley.

Very soon (within days) we will be shifting our focus as alumni back to helping FV fund "camperships" (financial aid scholarships for kids to attend camp whose families can't otherwise afford it) - an annual campaign known in recent years as "Project 332" (because our goal is sending 332 campership kids to camp).

But now I'm writing to say that this is your last opportunity to join many, many former CITs and others to have your name (and CIT summer, if you want) included in the "Alumni Cabin," one of the cabins that form the new Leadership Lodge.

If you go here

http://frostvalley.kintera.org/leadershiplodge/cits

and make a donation of any size, we will add your name to the walls of Alumni Cabin. In a few weeks a new generation of CITs will join our community - they'll see your name and will know they follow a special tradition.

See below for a copy of the message I (with Jeff Daly and Dan Weir) sent to you at the beginning of this project. We're coming all the way back from the devastation of Hurricane Irene, and now we'll be better than ever.

Click on this link and you'll see the list of alumni whose names will be on the wall, as of a few days ago:

http://media.sas.upenn.edu/afilreis/leadership-lodge-May2012.jpg

- Al

Al Filreis
http://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis

- - -

Dear Frost Valley alumni, one & all:

We are writing to many, many former Frost Valley campers, trip leaders, directors, program staff, counselors, environmental ed instructors, support staff, Family Campers, lifeguards, Village Chiefs, nurses and doctors, and CITs. When you’re done reading this letter, we hope you will fire up your computer’s or smartphone’s web browser and will go immediately to these two pages:

http://frostvalley.kintera.org/leadershiplodge/cits
http://frostvalleyymcaalumni.ning.com/

This email message will explain why. So please read on!

Hurricane Irene’s disastrous flooding took its toll on our beloved valley. Most receiving this letter will know what happened on the day after our final session’s summer campers left. Since then we have made a continuous effort to rebuild our community as quickly as possible. Thousands of dollars and hours of staff and volunteer labor later, we have removed debris, cleared camp roads, re-set hiking trails, and restored horse pastures.

Now we face our greatest post-Irene challenge: we must replace Pigeon Lodge, which Irene utterly (and horribly) destroyed. We must raise the money for the new building and we must complete its construction before the start of summer camp 2012.

It’s called Leadership Lodge, and without it our CITs, LITs and other “in-training” (“iT”) future camp leaders will have no home; or, we’d have to turn away 160 campers.

Yes, you read that correctly! The new building, replacing Pigeon, will be the home of our CITs. The first permanent home for our CITs in Frost Valley’s history. Many reading this letter will remember their own exciting CIT (or “LIT” or “FCC” or…) summer as if it were yesterday. Others are the parents, siblings, spouses, and dear friends of former CITs and will want, we hope, to honor them. What a time of life that was! We learned how to be leaders; we learned how important reliable, open-hearted leadership is to our own lives and to our world.

From the outside, Leadership Lodge will look like Pigeon Lodge did and Biscuit Lodge still does – wood framing on the second floor, with Forstmann-style dormers, and Neversink River stone masonwork gracing the exterior of the bottom floor. But inside, Leadership Lodge will consist of four cabin-style rooms.

Now, we together—people spread across the generations but with a life-changing experience in common—have a project to undertake. One of those four cabins, we hope, will always been known as “Alumni Cabin” in honor of our own—or our sons’ and daugthers’, or beloved friend’s or spouse’s—coming-of-age as Frost Valley leaders. If Frost Valley’s alumni and their loved ones are able to reach the goal of raising $75,000, every alumna or alumnus who makes a donation (or for whom a donation is made on their behalf) will be honored with her or his name on the walls of our cabin, along with the year of your CIT experience (if apt).

The building of Leadership Lodge so soon after Irene took away our beloved Pigeon Lodge is a characteristically creative response to setbacks by the people of Frost Valley. By rebuilding in this way, we are furthering our commitment to leadership development and reminding ourselves of the importance of our own personal decision to learn how to lead.

We hope you’ll help. Here’s how. First, go to the online Leadership Lodge Alumni Donation page at http://frostvalley.kintera.org/leadershiplodge/cits and make a donation. Or call 845-985-2291 and ask to speak with Jess or Liane. Second, go to http://frostvalleyymcaalumni.ning.com/, log in to this social media site we’ve built for Frost Valley people, and join the community there.

This second step is nearly as important as the first. There are many thousands whose heartfelt experiences at Frost Valley changed their lives. But we are in touch with only around 2,500 of them. Our goal is to relocate some of those who have gotten out of touch—your fellow campers, members of your CIT cohort, and co-counselors. Help us find them and reunite them with the FV magic!

Thank you for whatever you can do to help.

Sincerely,
 
Al Filreis
Jeff Daly
Dan Weir

July 4, 1959

Flag raising on July 4, 1959. Camp Wawayanda's second July 4 at its new Frost Valley site. At left is Mike DeVita (VC of Forest), in the middle (on the drums) is Dave King (VC of Lenape), and at right (probably) is Tom Squires (VC of Totem).

Olympic team from Germany, early 80s

Jurgen Bobrowski was an ICCP counselor from Germany in the early 1980s. In 1980 he was the head coach of Germany during our Olympics. That year one of the other teams was the Soviet Union (Russia) - and that's because for a month of camp we had three Russian visitors. This was the summer of the U.S. boycott of the Moscow Olympics (President Carter's way of protesting Soviet intervention in Afghanistan) and so we felt pretty special, working peacefully with these visiting Russian YMCA staffers. (Stuart Kaufer, the head of our dialysis unit in those years, spoke fluent Russian and was the head coach of the Soviet Union team!) Bobo (as we called Jurgen) wanted to make a gesture, Germany to Russian, and so he and his team-mates painted a "peace dove" inside a map of the USSR in the German banner. Probably you can't discern all this from this somewhat blurry picture, but there's the story.

Reflection Pond this morning at 7:30 am

As I passed by on a 2-mile run.

very soon to be home for our CITs

Leadership Lodge, replacing Pigeon Lodge (destroyed by Hurricane Irene), is nearly finished. It will be the permanent home of our CIT program. If you can help with this project, please consider it. We need to raise $130,000 more in order to pay for the construction: http://frostvalley.kintera.org/leadershiplodge/cits.

thank you from the FV board of trustees

important letter for all: 1) new social media site for alumni; 2) help us build Leadership Lodge to replace Pigeon

Dear Frost Valley alumni, one & all:

We are writing to many, many former Frost Valley campers, trip leaders, directors, program staff, counselors, environmental ed instructors, support staff, Family Campers, lifeguards, Village Chiefs, nurses and doctors, and CITs. When you’re done reading this letter, we hope you will fire up your computer’s or smartphone’s web browser and will go immediately to these two pages:

frostvalley.kintera.org/leadershiplodge/cits
frostvalleyymcaalumni.ning.com

This email message will explain why. So please read on!

Hurricane Irene’s disastrous flooding took its toll on our beloved valley. Most receiving this letter will know what happened on the day after our final session’s summer campers left. Since then we have made a continuous effort to rebuild our community as quickly as possible. Thousands of dollars and hours of staff and volunteer labor later, we have removed debris, cleared camp roads, re-set hiking trails, and restored horse pastures.

Now we face our greatest post-Irene challenge: we must replace Pigeon Lodge, which Irene utterly (and horribly) destroyed. We must raise the money for the new building and we must complete its construction before the start of summer camp 2012. It’s called Leadership Lodge, and without it our CITs, LITs and other “in-training” (“iT”) future camp leaders will have no home; or, we’d have to turn away 160 campers.

Yes, you read that correctly! The new building, replacing Pigeon, will be the home of our CITs. The first permanent home for our CITs in Frost Valley’s history. Many reading this letter will remember their own exciting CIT (or “LIT” or “FCC” or…) summer as if it were yesterday. Others are the parents, siblings, spouses, and dear friends of former CITs and will want, we hope, to honor them. What a time of life that was! We learned how to be leaders; we learned how important reliable, open-hearted leadership is to our own lives and to our world.

From the outside, Leadership Lodge will look like Pigeon Lodge did and Biscuit Lodge still does – wood framing on the second floor, with Forstmann-style dormers, and Neversink River stone masonwork gracing the exterior of the bottom floor. But inside, Leadership Lodge will consist of four cabin-style rooms. Now, we together—people spread across the generations but with a life-changing experience in common—have a project to undertake. One of those four cabins, we hope, will always been known as “Alumni Cabin” in honor of our own—or our sons’ and daugthers’, or beloved friend’s or spouse’s—coming-of-age as Frost Valley leaders. If Frost Valley’s alumni and their loved ones are able to reach the goal of raising $75,000, every alumna or alumnus who makes a donation (or for whom a donation is made on their behalf) will be honored with her or his name on the walls of our cabin, along with the year of your CIT experience (if apt).

The building of Leadership Lodge so soon after Irene took away our beloved Pigeon Lodge is a characteristically creative response to setbacks by the people of Frost Valley. By rebuilding in this way, we are furthering our commitment to leadership development and reminding ourselves of the importance of our own personal decision to learn how to lead. We hope you’ll help. Here’s how. First, go to the online Leadership Lodge Alumni Donation page at frostvalley.kintera.org/leadershiplodge/cits and make a donation. Or call 845-985-2291 and ask to speak with Jess or Liane. Second, go to frostvalleyymcaalumni.ning.com, log in to this social media site we’ve built for Frost Valley people, and join the community there.

This second step is nearly as important as the first. There are many thousands whose heartfelt experiences at Frost Valley changed their lives. But we are in touch with only around 2,500 of them. Our goal is to relocate some of those who have gotten out of touch—your fellow campers, members of your CIT cohort, and co-counselors. Help us find them and reunite them with the FV magic!

Thank you for whatever you can do to help.

Sincerely,

Al Filreis
Jeff Daly
Dan Weir

Leadership Lodge

Click here to read an important article about how Leadership Lodge is being built to replace Pigeon Lodge, which was destroyed by Hurricane Irene at the end of last summer.

Wanda Cypert has died at 93

Wanda Cypert, a long (long!)-time Frost Valley staff person, and long-time neighbor, has died. Her husband Paul was our maintenance director in the early 1960s, and their daughter Sue spent several years living at FV and working as a year-long Environmental Education instructor (she is now a college administrator in upstate New York). Wanda retired some years ago and lived just down the road from FV.

Glenn Horton writes: "I have some sad news. Wanda Cypert passed away this past weekend (March 10th) at the age of 93. For those that did not know Wanda, she was a true fixture of Frost Valley with a smile and attitude that warmed hearts with every encounter. Wanda filled in where ever necessary. Between houskeeping, laundry in the summer, and/or food service, she was one of those people that found Frost Valley to be home and the staff as her family. I'm not sure how long she spent working at the Valley, but the Cypert name has roots there as far back as the 60's. I for one will miss her smile."

reunion hoopla

FV people never outgrow the best antics: hoopla.

she visited once and never forgot

You'd think that most of the folks who find this blog and read it intensively are long-time "lifer" types, people whose lives are entwined with the place over years, decades even. But there are people who encountered the valley just once and will never forget it. One such person is Alyson, who visited Frost Valley for an "Indian Princesses" weekend (girls and their dads) back in the 1980s - as a 7 year old - and has thought about it always. Then she went searching on the 'net for FV and found us. So take a look at photos of a person whose life was memorably influenced by just one visit. Let's now go back to the early 80s.**




** (By the way, we know her visit was in the fall of 1983, 84 or 85, because we see her eating with her group in what is now Geyer Hall, the "old girls' dining hall," which was used while the new dining hall was being built in place of the original which had burned in the winter of 1982-83.)

old photo leads to thoughts of John Mumford

Photo taken in the early 70s, possibly 1969, by Ken Nathanson's dad during a visiting day or possibly check-in day at the beginning of a camp session. The fellow in the rakish-angeled straw hat is, I believe, Ken's older brother, whom we called "Snake" in those days. I could be wrong about that. The guy in the white shirt, wearing glasses, is the brilliant and creative John Mumford. John eventually became the quirkiest and most avant-garde VC of Forest in history. It was he who convinced us all that Forest needed a mascot - who turned out to be Kim Connell's goat, whom we named Bozo and who spent most of the summer with us. John also noticed that at night in the summer the constellation Cassiopia appeared as a "W" over cabin 6 when you sat at the CQ fire in the middle of cabins 6-10 (old arrangement, near the dining hall), and that any counselor assigned to cabin 6 would become "worthless." Thenceforward the "W" (two hands holding up index and middle finger, forming the now-famous Wawayanda W sign) referred not to "Wawayanda" but to "Wawayanda Worthless," a secret (and no doubt often unfair) judgment of counselors who weren't doing their jobs very well. It was Mumford who provided an apprenticeship (when he was a JC) for John Ferris, who himself turned out to be the very opposite of worthless - a smart and super-creative and abundantly dedicated counselor, especially for troubled kids.

lifer brick

Doubletop this morning

Doubletop Mountain this morning: 2 degrees Farenheit and a fresh several inches of snow.

tobaggan run

Here's a photo sent to me by Ken Nathanson. I'm guessing that it was taken in the early 70s. What is now the tube run - the grooved hill running down from the cabin 21-25 area (between 25 and 24 on the south side of the area) - used to be our tobaggan run. And, oh boy, when the snow was hard and slick a tobaggan, especially one loaded with people, could really move fast and, often, a little unpredictably. Down at the bottom of the run, just off to the left, was a shed we took to calling "the tobaggan shed" (although in the summer it was for years called "the Nature shed").

Leading the way here was Tom Ricciardi, patriarch of a sturdy family of Mountainside NJ-based Frost Valley friends. Tom was a member of FV's trustees. His son Pat was a longtime camper and then staffer. The Ricciardis, during the winter, come up to FV nearly every weekend as part of a snowmobile club, and they often otherwise spent a fun weekend in the Castle. Tom ran a construction firm and I believe provided the construction materials for building Turrell Lodge, Hird Lodge and the little (now-gone) house that came to be called "Ricciardi Cabin." And I believe Tom and his friends and family themselves built Ricciardi Cabin along with Carl Hess in - I think - 1969.

Bud Cox, Doug Kerr

trip list, early 80s

Here is a "trip list" for an Adirondack canoe trip from the early 1980s. You'll notice that toilet paper is a starred item. Okay, fine - obvious and still a starred object for today's trips! Look closely and see if you can discern items that are typically outmoded or different today.