My experience at Camp Orkila is from the 1970s.
Not sure of our particulars as to how we got there other than it was either through Y-Indian Guides (which despite being a really great experience between fathers and sons has likely died as the whole gender confusion thing we got going on struck a political nerve somewhere), or through the school system.
This camp provided a common experience that I have had positively reinforced over the years with business associates, sports club members, through area social activities and many other events with people who were local to the Seattle area as children.
It was a bit rough and we came home a bit hungry and smelling like campfire. This was the best way possible for us as kids from the pavement of greater Seattle to begin to understand Puget Sound, native populations and history and the rich forests that were everywhere past the edge of a parking lot.
So, it is with some sadness that I read how some reviews here seem to miss the points that really made this place a valuable and safe learning environment for me and my peers.
I was split up from my friend group and bunked with kids I didn't know. I hated it
I also badly needed to have that experience despite it's ommission from the brochure.
I think, and deeply, that those times allowed for fewer expectations which in turned allowed for a more broad perspective as to our control or lack of it, our marriage to nature
It would become of immeasurable value in the kids who would grow up to be the stewards of the PNW.
I understand the change of time as much as I understand how some qualities should not and don't change with time.
Camp Orkila delivered both. Not like in the myriad of camp pamplets I see now, but in ways even the Camp did not necessarily include as part of the spiel.
Thanks Camp Orkila.
Kindly written by one of the thousands of wet, fascinated campers wearing bell bottom jeans in the 1970s. read more