Rebecca Nappi: Camp as sacred as memories of it
Camp Sweyolakan on Lake Coeur d’Alene is not for sale. But man, it’s worth a bundle.
The camp, established in 1922 and owned by the Inland Northwest Council of Camp Fire USA, sits on 300 acres on Mica Bay, just about 15 minutes from the center of Coeur d’Alene. It features one mile of waterfront property, and for two nights recently I slept in a treehouse at Sweyolakan, as I did when I was 13. Sweyolakan means “sigh of the pines,” and the evening breeze through my treehouse was so calming, I nearly wept in gratitude for escaping the city’s heat.
I did creative writing with older campers, told bedtime stories to little campers, hiked and kayaked, broke an arrow during archery, and examined the fairy dwellings that campers fashion out of sticks and rocks in the “Enchanted Forest.”
I worry about Sweyolakan’s future because it’s a developer’s dream. Put upscale condos on it, name it Sighing Pines Estate, make a fortune. Counselor-in-training Elsa Chambers, 16, wrote: “If Camp Sweyolakan was sold, I would go to the Enchanted Forest and get all the fairies to fight for our camp.”
Lake Coeur d’Alene, discovered in recent years by the very wealthy, is still home to a half-dozen camps, built when lake property was cheaper and more plentiful. Thousands of Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts and Camp Fire kids and church youth learn swimming and archery and how to raise and lower flags and how to canoe. They learn what the sun smells like on dusty walking paths and that birds, owls and squirrels can make just as much noise as a city’s cars and trucks. They memorize camp rituals and songs: Hey, hey, hey do you remember, what good times can really mean? Say goodbye till September and come along and go with me.
These youth camps run on constant-scramble budgets. Toilets break down. Showers go to rust. Winter weather bursts pipes. Spring winds topple trees. Yet the camps hang on, and campers return year after year, and they grow up and send their children and grandchildren. These camps are not expensive compared with camps near bigger cities where the land has been devoured by development. You can do a five-day stretch at Sweyolakan for as little as $275, and all the youth camps offer assistance for low-income kids.
These are sacred spaces, people.
Peggy Clark is director of Camp Sweyolakan. She’s tough in a good way, but the minute I mentioned Sweyolakan as a sacred space, her eyes filled with tears. She calls it a place of healing. “You learn to love the outdoors. You learn community.”
More tears when I chatted with Mary Griffith, a teacher who volunteers each summer at Sweyolakan. In the 1970s, she was a counselor at Camp Neewahlu, an 82-acre Camp Fire camp on Kidd Island Bay. Neewahlu was sold in 2003 to actor Dennis Franz for about $2 million. Money from the sale is used for Camp Fire programs, and people praise Franz for opening part of his beach to Sweyolakan campers on “overnights.” Still, Griffith cries when she remembers Camp Neewahlu.
“I just wish there were ways to keep this forever for the kids,” she says.
Marshall Mend, a Coeur d’Alene real estate guru who attended camp as a child at California’s Lake Arrowhead, agrees. “I believe in private property rights, but some things are worth more than money, and that’s one of them.”
Mend estimated that if the Sweyolakan property were sold and developed, it would have an approximate market value of $160 million.
But let me repeat – Camp Sweyolakan is not for sale. Nor should it – or any of the other Lake Coeur d’Alene youth camps – ever be.