Everyone needs unplugged time

For four days recently, I volunteered as resident storyteller at Camp Sweyolakan on Lake Coeur d’Alene. The campers did not have access to anything electronic. No cell phones, no iPods, no MP3 players, no Wii games.

“We’re here to have an outdoor experience,” explained camp director Peggy Clark. “To get away from the race of daily life and communicate with one another. The only ‘Wii’ in camp is you and me.”

In those four days unplugged, I realized that:

Kids don’t miss their gadgets.

The Sweyolakan campers range from first grade to high school. Not once did I hear a camper lament the lack of Internet time. No one pined for their “screens.” Instead, they built birdhouses, painted miniature tepees, wrote in their journals. They did archery, took swimming lessons, canoed. They listened to, and told, stories. With the Alpine campers – ages 10 to 12 – we created a story featuring characters from Greek and Roman mythology. Each child added a sentence to the story. The plotline eventually carried the characters to a party. One girl said: “They invited everyone, even Medusa, but they had to put a bag over her head, of course.”

It was reassuring to witness imaginations in action. Not only that, all the Alpine campers seemed to catch the reference to the snake-headed figure.

Kids need electronic devices because they can’t roam free.

One morning, a counselor and I walked campers to the “Enchanted Forest” – an exceptionally beautiful patch of overhanging trees and lush foliage. We watched over the children as they built fairy cottages out of bark and branches. We listened as they made up stories. Kitty, age 8, told us that bugs were fairies in disguise.

After 30 minutes, we walked them back to main camp. Some of the campers paused to pick up rocks, pluck raspberries off bushes, listen to chipmunks. We hurried them along.

On that walk, I reflected again on my summers during the baby boomer era. Our parents shooed us out the door in the mornings and hollered us back at night. In between, we explored neighborhood enchanted forests – woods, vacant lots, parks. We dillydallied for hours because no parents hurried us along.

Children no longer have this freedom. They are like caged animals. In this crazy Joseph Duncan era, it can’t be helped. To get out of their cages, children must be supervised by adults. We adults don’t easily skip, tromp, explore or build fairy cottages in enchanted forests. Some of us try, but when exhaustion sets in, we contain the children by plopping them in front of videos and handing them their Game Boys.

Adults need unwired camps.

Youth camps always struggle to stay in business. Some offer weekends for adults, but Sweyolakan and other Inland Northwest camps should consider getting into the Camp Unplugged business. Offer a week a year with these rules: no cell phones, no e-mail, no Internet. It could be lucrative. Time magazine reported recently that it takes about 16 minutes for a worker to refocus after being interrupted by e-mail. Some companies are instituting e-mail-free days to jump-start productivity. Think what an e-mail free week would do for productivity of mind and spirit.

One afternoon, as I walked from main camp to Echo, where the teens live in tepees, I heard an ancient and exotic sound. The teens, gathered in the unit lodge, were playing cards. It reminded me of the science fiction movie “Fahrenheit 451,” which ends with men and women walking through the woods reciting the words of the classics, which had all been banned and burned.

At Camp Sweyolakan, something ancient and exotic is kept alive: Person-to-person communication, no wires attached.