Fishing, Friendship Found At Camp Program Gives Low-Income Adults A Break From Isolation

Judy can fish or swim here if she wants, or go line dancing, or play softball, as the 52-year-old did for the first time at last summer’s camp. She’s a center fielder.

But the West Seattle resident says she’ll save some of her energy for the talent show, where for the third straight year at this camp for low-income older adults she’ll read a poem that begins:

“Go placidly amid the noise and haste and remember what peace there may be in silence.”

Like the 70 other older adults who join her this week, Judy hopes the next three days at Camp Koinonia can provide the sort of refuge the reading alludes to, with recreational activities her only distraction from the solitude.

Run by Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission, the camp gives older adults, ages 50 to 87, a rare opportunity to leave the city - where most of them live on about $515 a month - and lets them take part in outdoor activities many of them have never experienced before, even in their youth.

A haven in the Cascade foothills west of Cle Elum in Eastern Washington, Camp Koinonia is set amid thick forests and open meadows, and is crisscrossed by streams and shaded paths.

Many of the campers are like Judy, who lives alone in an apartment building and whose physical disability - various leg injuries force her to walk with a crutch - and inability to drive make this sort of getaway impossible without help.

“I get away from city life and all the annoyance,” said Judy, who did not give her last name. “I’m not really a lover of the wilderness, but four days is just long enough.”

The campers pay about $25 for their stay.

Jim Brass, who began organizing the camps four years ago as director of Senior Ministries at the Union Gospel Mission, said the camp’s aim is to fight depression, which he sees as the most enduring problem among low-income older adults. Those people are at risk for alcoholism, or even suicide, he said.

“A camp like this helps break that chain,” said Brass, whose nonprofit Christian service agency works with 4,000 older adults in King County, which includes Seattle. “It takes them away from the loneliness, the sirens, the neighbors screaming.”

Inez Brooks, 68, who is helping with the camp’s arts and crafts workshops, said the campers share backgrounds of poverty, isolation or disability.

“Most of these people are not quite shut-ins, but they’re restricted by pain or finance,” said Brooks, who noted that almost all the campers come from low-income housing.

Campers fishing on Tuesday on a pond were far removed from the city’s problems, as they sent awkward if earnest casts into the water, while others rested in the shade.

Litia Salavea, a first-time camp participant, hooked a 14-inch rainbow trout after less than an hour of work. It was the first fish she had ever caught.

“Coming up here, I didn’t really want to go fishing,” said the 68-year-old, who started right up again after reeling in the first one. “Now I want to go fishing a lot more. I like fishing with other people.”