The Nature Lodge

During the summers of 1986-1989 I had the privilege of being the director of the Ecology-Conservation Department otherwise known as the "Nature Lodge". Among the merit badge classes taught there were Reptile Study, Soil and Water Conservation, Enviromental Science, Forestry and a few others I can't recall at this time. Forestry and Reptile Study were my favorite ones to teach. The building known at the Nature Lodge housed teaching space in the center of the building, shelves for holding aquariums containing non-poisionous snakes, frogs, small mammals and maybe fish and a back room where staff would sometimes reside or at least have a space to work on paperwork or simply to "chill out". In front of the nature lodge is a small trail and space of an additional merit badge class.

At least a couple of the summers I stayed in the back room of the nature lodge by myself. One of the other guys on staff had what would be considered a very primative computer by today's standards but we kept in on a desk. All that was on it was games that run off floppy disks and those were the older 5 1/4 inch disks that were literally floppy as far as the enclosure was concerned. If I recall correctly they were the text based games that would occasionally show a very basic black and white graphic from time to time. We also had one of those "electric balls" that looked like lighting was trapped inside. If the campers got a glimpse of the inside of the backroom all they would see would be the computer on the desk and the "lightning globe" so it gave the effect of being a high tech lab especially to the younger kids.

When I was the Nature Lodge director I tried something that had never been tried before. I actually got guest speakers from the Greenville Zoo, Clemson Univeristy and Furman University to come and speak on nature related topics. of course most of these speakers had some connection to scouting but it was a real thrill inviting them and giving both the scouts and adult leaders a chance to hear experts speak. I just mention that in case the current or future Nature Lodge director would like to try the same thing.

One more interesting thing we did was we used "real projection technology" to teach some classes and for evening actitivities. One of the staff had a slide projector and we set it up in the backroom and projected it on a sheet covering a hole in the wall between the back room and the main classroom area. I took photos around camp and got them developed into slides. These days it might be easier to use an older sturdy computer and run a Powerpoint/Keynote presentations but if a slide projector and slides are available I would still recommend them in a camp environment.

I hope to visit camp something this summer in the next few weeks to see how the old place is doing and how it's being utilized.