How does it feel to be a predator in the woods at night? Or, for that matter, the predator’s prey? Forty New Haven kids found out this week, through a five-day camping experience.
The camp, the brainchild of city housing inspector and Fair Haven organizer Rafael Ramos, is in its eighth year providing all the usual summer activities: hiking, swimming in the Eight Mile River that flows through their home base at Devil’s Hopyard State Park in Haddam and at nearby Hammonasset State Park; creating talent shows; and finding critters, like the red-spotted newt Ileanie Mercado is holding.
“He has eight spots,” said Ileanie (pictured), who is 8 and lives in the Hill. After being preserved in a photo, the newt was released back (from?) whence he came.
Special events are held each evening. On Wednesday this reporter accompanied David Heiser, head of education for Peabody Museum, to the camp for his presentation about nocturnal animals, or as he called it, “Having fun in the woods at night.”
When we arrived at dusk, the tiki candles placed in a circle were just beginning to glow. Another one was posted at the outhouse a short distance through the woods. But since this was no Port-a-Potty like the ones on the Green for summer concerts — in other words, it was kind of stinky — some of the kids, girls included, opted to pee in the woods and headed further away from camp, flashlights in hand.
The fact that they felt comfortable doing this is a testament to their overcoming the alienation many city kids — and adults — feel about being in the woods
Before the program started, kids were milling around the area. Bernesha Suggs (pictured), who’s 12 and who’ll be a seventh grader at Beecher School this fall, said this was her first camping experience. She was having fun. “We do different stuff we don’t do in the city, like hiking and swimming.” Asked if she liked being in the woods at night, she said, “Not that much, because lots of bugs come out.”
Heiser brought stuffed specimens of a barred owl and a screech owl for show and tell. He asked the kids to guess which animal is a favored prey of the great horned owl. When they couldn’t guess, he gave them a hint. “It’s black and white.”
“A skunk!” they shrieked.
Heiser explained that owls have excellent vision owing to their huge eyes (represented by the balls he’s holding), but that their eyes actually impinge on the part of the brain where the sense of smell is located. So they have a poor sense of smell, thus minimizing any negative consequences from grabbing a skunk in their talons.
He gave the barred owl’s call — translated into English as, “Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all?“The campers repeated it. He motioned for complete silence — and got it — before making the call again, and having them repeat it again. He said sometimes humans succeed in attracting a real live owl with their imitation call, but it didn’t work this time.
Heiser led the kids in prey and predator games (like the one pictured at the top of this story). They also played “bat and moth” in which a blindfolded “bat” with poor vision (but great hearing) tries to catch “insects” — i.e. other campers.
His workshop lasted two hours, and engaged almost all the kids for the entire time.
While they were playing, and learning, Siri Rishi (pictured), Ramos’s wife and fellow camp organizer, was in the “kitchen,” a tent-like structure attached to the open back of a small box truck. She whipped up two kinds of chili (with ground turkey and vegetarian), a salad featuring various greens and fennel, and quesadillas (tortillas filled with a modest amount of shredded cheese and grilled). And no dessert. Ramos and Rishi apparently wanted to get as far from the “Six Flags and candy” concept of field trips as they possibly could.
Rishi was asked if the kids ever complain about the food or ask for the unhealthful snacks they’re used to at home. To the contrary, said. “They’re always asking, ‘When’s breakfast? When’s lunch? When’s dinner?’” She said their only concession to junk food is occasional chips.
Ramos (emerging from one of two tipis on the camp site) is deputy director of New Haven government’s Livable City Initiative and founder of Bregamos Community Theatre in Fair Haven. He also serves on the board of Junta for Progressive Action, one of the city’s oldest and largest Latino service organizations.
“In 2000, I was president of [the board of] Junta and I saw kids just coming back from Six Flags, and eating candy. We spent a lot of money on the trip, and I thought, ‘Why not do something different that would be more memorable for them?’”
He started the camping trips in 2001, first on property owned by a friend near Devil’s Hopyard State Park in Haddam, and for the past several years in the youth group camping area of the park itself. The kids, mostly 8 to 12 years old, are supervised by a group of teens from Youth@Work and several adult volunteers who take off from work to run the camp from Monday through Friday.
Ramos also draws on New Haven institutions to present the campers with information they might not otherwise learn. When he set up the program he considered,
“Since we’re going camping, why don’t we get people to come and do workshops about the natural environment and get kids to advocate for the preservation of the natural environment?” In addition to Heiser from the Peabody, who made his fifth visit to the camp this year, presenters have come from the Urban Resources Initiative, Yale’s School of Forestry, the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station and elsewhere to do workshops about topics such as water conservation, protection of wildlife in Connecticut forests and the food chain.
United Illuminating lends the grill on which the cooks (including these two teens from Youth@Work) prepare everything from pancakes and scrambled eggs to ground turkey and grilled corn to garnish the chili. Buses provided by the New Haven Board of Education take the kids to and from camp and on their day trip to Hammonasset. The campers, who come from all over the city, pay nothing for the five-day experience. Ramos said he raises money from individuals and merchants throughout the city, as well as from groups like NeighborWorks New Horizons, which sends a few kids every year. The cost per camper this year was $109. In addition, he estimates the program has about $9,000 in camping gear.
When this reporter arrived at camp around dusk, Ramos proudly gave a tour of the grounds. Tents were scattered in threes through the woods surrounding the main activity area, which featured the kitchen, a fire pit, and several picnic tables. Not a scrap of trash could be found; he said another value they emphasize is the need to be caretakers of the natural world.
For the past several years, Adam Blasavage (pictured) has taken a week off from his job with Habitat for Humanity to volunteer at the camp. “I grew up camping,” he said, “but for these kids this may be their only chance to get out in the woods and see the world beyond Fair Haven. They play the tough guys on the street, but they come here and can be kids again.”
As Heiser prepared to leave, after sitting down to that delicious dinner, he couldn’t resist another “teachable moment.” Holding a high-beam flashlight right next to his eye, he shone the light at the underside of a log and saw a gleam, like a diamond, emanating from the body of a wolf spider. It’s because their secondary eyes (they have eight eyes) “have light-reflecting crystalline deposits that shine brightly in a beam of light,” according to information on a website Heiser forwarded after the visit to camp. He passed the flashlight to a few of the kids and to this reporter, who was as fascinated as any 8‑year-old with the wonders of nature.