South Hero
Camp Common Ground fosters community
Move planned for summer ‘04
By Adele Johnsen
Free Press Correspondent
On a hot summer night at Camp Common Ground, Gideon Turner danced his heart out to the music of an Afro-Caribbean band. Surrounded by other dancers, old and young, Turner waved his arms and tapped his feet, his long hair shaking with his movement.
Pausing briefly during a break in the music, Turner, in his 20s, animatedly described what has been drawing him back to the South Hero camp for five years.
“It doesn’t take very long for people to come and notice that something special is happening here. It’s something that happens between others,” said Turner of Burlington. “There really is a very unique sense of community here.”
That was the sense Peg Kamens and Jim Mendell hoped to foster when they launched Camp Common Ground in Hubbardton 10 summers ago after attending a Goddard College course on starting a business.
They decided to start a camp for families, a camp that would foster diversity and a sense of community among adults and children. For one to two weeks each summer, Camp Common Ground’s participants live in tents or cabins on the grounds of YWCA’s Camp Hochelaga in South Hero, taking courses in subjects ranging from Reiki and communications skills to watercolor and windsurfing.
“It seems to me that there are a couple of levels in which we operate,” said Jill Entis, a South Burlington resident and a participant in the camp for 9 years. “People have fun, we do art and wellness kinds of things, and families interacting. But underneath it is really learning how to live in community, so that when disputes come up, we really work on resolving them in a way that hopefully can be educational for everybody.” Entis works as a therapist and is a mediator at the camp.
The camp’s unique blend of family fun and community building has proven popular, not only among Vermonters but also among residents of farther-flung states and countries, including Wisconsin and Texas, France and Japan. The camp accommodates about 150 people. Spots fill up quickly once registration starts in February and there is often a waiting list.
This popularity is part of the reason Camp Common Ground is moving to its own site in Starksboro next summer, where it can offer additional sessions, not only in the summer but the rest of the year. On the 715-acre site, Camp Common Ground will have better athletic facilities, fields for grazing animals and raising food, an art barn and improved accessibility for elderly and handicapped campers.
“We have exciting plans for our facilities,” said Jackie Mangione, the camp’s marketing director and chairwoman of it’s capital campaign. “We’re a family camp, that’s what it’s all about.”
Photo by Peter Huoppi, Free Press
