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Beloved camp seeks help with up-KEEP
| Thursday, May 29 2008 10:15 AM
Last Updated: Thursday, May 29 2008 7:43 AM
LOS OSOS — The drafty, leaking icon of a popular Kern environmental camp is on its last not-so-green legs.
Camp KEEP is accepting donations for the dome project as well as scholarships for students unable to afford the tuition. If you donate, note to which effort you’d like your funds applied.
Donations can be sent to:
KEEP Foundation
Kern County Superintendent of Schools
1300 17th St. - CITY CENTRE
Bakersfield, CA 93301-4533
• Camp KEEP was founded in 1969. It now has two locations: KEEP Ocean in Montaña de Oro State Park and KEEP Cambria Pines in Cambria.
• About 7,000 students from Kern County and around the state attend both camps each year. Tuition costs about $240 and scholarships are available.
• There's a Camp KEEP Web site, Campkeep.org.
• Contact director Tom Anspach for more information at 871-1883.
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Photos:
An evening's campfire activity is under way at Camp KEEP in Los Osos last Wednesday. Naturalists Penny Principe (center), Eilif Paulson (seated left) and Jesse Robinson (seated right) will lead the students from Wallace and Huron middle schools in skits and songs around the campfire.
Wallace School sixth grader Gary Watson is hard at work on the beach at Montana de Oro building a sculpture from stones he found on the beach, during a Camp KEEP outing to the tidepools.
At the stunning Montana de Oro State Park, Camp KEEP naturalist Asher Weitzen delivers instructions and a nature talk to sixth graders from Wallace (Kernville) and Huron Middle Schools before they head out to explore ocean tidepools.
The "dome" is the center of Camp KEEP, which serves as dining room and classroom for thousands of students who visit every year. These are students from Kernville's Wallace Middle School and Coalinga-Huron's Huron Middle School last week. Officials are hoping to raise funds to replace the aging tent-like structure with a newer, modern building.
A stunning educational jewel, Kern County Schools' Camp KEEP Ocean is nestled in the Montana de Oro State Park along the Central Coast. Thousands of students from Kern and other counties attend the camp yearly, where they learn about nature and the environment and participate in events like field trips and campfire sing-alongs during a week-long stay.
Part of the Camp KEEP experience is the evening campfire, where the staff and naturalists educate and entertain the kids. This is just a portion of the group from Kernville's Wallace and Huron middle schools, who attended last week.
The metal-framed dome classroom is quietly corroding beneath a dozen weathered and cracking canvass tarps strapped down with 100 or more ropes. Layers of patchwork ply-board floor has rotted in some places and is awaiting repair.
It’s the centerpiece of Camp KEEP, Kern Environmental Education Program, but the dome is functionally, environmentally and structurally past its prime.
“A lot of people are very attached to the dome,” naturalist Dean Thompson said. “Some people say it’s like the soul of KEEP. But it’s not a practical building. ... Kids are coming to an environmental camp and I think it’d be nice if we were to provide an example to them. ...”
CAMP ANTICS
Each year, thousands of students from Kern County and beyond have ventured into the middle of a eucalyptus grove in Montaña de Oro State Park on California’s Central Coast for a week of science lessons, campfire songs and hikes to places like Morro Bay and the tide pools of Smuggler’s Cove to explore in real life the ecosystem and life cycles they have been reading about in textbooks.
Last week, about 80 sixth grade Wallace Middle School students took their turn at the camp.
They competed with one another to put plants and animals in the proper food chain order: “Sun is the ultimate power,” Bryce Muncy told his instructor. “it gives energy to the phytoplankton. The zooplankton eat the phytoplankton ...”
They sang songs at a stadium of logs around a campfire: “Live Oak, live oak, ooh, baby, let your xylem flow. Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
Some even stumbled upon a “National Geographic” moment.
“A coyote was trying to get a baby deer and the momma came along,” explained Joseph Montez.
For some it’s the first time they’ve seen the ocean.
“What I hope they gain is the appreciation for being outside,” said naturalist Asher Weitzen. “I hope they get off the bus and maybe go for a little hike, an adventure, instead of sitting in front of the computer.”
BATTERED AND BRUISED
While the students get a lot out of their week, camp staff grapple with deteriorating facilities.
In the kitchen, in a semi truck trailer, three cooks have to “do the crab” squeezing past each other and equipment, lead cook Katherine Ceniceros demonstrated.
Spanning less than 1,500 square feet, the dome serves as the mess hall, classroom, shelter and even the rain poncho drying room. Also, the milk is stored in a cooler in the dome because there’s no room in the kitchen.
The structure technically has no windows or doors. Canvass flaps are drawn open to keep the air flowing even if it’s cold and the propane heaters hung high on the dome are running. And rain sounds like bullets, Program Supervisor Elizabeth Roberts said.
And the coastal weather has battered the dome throughout the decades.
A center support post had to be installed after a wind storm blew the structure over in the 1970s, caretaker Rich Bohey said. And an approximately 25-foot-long wind screen lies in wait to shield the structure from dangerous winds. It was installed in the mid-1990s after one side succumbed to 70-mile-per hour winds.
If weather threatens on the weekends, staff take turns coming back to camp to raise the screen, he said.
SHINY AND NEW
And so the Kern County Superintendent of Schools, which operates the camp, hopes the dome’s days are numbered.
Plans for a nearly $700,000 permanent new eco-friendly classroom and kitchen are being developed.
The camp’s director, Tom Anspach, said he told the naturalists to “go for the pie in the sky” with a wishlist for a new camp centerpiece.
Now, on paper, are drawings of an ultra-modern environmental masterpiece — a far cry from the waste-generating dome that’s been at the camp for more than three decades.
Upgrades to the kitchen could provide one of the biggest environmental savings. A commercial dish-washing system would allow the camp to serve meals on washable dishes instead of styrofoam. Each week, the camp produces enough waste to fill a dumpster, Thompson said, much of that being disposable dishes.
The building would also recycle gray water from hand-washing, which would be used to water gardens. The roof would be soil and grass. A heat-absorbing wall would emit warmth in the evening. A wind turbine could generate electricity.
And windows that open and close would allow for natural light as well as safety for staff keeping an eye on campers playing on the grounds.
SENTIMENTAL ATTACHMENTS
While some naturalists are ready to bid the dome farewell, others like Penny Principe, who has been at the camp since 1984, are a little more hesitant.
“I don’t know if I want to answer that,” she said when asked how she’d feel about losing the dome. Diverting her eyes to the ground she said: “I have a real nostalgia for the dome. But then again it’s not an environmental building.”
And teachers who come back year after year are sad to hear it may be replaced.
“It’s an icon,” said Debbie Campbell, who teaches science at Wallace. “The dome makes camp.”
Alex Bennett, 16, a sophomore at Frontier High School, went to camp KEEP twice — once as a sixth grader at Almondale Elementary and once this year as a camp counselor.
“It kind of makes me sad because it’s all the memories of when I was there and now I won’t be able to go back and see that,” he said.
But when Anspach showed Campbell and two of her colleagues an architectural sketch of the dream building, they were pleasantly surprised.
“Oh, wow,” exclaimed Campbell, Steve Brucker and Terry Bolt in unison.
“I have to say, it’s beautiful,” Bolt said.
And Bennett said he’s happy about getting rid of styrofoam. He remembered the naturalists saying they hated using it. And he’s assured that, just as the dome provided a great experience for him, new campers will have great new experiences in the new building, like being able to go onto a stargazing platform.
From a teaching perspective, Roberts said she’s looking forward to the day when kids can see first-hand what green technology can do.
THE HOLD UP
Camp KEEP has raised about $200,000 in the past year or so toward the new design, Anspach said, but it’s well shy of the latest estimate of $660,000 calculated last year. Until then the camp will keep a close watch on the necessary repairs.
And the idea of the new building may grow on the dome’s fans.
“They’ll grow to have an affection for it, too,” Roberts said.