By Andrew Wood
As Cedar Coast continues to grow as an organization we are able to welcome and celebrate many firsts. In the past twelve months we have been able to celebrate our first fully operational season, we had our first school group fundraise a significant portion of their trip because the students wanted to come, we had our first, then second, then thirty-seventh solar panel installed on the stations new facility opening in April 2019. We also got to host our first ever Cedar Coast Field Station summer camp, a Youth Empowerment Camp that ran over five days in August of 2018. Campers including siblings, locals, long time best friends and simply curious kids came from Vancouver Island, the Lower Mainland and even from zip codes in Florida! I had the honour of working and living on Vargas Island while I designed summer camps that approached empowerment on the individual, group and community level. I wanted to ensure that campers had a variety of opportunities to establish where their comfort levels were and then provide a safe, supportive environment for them to push beyond them.
The empowerment camp was a hybrid of local knowledge, adventure-based learning and community service. Highlights included morning yoga on the deck and meditation on the beach, kayaking and stand up paddleboarding in the sun and campfire stories accompanied by driftwood carving/burning of wooden spoons. In addition, the camp focused on individual empowerment through outdoor leadership with campers taking turns leading practice first aid scenarios, participation in personal development workshops such as: goal setting, value sorts and emotional regulation. But what separates our summer camp from others, is our foundational programs around participatory research and the staff to bring them to life. Most camp leaders can’t ask questions like, “Why is this seaweed shiny blue underwater and just reddish-brown on the shore?” but, our Cedar Coast staff was able to. This ecological undertone was a highlight for one camper as they looked at the fresh tracks on a low-tide beach to reconstruct the animals and their interactions. Lastly, in my opinion, what made the camps truly unique was finding out what the people who spend the most time on Vargas Island love to do and then including those activities. These moments were the perfect combination of the right place, at the right time. From swimming in bioluminescence under the stars, watching the sunset from Ahous Bay or howling through the morning mist from the highpoint overlooking the property.
While it it is tempting to look back over the year and celebrate the accomplishments of Cedar Coast Field Station as an organization, and the multitudes of firsts that have occurred, it is surely more important to celebrate the firsts we facilitated for our visitors.
Andrew Wood is one of our in-house educators, a full-time teacher in the West Kootenays and passionate freestyle snowboarder and creative writer.
