1 in 8700: Ellen Flight

Ellen Flight is a true “campie.” The director of Camp Songadeewin, a girls camp located on the shores of Lake Dunmore in Salisbury, Vt., Flight has maintained a love for the outdoors since she attended the original Camp Songadeewin in Barton, Vt. as a child. Though the camp closed after the summer of 1975, Flight still remembers her favorite activities: nature study, arts and crafts and taking canoe trips. Most importantly, her summers as a camper taught her to value the camaraderie of a camp community.

“I think that remains the same for many kids today, having that home away from home where you love to be,” said Flight. “As a camp director now, that’s the kind of place I want to create — a safe place for kids.”

The Keewaydin Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that has run summer camps in North America since 1893, operates Camp Songadeewin, along with Camp Keewaydin for boys. The foundation also runs Camp Keewaydin Temagami, a co-ed camp in Ontario that specializes in canoe trips, and an environmental education center, located at Camp Songadeewin.

Flight has been part of the Keewaydin family for decades, as she worked at the boys’ camp for 19 summers. Beginning as a babysitter, Flight later became the camp specialist in canoeing and hiking trips, and ran the equipment room for many years. After “a miserable summer as the bookkeeper,” she spent the next 10 summers as Wigwam director, leader of the youngest boys’ unit.

Still, Flight’s path to camp director took many turns. After graduating from Skidmore College where she majored in American Studies, she attended Lesley University and got a Masters in Education. For 15 years she taught 7th and 8th grade at Georgetown Day School in Washington D.C. and at Charles River School in Dover, Ma. Then, in 1996, she stopped teaching with the hopes of pursuing another career that would allow her to apply all she had learned.

To figure out that next step, Flight did something she had always wanted to do: drive across the country. On a budget of $55 a day, for 3 months, she drove a total of 1,300 miles. Staying with friends along the way, Flight did not have an itinerary, just a sense of where she wanted to go.

“It was what I had always fantasized a trip across the country would be and more,” said Flight.

After returning, she began to work for Keewaydin full time. When Keewaydin bought the 60 acres on Lake Dunmore, Flight and the organization’s board of directors had a weekend retreat on the property and decided to reestablish Songadeewin for girls. In 1999, she moved to Middlebury and began her role as camp director.

“We had some history and we could do things in new ways,” said Flight, for whom the change in profession has been both successful and rewarding.

“What I like better about being a camp director than being a teacher is that I get to know them [the kids] over the years and watch as they grow and develop,” said Flight. “That long term relationship with people, that’s the most rewarding.”

Because she worked at the boys’ camp for so many years, many of her former campers now bring their daughters to Songadeewin.

Recently, the camp built a new dining hall that will be ready for use in the spring. It is a perfect example of the camp’s commitment to sustainability, as it has solar panels to heat the water used in the dishwashers, timber from Maine as opposed to the West Coast and many recycled appliances from the previous dining hall’s kitchen. Flight guesses that for most of the summer, it will not be necessary to turn on the lights.

“It is as green as a three-season building can be,” said Flight, who noted that being involved in the construction and planning process taught her a lot about sustainable building.

“There’s stuff I know about that I had never imagined,” she said. “I don’t know how you’d go to school for a camp directors job.”

The fact that the new dining hall is built in the camp’s center, altering its previous linear orientation, also shows the camp’s commitment to its motto, “strong of heart.”

“For the first time we’re going to have a center or heart to the property,” said Flight. “I know that will be a positive change.”

A recent capital campaign by the Keewaydin Foundation, which generated a total of $14.2 million, funded the dining hall’s construction. In addition, the money raised allows the Keewaydin camps to offer more scholarships, providing summer opportunities to those who cannot afford camp on their own.

“Kids of all sorts need to have access to camp,” said Flight. “We believe by doing what we do that if we’re going to save our planet, kids have to know what they’re saving.”

Flight’s faith in the power of camp is undeniable. Her goal is to provide kids with a chance to “grow independent and strong and sure of themselves in a way that’s different from other places or institutions they might be a part of.”

Songadeewin’s staff also embodies this mindset. The camp’s connection with the College is evident, as former campers have become students of the College and counselors at Songadeewin in the summers.

Flight’s beliefs are rooted in the idea that in an increasingly technological world, it is even more important for kids to spend time outdoors.

“One of the things that camp can do for kids is get them outside and get them unplugged,” said Flight. “There’s something very basically different when you’re living and you’re right there and it’s happening in the moment. You really have to learn to get along. That’s the work of the soul and the spirit that you can’t get electronically.”

“Plus,” said Flight, for both campers and adults, “it’s fun!”