Camp Fraser

Jack in the Pulpit, Star of Bethlehem, Spicebush, Virginia Creeper. Garlic Mustard, Tulip Poplar, Skunk Cabbage. Adam knew the Camp Fraser woods in May like some people know where to find the buffalo chicken dip in Harris Teeter. He was leading us around the 80-acre property in a bounding, practiced manner, stopping only occasionally to let us catch up before taking off again. I was there with my dad and some of his coworkers, all of whom were trying to figure out how they could better utilize this delicious slice of forest near Great Falls, Virginia, for outdoor education. Their nonprofit organization, Living Classrooms, sometimes bussed in loads of fifth-graders from inner-city D.C. to talk about topics like animal ecology and water quality; it was many urban students’ first time in a green space.

The potential for Camp Fraser and the land around it is powerful. Set in the second-wealthiest county in the nation, it lies just under an hour outside the heart of a capital city plagued with homelessness, gentrification, and a failing public school system. Living Classrooms tries to bridge the gap between underserved D.C. kids and the often-inaccessible natural world around them, but facilitating environmental stewardship can be difficult when the only familiar kinds of wildlife are the ones that scurry the streets at night. A chunk of close, undisturbed woods is a near-priceless commodity. But how to best take advantage of it? That’s what Adam, my dad, and their officemates were trying to piece together.

Perhaps officemates is a strong term, at least in Adam’s case. The thirty-something lives alone in a small house on the property, accompanied by his two rescue dogs, Puppy and Radio. His job isn’t so much as to visit the Living Classrooms HQ in the city but instead to take care of the roads, lodge, climbing wall, low ropes course, and cabins that lie scattered through the Camp Fraser woods. He is responsible for kitchen inspections, bunkhouse paint jobs, storm repairs, and a million other projects that seem to exist only partially in the real world, like the strip of torn-up soil that could be a butterfly garden or the overgrown lot where he cultivates strawberries and cherry tomatoes. He is enthusiastic almost to a fault, bursting with knowledge but lacking follow-through.

If there is one thing he is sure of, however, it is the forest. It is clear that he spends hours, if not full days, watching the trees bud and the flowers bloom, greeting the few regular hikers that wander onto the property in cheerful passing. As we zigzagged across muddy trails, often out of breath, Adam allowed us small snippets of his life, as well as bits of local history: he used to be an instructor for Outward Bound up north at the Boundary Waters, but left after three seasons due partially to a devastating dearth of cute women in the position. He finds and eats wild mushrooms as often as possible, preferring morels to other varieties. A Sycamore has fallen across the Potomac upstream, and the fancy all-girls private school down the road, the one with the perfect red roof and sunlit horse pastures, is infamous for connections to not one but two murders in recent memory.

The most curious part of the property is a crumbling structure far from the road that stands alone, two partial stone walls forming a rugged corner. Adam thinks that it is the remains of an 18th-century mill, as there is a sort of grinding stone that rests on the ground in what could’ve been the center of the design. Today, the walls sit covered in English Ivy and lichen, slowly closing in on themselves. Abandoned, the mill is almost completely forgotten. It is an apt metaphor for the rest of Camp Fraser, which stands to be left behind as the founding church’s members die off and surrounding real estate prices continually reach new heights. Without deft internal management to attract re-upped interest from public schools, Living Classrooms’ remote lodge will remain mostly empty for many springs to come. And what a tragedy that would be, for hundreds of eager eleven-year-olds and the future of the planet that lies cradled, unbeknownst to them, in their hands.