Field Camp will have a residential camp–Camp Poplar–in the Summer of 2024 for the first time. We will run the usual Field Camp as it has always been for 12 weeks in the summer, but during three of our most popular weeks, we are going to do a sleepaway version at Camp Albemarle, with a tentative plan to do more weeks in coming summers.
We will start with one week, from Sunday, June 23rd through Friday, June 28th, and then do a two-week camp from Sunday, July 7th through Friday, July 19th. It will be a coed camp for ages 9-15. Its culture will be much like that of Field Camp, with the same motto: “be safe, do good, have fun, help out.”
Activities
Our activities will be similar to those at Field Camp, but we anticipate taking regular trips from Camp Albemarle to local outdoors spots that we have not frequented so much the last few years (Sugar Hollow, Shenandoah National Park trails, Goshen Pass, etc.), as well as some that we have (Blue Ridge Swim Club, paddling the Moormans, and rock climbing in the George Washington National Forest). See the detailed tentative schedule below.
A seminal component of the experience will be that each of the two sessions will feature a camping trip away from Camp Albemarle, with kids in tents on the AT, along the James River, or at an outdoors destinations in West Virginia (details, of course, to be determined).
Staff
Andy Goodstein is Camp Poplar’s co-director. Andy has a B.A. in English and a Master’s in Education from the College of William and Mary, where he was on the cross country team. Before joining us at Field Camp in 2018, Andy was the program director at Camp Holiday Trails in Charlottesville. Andy coaches rock climbing in Charlottesville. He is also an accomplished long distance runner, and has finished ten times in the Top 10 in the Charlottesville 10-Miler.
The camp staff is made up primarily of experienced Field Camp staffers with some new faces and some past favorite counselors whom we have not seen for a few years.
Getting Started
As many of you know, I started Field School in 2007 in a humble building in Crozet Park. I really wondered if we had enough on which to build the foundations for a school, but it turned out that we had all we needed, and that the enthusiasm for being a part of a pioneer venture went a long way toward making it an excellent little school. I think that everyone who is a part of our first summer at Poplar will have not just a potentially transformational summer experience, but will feel unusually invested and remember being a part of the start of something important to them as well.
I probably don’t need to tell you about camp’s virtues generally, and whatever those benefits are, they will be multiplied at Camp Poplar. Please let me know if you have any questions, and we look forward to seeing your campers with us next summer!
Registration
The fee for the one-week session is $1200 and it’s $2500 for the two-week session, with all camp expenses included. You can register with a deposit here.
