More about the Woodland School

Here is the second installment from Carl Tannenbaum about the Woodland School.

"In the summer Woodland School was run as a camp and is described below along with Camp Wake Robin which may have been in or near the Roxmor Colony."

THE CAMPING IDEAL - The New Human Race

A brief survey of the summer and winter outdoor Camp Movement in the United States, with particular reference to organized cultural camps in the Atlantic and Midwestern States, based upon observations made on a second camp tour undertaken for The Red Book Magazine.

by Henry Wellington Wack - Copyright 1925

One of the oldest Catskill Mountain camps is Camp Wake Robin, which Mr. Harry W. Little has directed during the last nineteen years. It was first named Camp Burroughs (1901-1903) in honor of John Burroughs, the naturalist, who, while rambling over the Woodland Valley trail, said of it : "a retreat which so took my eye by its fine
trout brook, its superb mountain scenery and its sweet seclusion, that I marked it for my own."

We have cast flies on the Woodland Valley stream and the Esopus River these past twelve years, and know something of that romantic water-shed that lies between the Schoharie River, Wittenberg Mountain and the Ashokan reservoirs that keep New York clean and quench its summer thirst. Big Indian and Roscoe, and the Beaverkill, Never-
sink and Willowemoc trout rivers ; the late Anthony W. Dimock's wilderness lodge in the Happy Valley near Peekamoose and the Roundout River, and like a jewel in all this glorious setting, luxurious Yama Farm, that wonderful creation of Frank Seaman and his transcendent vision. The whole region is one of exquisite charm and so accessible to New York City that it is fast becoming the week-end lure of thousands of automobile par
ties from April to November. Yet with all this, it is in the heart of State Forest Preserves. No wonder John Burroughs was enchanted. No wonder Mr. Little and his nature lore associate, Mr. Oliver P. Medsger, went to Woodland nearly twenty years ago and builded Camp Wake Robin for younger boys.

Wake Robin is a woodsy camp of very simple construction. There are a number of rustic buildings, amongst them the Roost, where the camp assembles ; the Hive, where they study, develop kodaks, mount specimens ; the Shop, where their hands are educated to make and do all sorts of useful things ; the Council Ring, where the Sachems and Sagamores and their young trail-makers fore-gather for the powwow ; the Pagoda, where Camp Mother Medsger patches up barked shins and bruised hearts and sore toes, and a little home sickness perhaps in a first-year boy during his first week in camp. Finally, there is the Roxmoor Inn, close by, where the boys have their meals, and
the get-away banquet at the season's end ; and last of all, there is the little Woodland Neighborhood House where vesper service is held every Sunday. Mountain trails, swift tumbling brooks, a swimming pool in Woodland Stream; peaks to climb;
trees to chop ; birds, foxes, squirrels, bears, muskrats, marten, porcupines, weasels, partridges, pheasants, woodcock and — well, more than enough to keep boys busy, make them healthy and send them home in the autumn as brown as roan colts and as flipperous as fleas. In such condition, after such a camp season, it's a grand and glorious feel-
ing — to be a boy!

Up the Panther Kill brook, which is a picture gallery from its source to where it gurgles into Woodland Stream near a little bridge, from under which we watched two bear-cubs last spring scratch their bellies and maul each other like pups, there
is another camp near the plateau of Panther Kill Mountain. It is Woodland Camp, connected with the Woodland School, of which Mr. Erwin S. Spink is the headmaster. It is a very pretty school camp, altogether different from Camp Wake Robin, and as well groomed and slicked and mowed and beflowered as the other is rustic. Each direc-
tor is realizing his own ideal of a wholesome outdoor life for boys — young boys ;and each is carrying on successfully in his own individual way.