Price Lodge by Moonlight, Camp NoBeBoSco

Posted by Russ Devan (New Hanover, United States) on 21 July 2008 in Landscape & Rural and Portfolio.

I'm back from attending a week of Boy Scout summer camp with our Boy Scout troop. We attended Camp NoBeBoSco located near the Delaware Water Gap near Blairstown, NJ. Except for one intense rainstorm the first night, we had pretty good camping weather for July. Almost all 42 of our scouts earned several merit badges last week and several members of our troop participated in a service project that benefited the camp. We replaced the signage along the camp's entrance road which had become weathered and tired looking. Five of our boys and three leaders instead of attending traditional summer camp, spent their week paddling 70 miles by canoe down the Delaware River over four days. They began their journey in New York state and ended south of the Delaware Water Gap in Pennsylvania, where they were met and driven back to camp to rejoin our troop. These scouts wilderness camped during their entire trek.

The image above is of Price Lodge, also referred to as the Nature Lodge by Camp NoBeBoSco. This was shot one night during a full moon, after the rest of the camp had gone to sleep. During the day, this lodge is crawling with boy scouts working on various nature-related merit badges. My son earned his nature, mammal study, weather and environmental science merit badges last week in this lodge. He also earned his canoeing merit badge, but did so on the lake and wasn't part of the canoe trip.

I will be posting some images over the next few days of camp. If this image or some of the other images give you a bit of deja vu, it might be because the first "Friday The 13th" movie was filmed on location here. Yes, Camp NoBeBoSco was Camp Crystal Lake in that movie and Price Lodge appears several times in the movie. The lodge where most of the filming took place (at Van Dusen Lodge) was just a few yards up the hill from Price Lodge, where this photograph was made. The original "Camp Crystal Lake" sign that appeared in the movie now hangs in the camp's Trading Post.

As I was patiently waiting for the long exposure to be completed for this image, I could hear the sound of an air horn and fire crackers going off in a different part of camp. When I heard those sounds, I knew that bears had been spotted somewhere in the camp and the camp officials were trying to chase them away. It turned out that Chester (named by the camp) was spotted only about 50 yards from our campsite. I was disappointed that I had missed seeing him because I rarely get to see bears while on camping trips. However, Chester didn't totally disappoint me as he visited our campsite on the final night of camp. I spotted him crossing a path just a few yards from my tent before he walked into the main part of our campsite after catching the scent of our trash bag. Crazy me actually followed after him with my camera in hand trying to get a better look. I managed to get within about 50 feet of him before the kids saw him and scared him off. Unfortunately, I didn't get a decent picture of him.

In past years, Chester or a close relative, actually entered one of our Asst. Scoutmaster's tents while at summer camp. Not once, but twice in one night. He was attracted to the snacks that were stored in the leader's footlocker and managed to make off with a bag of Cream Savers candy before we scared him off. That was seven years ago and that leader still hasn't lived that one down yet (and we don't intend to let him either). One of our other scout leaders, who is a music teacher, decided to memorialize the visit from Chester by writing a song about it and having the entire camp sing it at the camp's closing campfire ceremony that week. Hey, what are friends for, right? It's the least we could do for him.

"The Master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence in whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he is always doing both."
- Zen Buddhist Text

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