Passages Camps - some personal views and other things

Why Are Passages Camps So Special?

After thoroughly enjoying the Spring 03 Passages Camp I wrote what follows in order to explain to my friends, and now to you, why I think Passages Camps are well worth checking out.

Dear Friend,

It occurs to me that I've may not have recently filled you in as best I can on just how wonderful I think Passages Camps are.

For a minority of you I don't need to as you are also Passages regulars and have your own reasons why Passages is so special for you - for you guys may this act as a (possibly inspiring) example of one way of inviting your friends along to Summer Camp.

So, why do I try to make every effort to ensure I get to go on every Passages Camp going? In short: growth, community, belonging and fun.

Growth

My first Passages Holistic Growth Camp was in May 94, eight months after I learned co-counselling (an effective, democratic and low-cost self-help technique / movement).

Founded by two people involved in co-counselling, Passages Camps offered a way of further exploring ideas and techniques for fulfilling human potential.

As well as co-counselling, there has been, at various times, music and dance, tai chi and chi kung, body work and massage, encounter groups, diverse healing therapies, Tibetan overtone chanting, and others too numerous to mention.

What's on offer at each camp is a function of what the people attending choose to offer, which echoes the progressive DIY culture that has developed during the 90's - bring what you'd like to find and exchange experiences freely.

I sense a largely unspoken communal commitment to respect, support and empower each other in enriching and deepening our personal life journeys.

Community

Many people on each Passages Camp have been before and come back for more, which is, I'd suggest, the most validating and positive testimonial possible. So the idea of a dispersed, intentional tribe returning to its tribal homeland seems to fit rather well.

We share around the labour required to keep the camp running smoothly, such as chopping firewood, preparing meals and childcare (amongst other daily tasks); and this collective effort for our communal good seems to build and bind an authentic sense of community, which many urban and rural neighbourhoods seem to have lost.

The multiple points of contact and communication, some formal and most informal - in support groups, workshops, community gatherings, cabaret and ceremony evenings, hot tubs, shared work, common mealtimes, walks, games and hanging out around the hearth fire - all allow for the development of interpersonal and social relationships which bind our community together.

Indeed, when the founders relinquished control of running Passages, from the Passages community which the Camps have created there emerged a group of volunteers willing and able to very successfully run the Camps as a voluntary collective endeavour.

For myself and many other regular campers, significant long-lasting friendships have been founded in the Passages field. And the qualities of the people Passages seems to attract are those which encourage me to seek to form new significant long-lasting friendships.

Belonging

For all the reasons mentioned above, I feel much more of a sense of belonging to the Passages community than to almost any other social collective I have encountered.

Then there's the magnificent natural beauty of our field and the Somerset countryside in which it nestles. Being surrounded by the vivid greens of ash, oak and hollow blackthorn hedgerows; the colourful variety of wild meadow flowers; and the visual and audible splendour of badgers, buzzards, field mice, wood pigeons, cattle, skylarks, horses, friendly chaffinches, barn and tawny owls, all help make me feel right at home in communing with such outstanding natural beauty. I love the tranquillity of the green enclosure that enfolds our fresh water spring, and the way its sparkling waters meander in their streambed across our field. I adore the peaceful panorama from the top of our field, out past Glastonbury Tor and across the rolling Somerset levels.

To the people and the place, the community and the geography, and to the very depths of my being, I feel a deep sense of belonging and homecoming.

Fun

There are too many ways of having fun on a Passages Camp for me to enumerate them all, so I'll just mention a few of my favourites.

• Being allowed to join in one of the games the children are playing.
• Joining in the music and singing around the hearth fire with voice and drum / percussion.
• Helping plan and participate in creative activities with the children.
• Taking part in the wide-ranging and wildly surreal spirals of anarchic and irreverent humour that can sweep over a fireside crowd (with a little encouragement).
• Navigating to the quarry for the finest outdoor swimming experience available.
• Teaching origami to children from the book from which I learned the paper-folding art when I was their age.
• Collectively creating props and costumes for ceremonies and cabaret performances.
• Listening to some of the most cherished poems of my fellow campers and reading them some of my own favourites.
• Alone and with others, writing, planning, creating, selecting, researching, rehearsing and putting on a performance in a DIY Cabaret Evening.
• Good-naturedly defending scientific rationalism and humanistic modernity against everything from post-modern relativism through neo-paganism and superstitious mysticism to what one camper once characterised as "New Age wanky-bollocks"!

There's also stunning sunsets, the star-studded night sky (shooting stars and satellites a speciality), midnight hot tubs, authentically deep and meaningful exchanges of ideas, delicious and plentiful vegetarian food, five carpeted communal spaces (the Whale, the Snug, the Meditation Bender, Children's Bender and Kitchen Bender), safe communal childcare responsibility, and the opportunity to volunteer to help run the camps.

Back before May 94, someone suggested I suck it and see if I liked it (and to whomsoever that someone was - thank you). As you can probably tell from the above, I liked it very much indeed, so now I suggest that you might like to suck it and see if you like it too.

We've found that the Passages Camps idea often spreads best through word-of-mouth, positive personal testimonial and friend inviting friend to share in the growth, community, belonging and fun. So please consider yourself personally invited. We'll be laughing, singing, chatting, crying, swimming, sharing, philosophising, reciting, playing, hot-tubbing, star-gazing and generally mucking about in a beautiful Somerset field - and I hope you might like to be joining in too. Nearby you'll find some photos and a sketch map of the field to whet your appetite. Costs are on a sliding scale depending on how much you feel you can afford.

And if you've come across anything as special to you as Passages Camps are to me, and to which you'd like to invite my participation, then please let me know all about it.

Thanks in advance for your time and attention; I look forward to hearing from you shortly.

Peace & Love,

Tim Jones
tdj_personal@hotmail.com

Taking the Long Drop….

Someone suggested that I put a piece on the site about passages. My first thought was -

"I can't be bothered and there's another episode of the Simpsons on and I wonder what's in the fridge….etc".

My second thought was -

"I suppose it might be a good idea and I like the chance to ramble on uninterrupted and I've seen this Simpsons at least three times this month and - I can't really manage another chocolate cake bar - so here goes"

My third thought was -

"I'll tell all these visitors to the site - both newcomers and those who used to come but "moved on" how wonderful the camps are and that we're still going strong and that we had a great time in May and how I might make them feel like they were missing out on something by not coming"

My fourth thought was -

"I'm pretty certain that that sort of thing wouldn't make me want to come unless I wanted to anyway"

My fifth thought was to say why I come.

I first came to Passages in 1993. It was the third year and was in the field with an oak tree. I can't remember why I came except that I was looking for a camp and it was small and there was communal cooking and a mention of "community" in the blurb. I keep coming - not because it is small - though it still is - relatively so - but because for me it is a community. What this means for me is:-

• We cook together
• We eat together
• We get to know pretty much everyone on each camp in some way
• We sing together
• We dance together
• We make decisions together - sometimes thought the consensus of the morning meeting - sometimes through the hierarchy of the organising group (a small group who organise the camp)

Generally - a group of adults and children - most of whom know each other - some of whom don't seem to get on - or not - for a weekend or a week in a field - and I like it.

• I like the cooking, the singing and the Cabaret the best
• I sometimes find the meetings inspiring and sometimes infuriating and tedious.
• I occasionally attend the workshops that camp members offer and surprise myself by enjoying them
• I like the fire
• I tolerate the toilets
• There's usually at least one person at each camp that I hate - but if its only one I consider it a result
• Often there is more than one person with an amusing name - which is nice!
• Some child usually wrecks something at some point during the long camp which gives me a good opportunity to pretend that I am stern
• However hard it is I always love it.

I didn't have a sixth thought.

Barry

[top]

What I like about Passages Camps

I like the central fire, with its cover from the rain, with everyone cooking and eating together.

I like the Passages field in different weathers: rain, sun, wind, morning mist, and clear, starry or moon-lit nights.

I like the wide-ranging workshops.

And I like the various practical jobs - lots of dealing with wood, open-air vegetable-chopping etc - needed to keep an event like this running.

Frank Sierowski

[top]

Passages 2002

What's this Passages, then?
I mean, can I come in?
It's bound to be in tents.
Will I go on a bender, or in one?
Will I have a whale of a time?
Does "Passages" mean you have to pass for ages
before you can pass a motion?

As a total newcumber,
"inner growth" sounded like cancer.
And what would the workshops be like?
Unicorn Spotting? Rainbow Knitting?
What would Pottery Massage be —
A chance to get my hands on some jugs?
Would the hot tub be a tot hub?

Well & truly processed, like peas or cheese,
we endured the meetings about the meetings
to discuss the previous meeting,
and went up to howl at the moon.
I used to be a werewolf but I'm alright now-ow-ow.

One day it rained like a bucket
and I sat in my tent in an orgasm of zips,
pissed off with being pissed on.
The storm cleared everything;
the sun came out like a killer,
and the workshops really worked.

But it wasn't all poetry and light;
the wasps got vicious in their rugby shirts;
aircraft circled to discuss the ragwort trade.
Jo's chair sank holes that broke the field,
and Ian landed in the shit.
Bill the cat was off to kill the bats,
and Chirper ducked the issues.
At the fireside, we had
a poet calling the kettle black.

To lighten these burdens,
Jesse summoned the genie
to generate: anti-aircraft vibes;
Ian's wet hat technique (he won
the wet tee-shirt competition);
a jam-jar Jonestown and a wasp-zapping spray;
a fiercely democratic football match,
complete with freelance star striker;
a sage young manager
and a crowd of loyal fans
pretending to be hooligans.
We had tai chi and chai tea.
We had a disco, where we discovered
two distinct ages of punks.
In my day we used to pogo;
now it's hot tub, fire, and a warm mug of cocoa.

Passages 2002: Bill / Chirper

Bill comes & goes,
unchallenged and non-plussed
like the group of funny people
he disdains
by sitting with us just long enough
to lick his bum.

Chirper's stopped chirping;
the per-second billing has ceased.
While he lies and sleeps in the shade
to prevent his getting crispy,
we fuss around him like parents
pouring the oil of love.

Lawrence Pettener 2002

[top]