09/01/2026
“What if my kid just plays all day?”
Well, sometimes they might create a civilization.
As we prepare for a new learning year here, we’re walking the grounds and finding the vestiges of our last time together in community, for summer camp. In particular, when we walk through one strip of forest the young people here have named “Tree World,” we notice the remains of a bustling civilization: New Town.
Much of the play during our past summer camp season, across weeks and different cohorts, centered around New Town, a thriving city in the trees, built with felled lumber and brush, rope and pulley systems, “junk” from our adventure playground, and so much else the young people ingeniously appropriated into their play. New Town had fenced yards, tree swings, and lofted apartments. New Town boasted local businesses, including a bakery, sandwich shop, and lemonade brewery (which served the sweet-tart beverage infused with basil from the TCC gardens). It hosted dinner parties, a newspaper, bartering zones, a zombie apocalypse, and so much more than we could see or say.
It also had a (very accurate) tagline: “There’s always something new going on in New Town.”
On the last day of camp, one camper eagerly asked a facilitator, “Will New Town be here next summer?”
The emergent and ever-changing nature of this space ensures the only honest answer to that question is, “Well, I don’t know.”
What does seem certain, is that, in the spirit of New Town, there will surely be something new going on. 🌱✨
