Fine Companions
Remembering Pinewoods Before 1976
A Pinewoods Centennial Camp Session
Dancing Morpeth Rant
Courtesy of The Pinewoods Camp Collection, 1907-2008, MC288, Milne Special Collections and Archives, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, USA.
A Pinewoods Centennial Camp Session
Tuesday, June 10 – Friday, June 13, 2025
Pinewoods Camp, Inc. offered a unique, Centennial, mid-week session in June 2025. This session focused on a relaxed schedule at Camp, sharing memories and reflecting on the evolving culture of Pinewoods from 1944, when Lily Conant inherited the Camp, to 1975 when PCI purchased Pinewoods. The session featured the English and American musical traditions offered during most of the sessions during those years.
133 people joined us for this unique Centennial session at Pinewoods, with our furthest travelers coming from Australia, Hawaii, and Barcelona, Spain! One former camper and crew member had not been back for 53 years. Many others had not been to Camp for some time, and the happiness of being at Pinewoods was palpable throughout the session.
One of the unique features of the session was the variety of ways people could choose to participate. Seven campers attended just for Thursday afternoon. And those who needed to or preferred to sleep offsite had the option to do so, joining us at Camp during the day and into the evening. The “Wandering Albatross,” the golf cart shuttle that ran regular circuits around Camp, provided a service for any campers who needed assistance getting around Camp.
Morning, afternoon, and evening dances were filled with old favorites and superb dancing to beautiful music. Muscle memory is a remarkable thing as some of us dance regularly and some of us rarely in our current lives. A very popular class in the schedule, drawing up to 75 people on the 2nd day, was the late afternoon “Memory Roundtable.” There was, of course, a Centennial birthday party for Pinewoods.
We offered campers the opportunity to write a Pinewoods centered biography and bring it to camp, and we displayed over 80 on a rope on three sides of Ampleforth. These bios now live in a binder at Camp.
Fine Companions was a successful and memorable session, thanks to the efforts of our tremendous staff: Karen Axelrod, Rachel Bell, Lisa Greenleaf, Dereck Kalish, Eric Martin, David Millstone, Laura Sprung, and Jeff Warner. The program was supported by volunteers lifeguarding, organizing jobs and parties, and offering medical triage should emergencies arise. The additional support offered to campers at this session worked because of the generosity of seven additional volunteers who washed all the dishes, drove the golf cart, helped campers to and from their cabins, and assisted on-call with anything else needed.
Why Did Pinewoods Host This Session?
Reason #1: To offer an opportunity to gather at Pinewoods for the people who shared the second quarter of our hundred years (the Conant years) and for them to share back with PCI their stories and memories of that time.
Reason #2: In our Centennial year, PCI looked for ways to welcome back anyone who had not been to camp for a number of years.
Reason #3: To test out a model for a camp session supporting participation in novel ways. The schedule was, intentionally, light on programming, offered a less active option each period, and didn’t run as late into the evening. An intent of this session was to try out a possible template for program providers to use, should they decide to offer a similar kind of session in the future.
Program Directors: Susan Creighton and Marney Morrison
Advisory Committee: Michal Warshow, Brad Foster, David Conant
People in the Kitchen – Pinewoods 1973
© Suzanne Szasz, rights holder: Linda Swenson. Used with permission from Linda and Courtesy of The Pinewoods Camp Collection, 1907-2008, MC288, Milne Special Collections and Archives, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, USA
Morris dancing during a CDS(S) Thursday Demonstration open to the public
Courtesy of The Pinewoods Camp Collection, 1907-2008, MC288, Milne Special Collections and Archives, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, USA.