Suzanne Stewart
Staff Writer
We’ve all seen the movies depicting summer camp – kids running to get on a bus with their suitcases, excited for the adventure ahead. Matching T-shirts, cabins with bunk beds and a mess hall where a food fight might break out.
That was the 70s and 80s and while the world has modernized a lot with advanced technology, there is still a summer camp that maintains those classic vibes, and it’s located right here in Pocahontas County.
Thanks to the National Radio Quiet Zone – and the diligence of the camp directors – Camp Twin Creeks in Minnehaha Springs still has that 70s feel. Campers are able to come in, unplug and enjoy the outdoors for two weeks.
Running the camp are husband and wife duo Iain and Amy McClements. Iain handles the camp year round, making sure operations are in order, and Amy is the camp director. She makes sure that everything is ready for all the campers.
“It’s just a summer camp,” she said. “Co-ed, traditional, sleep away camp offering fun for kids all summer long, but we really try to put our focus on being a center for youth development, to help children work through challenges – whether it’s just going away from home for the first time or something else they migh be working through.
“So, being in the great outdoors, having to detox – as you know we don’t have any cell service – which is amazing, especially for kids that need that time away from all of that, but also just to have an opportunity to socialize,” she added. “It’s a community here.”
There’s a little bit of everything at Twin Creeks. As Amy explains, there are five core areas for the campers to enjoy. Land sports, water sports, climbing sports, a nature program and trips away from camp.
“Think of any sport that a kid might want to do – we offer it,” she said. “We have water sports. We have our project adventure, which is when I say we put the kids in the trees – so that’s when they’re doing a climbing wall, they’re doing ziplines, they’re doing low rope games which might be working together as a team to climb over a big six-foot wall.
“We have our nature program, which is learning about their environment and what’s around them,” she continued. “We talk about the state a little bit more and things that are very West Virginian. We also take trips. We spend time on the Allegheny Trail and end up sleeping out at Watoga. That’s for our older campers. Our other campers do a three-mile hike then back to camp to sleep out in our shelter in the woods.”
For some campers, that is a first time to sleep overnight in a tent.
“It’s a big deal for some of our city kids,” Amy said.
There is also the arts program, which includes equestrian, dance, woodshop, arts and crafts and music.
That’s just the first part of the day.
“That’s what they do just in the morning,” Amy said. “We kind of rotate them through. Everyone has an opportunity to try every offering we have at camp during the morning.
In the afternoon, the campers go to their Master Classes. Those are more in-depth courses the campers get to choose, and they spend time diving deeper into a subject, such as fishing, archery, fencing, jewelry making and much more.
“The first day of camp we present master classes,” Amy said. “So the children get to choose two of these offerings, and they get to do that every day of camp. It’s where they really focus on learning a skill.”
Iain and Amy joined the Camp Twin Creeks family 24 years ago, first as counselors and for the past 10 years in their current roles.
Iain is from England and Amy is from Pennsylvania. They met at a sleep away camp in Pennsylvania. The camp was owned by the same man who owned Camp Twin Creeks at the time. He asked them to work for him there, and the rest, as they say, is history.
“We said, ‘sure we’ll do that for a couple of years before we grow up’ and we’re still here,” Amy said, laughing. “Haven’t quite grown up yet. We like to believe we’re still kids at heart, but to be honest, we very much are the adults here. We have to remind ourselves that the adults aren’t coming, we are the adults.”
Amy and Iain take their positions very seriously, knowing that are essentially the parents of their campers as well as counselors during their time at Camp Twin Creeks.
It’s not a foreign concept for the pair. Iain is a coach and active in community youth activities back home in Pennsylvania, and Amy owns and directs a preschool.
“We just really leaned in hard to our passion of just helping the world be a better place with inspiring young children,” Amy said. “We realized for us as human beings we wanted to be able to give back to children and camp is a perfect place to do that. To be a support for kids, especially as the world is changing so rapidly and knowing that these kids have different experiences than you.”
Camp is such a huge part of their lives, that their three children – Harrison, Finnley and Blakeley – have essentially grown up there.
Seeing the camp and campers as an extension of their own family, Iain and Amy strive to make sure the children have a positive experience at camp and help them discover new passions while they are away from home.
Amy admits camp isn’t always easy and conflicts arise, but that is what makes a well-rounded person –learning to deal with the good and the bad.
“We do feel like we have our little kingdom up here, our little world here that’s doing what it can in this moment, and we hope so much that it transfers to them in the outside world,” Amy said. “We truly believe at summer camp – at least compared to the world they have out there – this is the last place they can truly be kids and just play and just be and be surrounded by each other as well as nature.”
For more information on Camp Twin Creeks, visit camptwincreeks.com