We asked Flying Deer co-creators Alex Olchowski and Devin Franklin to share their memories of our first years. Here are their stories.
SOWING THE MAGIC
by Alex Olchowski
In the summer of 1996 a nearby backyard in West Lebanon, one that gave way to a forest hardly anyone ventured into, was transformed into something so much more. A lean-to was built from scratch just out of sight behind the tree line. Trails were carved into those overlooked woods. In these early weeks it was just two of us building what I would later realize was the essence of the classic baseball film Field of Dreams, in which the motto that no child dreamer could ever forget was “If you build it, they will come.” And on the first day the kids surely did come. Just enough of them for us camp director rookies to handle.
The big move up to the Abode’s sacred lands came the following summer. A thunderstorm finale after weeks of sweaty trail work erupted over us while bathing the mud off in the middle of the Chair Factory road pond. There were three of us then, and we hooted and shouted our elated victory calls, certain that the cosmos had shown us it’s approval of the work we were engaged in. Us three men had moved a boulder as big as a small car days before, in the process altering the makeup of my lower back for the rest of my life. I always say to myself the chronic pain was totally worth it.
We made a stage of packed earth and birch logs and began offering Friday evening performances for the parents who wandered into the torchlit forest. These shows were always scenes of pure magic. Every day during those summer weeks the children’s little feet planted invisible seeds into the ground. After the winter dormancy they would shoot up in sprouts of energy, reliably emerging over and over every year that followed. After these initial two summers Flying Deer had a life of its own, simply needing more hands to help it evolve. And, of course, more little feet to sow the magic.
Sometimes life goes in a great big circle. For the past two summers I arrive at Flying Deer’s land in East Chatham to deliver my son, now six years old, to multiple weeks of nature camp. It is a daily joy to witness the spirit we started it all with decades ago – reverence for nature, playing, learning, crafting – living on and expanded upon through the efforts of the passionate, hardworking, and deeply committed staff. The culture we birthed all those years ago in a backyard forest has morphed from a few origin threads into a strongly knitted fabric. A tapestry woven of hope and the belief in a future not just for my son and all of his generation, but for our planet and the myriad creatures inhabiting it alongside us.
Although I haven’t been involved on a daily basis for a long time, I’m always happy when the Flying Deer community is a part of my life—from Franklin birthday parties at the pond and polar plunging, to Flying Deer Day celebrations and opening circles of my son’s camp weeks. And to this day when it comes up I always tell people that co-founding Flying Deer Nature Center alongside my friend and teacher Lenny Brown will always be one of the best things I’ve done in this lifetime. Thank you all for being here not just today but over the decades.
Metsavend: Flying Deer’s Foundation of Friendship
by Devin Franklin
As she watched me packing for my first college experience, my older sister, Kim, offered some sage insight: “You’ll meet your friends within the first few days. You’ll find each other like magnets.” She was right. Alex and I, and our other besties, were perfectly matched—we all loved to forest romp, bang on bongos, and discuss deeply. One day I asked our mutual friend, Raivo, if there was a word in Estonian meaning, “forest brother.” Without skipping a beat, he answered: “Metsavend!” That’s what the four of us were.
Alex and I especially bonded over shared themes of curiosity and awareness. We conducted experiments. One night in his dorm room we stayed up late, and took turns falling asleep while the other spoke messages into our ear. Then we’d be woken up, report our experience, and track connections between the words and dreams. Also, did you know that, with the help of goggles made from a couple Dixie cups and rubber bands, you can actually turn a field house rehabilitation pool into a sensory deprivation tank? Not that it works well.
It was during one of these creative hangouts that I first heard Alex speak of a curious community in his hometown called the Abode of the Message. He showed me a beautifully illustrated book, which he had gotten there, of poems by Rumi, a Sufi mystic. His beautifully detailed descriptions of the mile-long drive “up the mountain,” and the mountain itself, painted pictures that captivated me. And no doubt planted seeds.
Within months of our freshman year, our metsavend posse met a local lobsterman named Dan Fisher, aka Tracker Dan, and his friend Eric Doucette. Longtime students at Tom Brown Jr.’s Tracker School in New Jersey, these men became our weekly mentors in skills of nature awareness, tracking, survival, scouting, and most importantly, deep awareness of the “unseen realms.” Two years of that shared experience gave our friendship a new bond of having our personal worldviews blown apart. It was like dropping a sizzling stick of dynamite into a jack-o-lantern.
During school holidays, Alex reported these experiences to his former high school teacher, Lenny Brown. Having been profoundly affected by Tom’s book The Tracker, Lenny was keenly interested to hear about these experiences. Their relationship evolved from the realm of formal teacher-student education into a collaborative mentoring friendship. Thus, come Alex’s sophomore summer, he and Lenny and Deborah Brown launched a summer camp called Flying Deer Nature Center. (A big nod to all the other players and friendships that were also at work in FDNC’s birth!)
I heard many stories from Alex about the creative magic that came alive these first two years, 1996 and ’97. Making trails. Exploring swamps. Crafting plants. Cooking on fire. Theater in the woods. Sleeping in shelters. And best of all, how much the kids devoured it all, and how happy it made them. It sounded enchanting. Alex’s and my friendship continued, despite the fact that I departed our alma mater early to live and apprentice with Tracker Dan, to help him start his own wilderness school.
I distinctly remember the Maine winter day I sat indoors and asked myself: If you could have your dream job, what would it be? The question was immediately chased by an answer: A survival skills instructor at a children’s summer camp. A month later, I received a letter from Alex via snail mail. I opened it. Essentially, it read: “Devin, next summer, we at Flying Deer want you to be our survival skills instructor.”
I hitchhiked from Brunswick, Maine to New Lebanon, NY, where I stepped into the Browns’ front door. And as I did, the words rang in my head: “I am home.” I am still blessed to have Alex as my friend, and to watch the friendship grow into and between both our families. And now Flying Deer has grown as a community, with an important word laying in its foundation: metsavend.