Dear Upper Elementary Families ~

We hope your summer is full of time, grace and relaxation together with your family. May your time together be savored and enjoyed!

We are excited to tell you below about our plans for continuing our fall key experience with all upper elementary students. As we visited Widjiwagan last year with our upper elementary community, camp staff let us know that their facility cannot continue to host our classrooms all together. (Even last year, Camp Widjiwagan was already over capacity for our visit.) It is important for community building across upper elementary that we go all together on our key experience in the fall. We have worked with the staff at Widji and our own goals to find an appropriate site to continue an excellent key experience. We will be going on our fall 2018 key experience to Wolf Ridge Environmental Learning Center in Finland MN.

Karen Pick - Widjiwagan director, highly recommended the program at Wolf Ridge Environmental Learning Center. Wolf Ridge has an excellent reputation, and we are thrilled to have such an excellent opportunity to engage our community among the woods and the watershed of Lake Superior. And it’s important that we continue to guarantee a program that offers opportunities for personal challenge, wonder of nature, and experiencing interdependence, A description of the site from Wolf Ridge:

“Located on a ridge overlooking Lake Superior, Wolf Ridge’s 2,000 acre campus is bordered by the Baptism River and features creeks, two lakes, two high peaks, 18-miles of trail and a mixed forest of maple, birch and spruce. Wildlife is abundant and includes pine marten, eagles, moose, black bear, white-tailed deer, fox, wolves, beavers, peregrine falcons and loons. Facilities include four classroom buildings, two dormitories, a dining hall, a raptor aviary, a library, two auditoriums, two rock-climbing walls, two outdoor ropes courses…”

And, while we look forward to the opportunity to engage this new experience, I understand that there will be mourning in this transition. Widjiwagan was a wonderful experience, and the memories will bring nostalgia. There will still be woods, hiking, naturalist walks, star viewing, and adventure in the north woods - but on a different side of the Laurentian Divide. And there will be mourning of Widjiwagan and anticipation of trying new at Wolf Ridge.

Let me know if you’d like more info, or if you have feedback on how we can best work together!

Regards and well wishes for you,

Sam O’Brien
Head of School