I heard the story of the "Man in the Red Bandana" in 2004, during my first summer as a counselor at Camp Becket-in-the-Berkshires. Welles attended Camp Becket as a child and was an avid Boy Scout before he became a volunteer firefighter at 16. The trust fund established by his parents makes annual gifts to Camp Becket and other organizations that impacted Welles during his youth.



"The most fundamental thing we can do as a human being is to not run away in the face of a crisis, but turn around and run into," recalled Tim Murphy, a long-time Becket staffer, when I asked him about Welles in May. "It's such a compelling example of the Becket values at work, those lessons we try to instill in campers. Whether or not Welles was manifesting those, or they were in the back of his mind, who knows?"

When I heard Welles's story, I found my mind drifting back to my own first day at camp in 1997. I was standing at dinner in the dining hall, a cavernous gallery that would serve as a major meeting space for more than 300 boys and staff for the next month. I was 10 years old and terrified. Bookish and diminutive for my age, I shied away from strangers and felt overpowered by the taller, more energetic boys surrounding me. Most had already spent a summer at Becket, and their intimate, extensive knowledge of camp lore made me feel even smaller.



When the meal ended, the entire hall burst into raucous song. Overwhelmed by the sudden assault of alien noise, I fled to the grass leading from the lower part of the building to Rudd Pond, the man-made lake on which Becket sat. My counselor, Jon Roy, followed me.



Jon, now a teacher in Newton, Massachusetts, had been at Becket as both a camper and counselor for nearly a decade. "I know this seems like a lot to take in," he said, lowering himself to one knee so he could make eye contact. "But this place will seem like home before you know it. There will be good days and bad, but I promise you that by the end of this session, you'll carry Becket with you for the the rest of your life."

He was right. I spent 11 summers at Becket, first as a camper, then on teen leadership programs, and finally as a staff member. But it wasn't until I found myself faced with the Welles's final act of compassion that I truly realized what a dramatic impact outdoor education could have on a child. Summer camp isn't just a place to make new friends and learn new skills. It's an essential feature of American life, a crucible for the moral and personal development of young people into adults.

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American summer camps and other forms of outdoor education -- organized, experiential learning in a natural setting -- owe their intellectual foundations to Henry David Thoreau and his sojourn into the wilderness in Walden. Fearful of the encroachment of "over-civilization" during the mid-19th century, Thoreau took to the woods surrounding Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts, to gain a better sense of society and himself, ensconced in the "raw" and "savage" delights of nature. "I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately," remarked Thoreau in one of the most famous passages from Walden, "to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived,"

