August 29, 2004
Summer camp finds silver lining
Camp
enjoys a rich legacy
By Gregory Moore
Special to the Herald
Two years later, Clay Colvig is able to joke about the Missionary Ridge Fire.
"Fire? What fire?" Colvig said, tongue firmly in cheek on a bright morning in July.
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| Counselor Grant Bryans, right, picks up a map for his group's treasure hunt at Colvig Silver Camps on Aug. 6. Two hundred and one campers - 7 to 17 years old - attended the camp this year. |
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| Clay Colvig, director of Colvig Silver Camps, watches campers and counselors on a treasure hunt on Aug. 6. Behind Colvig are benches Jim Colvig, the camp's site manager, built from trees that were cut down during the 2002 Missionary Ridge Fire. |
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| Counselor Grant Bryans, left, uses a compass to figure out the next step in a treasure hunt on Aug. 6. Assistant Counselor David Hayes, center, holds a shovel to dig the treasure, and camper Max Holmes wait for instructions. Max’s parents are Kate and Thomas Holmes, of Santa Fe, N.M. |
"It all looks pretty decent now," he added, gesturing at the tall pines, shimmering aspens and green meadows visible from the camp office porch, "because since the fire, things have gone so well."
He wasn't laughing in 2002. The blaze came within scant yards of devouring his home, livelihood and family history at Colvig Silver Camps just northeast of Durango on Red Creek.
Much of the land around the camp has recovered, but from the windows of the main lodge, the burned areas are still visible, looking a bit like blackened fingers of an outstretched, grasping hand ready to close about the property.
Luckily for Colvig, his family and all the staff and campers who call Colvig Silver Camps their summer home, that fist never closed.
Colvig's staff (nearly 50 people) was undergoing an annual training session north of Durango near Potato Lake on June 9, the day the fire started. Because the fire was well north of camp and moving in a northwest direction, Colvig Silver Camps welcomed its first session of campers to Red Creek on June 12. The next day the entire camp participated in a standard fire-evacuation drill that is always held on the first day of camp.
That evening, fire officials informed Colvig that the fire, rapidly moving to the east, was burning in the Shearer Creek drainage, just east of the camp.
"That fire was so unpredictable," Colvig said. "It started 10 to 15 miles north of here and higher (in elevation). But it didn't follow any of the normal rules for a fire."
Colvig decided to evacuate, and in two hours - with the ridge east of camp glowing red from the fire just over the hill - nearly 150 campers and staff members were safely encamped a few miles down Florida Road in the big meadow at El Dorado Ranch, a site soon dubbed by the campers as the "Refugee Camp."
Castle Greyskull
Intense smoke from the blaze soon forced another move, this time to Escalante Middle School - dubbed "Castle Greyskull" by the horde of campers holding a giant slumber party in the gym. With no containment of the fire in sight, the camp staff, struggling to stay in communication with worried parents from makeshift office quarters in town, decided to cancel the session. The traditional farewell dance was held at the school, and by June 18, all the campers were on their way home.
"The worst part for me was having to tell the campers they had to go home," Colvig said. Just days later, Colvig faced another emotional parting when lack of progress in containing the fire forced him to send his staff home as well.
With the fire threatening camp once more, this time from the north and west, determined fire crews dug fire lines and set a back burn to hold the flames in the upper Red Creek drainage. Helicopters dropped down to the camp's Outpost Lake for water and bombers painted the rock ridge north of camp bright red with slurry.
Fortunately, the lines held, and while the camp lost most of its revenue for the year, Colvig was able to recall his staff and invite campers to Red Creek on July 27 for a final camp session. He was also able to arrange for one group of his oldest campers, the Pathfinders, to travel to Wyoming and hold their camp session near Jackson Hole.
"We didn't lose anything," Colvig said, speaking of the 40-odd structures spread out on both sides of Red Creek. "I don't know what to attribute that to. Just luck and a lot of great damage control by all the crews we had out here to fight the fire."
Building community ties
Losses from the summer of 2002 aren't even part of conversation at camp in 2004. What occupies the thoughts of Colvig and his staff is how much the organization gained from the Durango community, from alumni and from the campers who spent what might have been the shortest summer camp session ever held during those six tumultuous days in June.
"On the positive side, a lot of alumni got back in touch with us," Colvig said, adding that their generous donations to a fire-recovery fund went a long way in getting the camp re-organized for the summer of 2003.
"We came away with a much better understanding of the community as well. Our experience backed up what all the firefighters were saying about Durango. About what a great, generous community it can be. Tamarron donated three nights lodging for our whole staff after our second move. A Durango law firm let us use its office to contact the kids' homes and keep parents up to date on what was going on with camp. Friends helped us move everything out of harm's way during the fire and our neighbors all helped us get resettled afterwards."
Nearly all of Colvig's staff and campers from the summer of 2002 have returned in the past two years, and the adventures of the fire-shortened session have become the stuff of camp legends.
"Looking back, those six days of camp were not discouraging," Colvig said. "It was an affirming experience. It was six days when our campers and our staff learned so much about life, and about how important it is for us to support each other.
"We heard from more than one camper that those were the best six days of camp we ever held."
Camp enjoys a rich legacy
By Gregory Moore
Special to the Herald
Colvig Silver Camps was founded in 1969 by Craig and Mary Colvig, who took over the Silver Spruce Camp for boys and the Silver Saddle Camp for girls operated by Forrest Groves.
The Colvigs moved their operation to its present site on Red Creek the same year, and in 35 years, more than 5,000 campers have visited the only family-owned summer camp of its kind in Southwest Colorado.
Clay Colvig, one of Craig and Mary’s three sons, and his wife, Tavia, direct the camp, which now occupies more than 600 acres. In addition to the original camp programs for boys and girls in grades 5-7, Colvig Silver Camps now holds coed Homestead camp sessions for children in grades 2-4 and coed Outpost camp sessions for children in grades 8-9.
High school-aged teens take part in Colvig’s Pathfinder sessions, which are held away from camp in wilderness settings. In all sessions, Colvig Silver Camps stress personal growth and the development of leadership qualities in a noncompetitive environment. As campers progress in age, more of each session is spent away from camp in outdoor adventures and camping trips, and Pathfinder sessions culminate with campers taking solo excursions in the backcountry to demonstrate their self-reliance and outdoor skills.
Staff members such as Ingrid Arnold first came to Durango as Colvig campers. From New Jersey, Arnold was at the camp during the fires of 2002, and now shows the children in her care the effects of the fire, and how the forest is recovering.
"We’ve come up with a lot of ways for the kids to get a sense of what happened," Arnold said. "Like charcoal drawing with wood from trees that didn’t survive the fire, and going up to see the burn area."
Two years after the Missionary Ridge Fire, Clay Colvig thinks the operation’s recovery is nearly complete. But he’s cautious about plans to expand the program, and adamant about keeping the camp’s original goals and mission intact.
"The money is just a small part of what we’re all about up here," he said in July. "This camp isn’t run as a money business. We’re in the future business."
The Colvig philosophy was perhaps best summed up when Colvig spoke of his plans to install some signs on County Road 246 in an attempt to get drivers passing through the camp property to slow down.
"The signs shouldn’t say ‘Slow, Children at Play.’ They should say ‘Slow, Future Leaders of Society at Play.’"