near Pinecrest, California

Camp Peaceful Pines 

A 40-acre setting in the Stanislaus National Forest on the Clark Fork of the Stanislaus River. Located about 25 miles above Pinecrest off the Sonora Pass Road, the camp is at the 6,200 foot elevation. Travel time from Modesto, 2-3 hours.

• modern kitchen and bathing facilities
• rustic cabins and platform tents (unheated)

Camp registration includes six meals, snacks, sleeping space, insurance and leadership costs. Partial financial aid, youth work/scholarships, and day rates also available. Camp limited to 150.

To keep costs to a minimum, campers will share in meal preparation, general camp clean-up, children's programs, and other work.

Campers need to provide their own bedding. A medical person will be on duty.

The camp officially opens with supper on Friday, June 28th. Campers are welcome to arrive any time after 2:00 PM on Friday to enjoy unscheduled free time around camp. Camp will close following lunch and clean-up on Sunday, June 30th.

No pets, firearms, or firecrackers are permitted in the camp, nor are smoking, alcohol or other drugs.

Directions to the camp and camp schedule will be mailed to participants shortly before camp.

2001 Camp Committee: Lynn Lucas, Ken Schroeder, and Indira Clark. Cook: Deborah Roberts.

Make checks payable to:

MODESTO PEACE/LIFE CENTER
720 13th Street
P.O. Box 134
Modesto, CA 95353-0134
209-529-5750 weekdays 2-4:30 pm

Info: contact Lynn Lucas, 209-527-7634

Early Registration Deadline: June 10, 2001

(print and mail form, not for electronic submission)

Building Peace: the 20th anniversary of Peace Camp

By INDIRA CLARK

“Let’s rent Camp Peaceful Pines for a weekend next summer, get Jim Wallis to speak, and invite all those people to a peace camp!”

It was Christmas Eve 1982.

Ronald Reagan was in the White House plotting the destruction of the Evil Empire and, seemingly, much of the civilian population of Central America. A new generation of missiles were deployed in Europe despite tremendous protest there.

We were driving home from a vigil outside Lawrence Livermore National Lab, the think tank of the US nuclear arsenal. The vigil was part of a 20 day protest initiated and coordinated by the Modesto Peace/Life Center, in which over 50 peace and religious groups from around Central California participated.

Sure thing, Merritt. You find out if camp’s available and if Wallis might even be interested, I told the Waterford Church of the Brethren minister, thinking I’d never hear of it again.

Ten days later he phoned: there was one weekend still free in the Camp Peaceful Pines 1983 schedule, and Jim Wallis, editor of the evangelical Christian pacifist Sojourner Magazine, was interested in coming out from his work in inner-city Washington, D.C.!

So we gave a Peace Camp, and 150 people came.

This was a time of much activity, many meetings, speakers, demonstrations. In less than two months that Spring we literally wore out a copy of the film so much was the demand for showings, of “The Last Epidemic,” the graphic movie on the probable effects of a nuclear war and, in particular, of a bomb dropped on San Francisco. Dozens of peace people trained as discussion leaders and accompanied this wake-up call by Physicians for Social Responsibility.

When the idea of a peace camp was first presented to the Peace/Life Center Board, Jim Higgs admonished us, as only Jim could admonish, to make it more than just a conference set in the mountains: we needed to make this a camp.

The plan was two-fold: Building Peace in Our World, Building Peace in Our Homes. It was not just about education on issues of concern, but also about a time for fellowship, relaxation, and nurture — to get to know people more fully than just their politics. And, very importantly for the many kids, that theirs weren’t the only “crazy” parents: other families were attempting to live peacefully and responsibly locally.

Bunny Huddleston took on the pre-schoolers, and David Irwin, the children’s program, plus he struck up his guitar around the campfire. Sharon Irwin and Karen and John Cosner cooked up fresh, healthy, and delightful meals hitherto unknown in camp food, a tradition carried on through the years by Carla Messamer Shoob, Pam Franklin, and Deborah Roberts. Dan Onorato and I, camp coordinators, were in charge of adult program and everything else.

But from the first, Peace Camp was a participatory camp. Jim and Margaret Worthington met people in the parking lot and graciously showed them around the camp. Gene Palsgrove identifying birds as Sam Tyson botanized on a nature hike. And John Osner set up his telescope (and sang the full version of “Alice’s Restaurant”).

Taking Jim’s admonishment to heart, and since the cooks refused to buy them, Dan brought marshmallows for the children roast. (This was the man who once wrote a 2-page Ode to the Soybean for the peace center newsletter.) Willie Weaver found that a marshmallow bag made a comfy cushion on a log bench.

I remember that as I bellied up to the podium — I was twentyomething and eight months pregnant — I had a sense of coming full circle. There around that circle in Camp Peaceful Pines, which my father help locate, were so many faces of people who helped shaped my conscience, convictions, and world view. Though longtime community activists had started this camp — people such as Phyllis Harvey who organized some of the first anti-Vietnam War vigils in Modesto, and Mary Baucher who edited and produced the first newsletters of the peace center — they let me know that Peace Camp would be led by my generation.

It’s been a camp for people of all ages. While there have been three and four generations of Sessers, Osners, Harveys, Weavers, TenBrinks, Roberts, Clarks attending camp over the years, the friendships and “family”-ties grown among the people of the local peace community have been a source of encouragement and strength. We, of the boomer crowd have come to know and appreciate the experiences, courage, and commitment of the generation before us who worked so diligently over the decades, standing up for the things that make for peace, justice, racial equality.

And there’s many a treasured bond between kids and their “other grandparents” who met at camp.

For several years, speakers largely concentrated on US policy just about everywhere around the world. Then in 1987 we signed up David Brower, arch druid of the US environmental movement The reaction was, “Can you believe DAVID BROWER is coming to Peace Camp!!!!!!” - and - “WHY is David Brower coming to PEACE Camp?” Brower, 75-years-old, made the link that war is also an environmental issue. He also urged us to work not just for conservation, but for restoration of the environment.

Former Modesto Mayor Peggy Mensinger spoke on local growth, as did speakers from Merced, Stockton, Berkeley. Political songster Mark Levy led songwriting, treated us to a Saturday night coffeehouse-style performance, and accompanied Blythe Osner to the greatest moment of talent ever at camp as she sang a pre-Inquisition Sephardic love song.

The two topics many campers loathed to discuss were the Middle East and abortion; however, we did.

Sandy Sample and others led workshops on Parenting for Peace and Justice. Shelly Scribner brought in Rope Course programs for cooperation building in the youth program. Merritt Hulst led all-day hikes, a youth fave carried on by John Lucas, Ron Gowans, and Mike Miller. Glenna Anderson, Terry Hartman, Marge Fletcher, and Denny Stoup led arts and crafts; Deborah Miller, poetry writing; Tim Smart weaving world cultures together through star stories.

The vice-mayor of Modesto’s Sister City, Khmelnitskiy, and his entourage echoed back “May There Always be Sunshine” in Ukrainian around the campfire. They ferried many of the 75 kids across streams on the youth hike the next day (and later said they were saddened that the women among the hike leaders declined the same chivalrous offer - I was thirtysomething and pregnant at the time).

Dancing to salsa while working in the kitchen, folkdancing with Don and Judy Kropp — and we’ll never forget waltzing under the stars with our children and friends led by Bob Fitch, serenaded by young John Cinadomo’s violin.

Some people have found a measure of peace reading a book, snoozing under a tree.

Camp committee members have come and gone: some longtimers along with Dan, Dave, and me have been Jim and Hema Gonzales, Barb Schickler, Wendy Elder, Ken Schroeder, Ruth Enero, Lenore and Jim Dupre, Suzanne Meyer, Tim Smart, Monique Kamille Capp, and Lynn Lucas. Almost everyone who has attended a peace camp has been asked to share a talent or assume leadership, though many volunteered before being asked.

News came that Margaret Worthington had died as we gathered at camp one year. A stone carved with Henry Osner’s name rests in the stream in the middle of camp where he loved to play with the children. Many elders are no longer with us or are unable to attend camp. And two years ago campers around an early morning campfire circle shared stories of Jim Higgs, bits of which Sandy wove into the liturgy for his memorial service later that week.

Last summer, after the 19th annual Peace Camp, there were heady plans for celebration at the 20th. Sandy even suggested bringing back Jim Wallis, his voice for peacemaking still powerful in articles on the conflicts in the Middle East.

Those idyllic thoughts were dropped as our nightmares became reality on September 11th and subsequently in the Middle East. Then, there were the wars, prejudice, racism, plus the controversy that exploded over Danny Glover as the 2002 Martin Luther King Commemorative Event speaker.

So 20th Peace Camp will be low key: children’s program with Shanthi Gonzales (who was in Bunny’s group at the first camp); hikes —  Lynn and Ken may be freed up for an all-dayer for the first time; a discussion group or two; singing with Scott Gifford; star-gazing with Tim. Lorrie Freitas is in charge of the talent show, Deborah will be in the kitchen. A time to relax. If you want something else to happen, volunteer.

Camp Peaceful Pines has become “my favorite place on earth” for many a child. And while we are often dismayed over all the work that could or needs to be done locally - let alone in the world - let’s celebrate what a strong and vital activist community we have built.