posted August 31, 2005 01:13 PM         

Wednesday, August 31, 2005

Happy, holistic campers

No weenie roasts here. At the 'hippie camp' in Rural Retreat, activities include organic food, dream interpretation and group hugs.

By Beth Jones
777-6493
The Roanoke Times

Welcome to Rural Retreat. Population 1,350.

Except in the summer, when that number goes up by about 100 "hippies."

ONLY ONLINE
Slide show of the campers

A few miles from the center of town, where locals sit down at Joey's Country Kitchen for cathead biscuits and bologna sandwiches, out-of-towners flock to a rustic camp to meditate, eat organic meals and explore the idea of what may lie beyond the physical dimension.

It's a summer camp for members of the Association for Research and Enlightenment, a group that studies Edgar Cayce, a 20th-century psychic who's been called the father of the New Age movement. Typically, members of the group, which has its headquarters in Virginia Beach, believe in holistic healing, dream interpretation, reincarnation and extrasensory perception.

The A.R.E. Camp, founded in 1965, gives campers -- usually but not always kids -- venues to explore concepts found in Cayce's extensive writings. But the schedule also allows plenty of time for taking dips in a stream-fed pond, playing poker and napping in the woods. John LaPrelle, who worked as associate director for part of this year's summer season, said it's mostly the chance to play, to get away from it all, that draws people to A.R.E. Camp.

"It's always a nice group of people," he said. "That's the thing. This is fun."

Morning has broken

Getting to the Wythe County camp, which is on LaPrelle's farm, requires negotiating a couple of gates and maybe nudging a napping cow from the milelong dirt road. Lush mountains surround A.R.E. Camp on all sides.

Campers -- who may have traveled hours from places such as Michigan, New York and Florida -- sleep in tents or open-air cabins with no electricity or plumbing. One recent rainy morning when the camp was hosting a weeklong program for families, a half-dozen campers gathered to do morning stretches.

Counselor Daniel Chambo spiced up the routine with his wacky narration.

"Go down in a barrel like a rat about to be introduced as a non-native species," the 21-year-old instructed for a move that involved bending toward the ground. Afterward, campers lined up to give one another back rubs. They finished by bending over on top of one another until they looked like an upside down L, chanting "Ommmmm."

All that omming can work up an appetite. Much of the camp food comes from its organic garden. Meals tend to be veggie-heavy, but chicken occasionally makes it onto the menu. Breakfast, it goes without saying, includes granola.

No sodas or junk food here. Smoking is strongly discouraged.

A love of music, however, is practically a requisite. A couple of times a day, campers gather to sing.

Songs range from the silly ("Boom chicka boom") to the political (such as "Paradise," a song about the destruction waged by a coal company).

Every day, organizers plan a special event such as a talent show, a campfire or a hike to nearby White Rock Cliffs.

Upon reaching the summit, campers do something they'll repeat several times during the week: They join together and shout, "Joy!"

Their voices can be heard all the way back at camp.

"It just reverberates all over the mountains and it's beautiful," said camp nurse Martha Furbush, 44.

Love sick

Each day, campers break into groups to discuss their dreams. Most of the members of a group that was meeting in the camp library were AWOL one morning during Family Camp. They likely slept in on the rainy day (the camp has a lawn chair clause: If you don't feel like doing something, don't do it).

That left only Dawn Mercier of Virginia Beach, her 11-month-old daughter, Fern, and Patti Mills of Ohio for their session.

Mills, 44, starts out talking about a dream, but digresses into how she's recently gone into recovery for drug addiction.

Mercier doesn't force Mills to stay on track. She tells her she made the right decision in coming to camp, that it's a healthy place. She talks about a person she's known who struggled with another addiction.

When it's time to move on to the morning gathering, Mills, clearly moved by the intimacy she'd shared in the cabin, looks at a reporter and begins to cry.

"I've got this love sickness," she says. "I'm afraid to love. I'm afraid to be loved."

Deliverance

LaPrelle, 57, hesitates when asked to talk about the camp's emphasis on loving one another. In the past, some locals and even a few members of the Edgar Cayce association developed the wrong idea when someone used the L-word, he said.

To be clear: This is not a nudist camp nor a den of free love.

"It's about laughing, being open and friendly and easy with each other," LaPrelle said.

James Lloyd, 39, can't remember how long he's been visiting A.R.E. Camp. He guesses about 17 years.

"I've made a lot of lifelong friends," he said.

Lloyd is the vice mayor of Rural Retreat, a town barber and a music teacher. He brings his students to A.R.E. Camp to play the weekly square dance

Some locals refer to A.R.E. as "hippie camp." Lloyd does, too, but not in a disparaging way. He'll tell you he values the camp because it crushes stereotypes about both A.R.E. campers and people of the rural South.

"We see good people come to hippie camp," he said. "They see we're not inbred like 'Deliverance.' "

Free to be me

When asked why they return year after year, veteran campers gave a similar answer: At A.R.E., no one judges anyone else.

"I knew I'd be accepted and loved even though I had buck teeth and braces and was pudgy," Furbush said of attending the camp as a child.

While some pubescent girl must have teased another at some point in the history of A.R.E. Camp, by and large, a philosophy of acceptance hovers over the camp like a rainbow.

Here, the teenager who reads a book on the sidelines isn't forced to join the game. Here, asking a grown-up camper "What do you do?" is considered almost taboo; the job doesn't define the individual.

Here, the little boy who places his sock on the end of a giant stick isn't lectured about the dangers of poking out an eye.

"Does it smell bad?" a curious adult camper asked 8-year-old Aubrey Inkster. "To ladies it might," he answered.

"Hmm," the adult said, taking a moment to mull it over. "A gender sensory thing."

What's the significance of the sock, one might ask.

"It's just to represent that it's mine," the child explains patiently, "and it's lucky because it's got my foot smell on it."

Happy

Jennifer Burbage, 36, came to A.R.E. for the first time this summer with her son. Her husband stayed at home in Suffolk.

"As soon as they said their first 'Ommm,' he'd be out of here," Burbage said.

Burbage, however, was hooked on A.R.E. by midweek.

"No TV to turn on. No e-mail to check," she said. "You've got to put everything on hold and just be."

For Daniel Chambo, who's studying wilderness leadership and experiential education at Brevard College, the aim is to incorporate all the good things about A.R.E. Camp -- from organic food to how everyone hugs one another good night -- into day-to-day living.

"The way I am when I'm here is how I want to be," he said. "To know that works. To live consciously like that. To know it's possible to be that happy all of the time."

'Turning A.R.E.'

A tongue-in-cheek camp song sung to the tune of "Turning Japanese"

I held a crystal.
I had a dream.
You were so lucid,
I had to scream.
And you told me not to eat lots of sugar and red meat.

I think I'm turning A.R.E.
I think I'm turning A.R.E.
I really think so.
No gum. No candy. No soda. No TV.
No flush toilets are found at A.R.E.

Everyone around me is meditating
Even the garden is vegetating.
I meditated. My mind is clear.
I dreamed of Jeannie
and she was there.

And now I'm hopin'
And I'm prayin'
That my vision
will be staying.
I hear ringing inside my ears.
There's someone singing but no one's here

And now there is no disguising.
I think I'm turning A.R.E.
I think I'm turning A.R.E.
I really think so.