Fr. Bill, where did your love of the wilderness begin?
When I was 5 years old on the shores of the Mississippi River. My parents had a little cabin across the river, about a mile out of Red Wing. I spent part of the summer there, and I didn't like that very much because all of my friends and playmates were in town, and I was out there on the river. And still, one day I had a vision of how beautiful it was. Wrens were singing, I knew what wrens were, and the boats were coming and going past, and it was perfect weather...and for the first time in my life I thought, "hey, this is beautiful, I want to stay here."
Who came up with the idea to start Laketrails?
I did. Fr. Jerry Noesen, who was one of the co-founders with me, he came to visit me at Camp Columbus that year, and decided to travel back with me in my old car. For the first time I opened up my ideas of a camp to him, a camp for older kids - teenagers, in a wilderness setting. Upon that road back we decided it would be some place on Lake of the Woods. We would look around, and even call the camp Laketrails because it would be largely for canoeing in the wilderness. I thought Jerry was good material for the camp, and to do it with me. So we talked about it all the way from the Black Hills to home.
No comments:
Post a Comment