Phyllis Wheatley summer camp continues in a new form — nature excursions along the Mississippi
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Outside the entrance to the Phyllis Wheatley Community Center in north Minneapolis, a yellow school bus sits idling.
Aaron Raivo-Lynch stands nearby checking-in youngsters into the center’s special summer program, Mississippi River Exploration. The bus will take the group to four locations along the east side of the river: the Mississippi Watershed Management Organization, Sheridan Memorial Park, Boom Island Park and St. Anthony Falls.
The day’s tour is an initiative of the center’s Camp Katharine Parsons, a 106-acre camp west of the Twin Cities in Carver County. Parsons, open from the late 1950s until 2001, offered an outdoor experience for kids living in Minneapolis, mostly the northside.
These days, the summer program is a little different. It’s a two-week session, four days total, offering nature excursions along the Mississippi.
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Raivo-Lynch said he’s a big fan of the state’s waterways. Minnesotans of all ages, he added, should have more connections to nature and the state’s precious resources.
“This is a great chance to get out — to get away from screens. The whole entire program is along the river, and we’re at four different points,” he said.
The campers, ages six to 16, experience the Mississippi as it changes form through the Twin Cities. It enters as a prairie river in the north and exits St. Paul as a working river.
On this day, the second day of the session, the group of 28 children, tweens and teens piled into the bus with six chaperones.
Mississippi Watershed outreach specialist Adam Flett spoke to the kids about the agency’s mission.
“A big part of what we do here is [to] think about what happens with water once it starts falling from the sky and hits the street and starts going into the drains, right?,” Flett said. He added that the water picks up various things and carries them into the river.
The campers were then treated to a tour where they saw a rain barrel cistern. The tank can hold up to 4,000 gallons of water at a time. The cistern was full, Flett explained, because of the recent rainy weather in the area. Some of the water would be used to water nearby trees, he added.
A somber history lesson
Later, at the group’s second stop, Sheridan Memorial Park, it was time for a history lesson. The park, right on the Mississippi, pays tribute to Minnesota’s war veterans who fought in 10 different conflicts. Vertical granite markers and peace gardens surround the veterans memorial which is a giant, spherical sculpture, around 30 feet high.
Raivo-Lynch read the engraved text about the U.S. Dakota War of 1862 which describes how hundreds of settlers and Dakota people lost their lives.
He also added that U.S. soldiers marched 1,600 Dakota people to Fort Snelling, which overlooks the convergence of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers, known as Bdote.
After telling the students about the mass hanging of 38 Dakota men, Raivo-Lynch asked for feedback.
“Does anyone have any questions or anything that they want to share after hearing this information?,” Raivo-Lynch said. “This is pretty heavy stuff, but it's really important to understand as a Minnesotan and as an American.”
There was silence. Then chaperone Dystany Gatlin encouraged students to share their thoughts.
“I want one of you guys to volunteer and tell me what’s your thoughts about what you just heard,” she said.
Griffin Bailey, 10, spoke up.
“Very, very bloody and sad,” he said. “I don’t have anything else.”
Gatlin asked for more responses.
“A lot of people got killed and died for petty wrongings of other people and people killing other people because they’re different and not seeing anything from anybody else’s life perspective,” said Gatlin’s 16-year-old son Jaydin.
After some collective reflection, Raivo-Lynch explained what a treaty meant and provided more historical context.
The campers explored the gardens on the way to the park’s playground.
There, the Lippincott sisters Alaina, 9, and Amiya, 7, from Ham Lake spoke about their camp experience.
Alaina said she liked connecting with the outdoors.
“What I like about the camp is that we get to do these field trips and get to explore nature,” she said. Alaina says she is also is fond of trees and plants.
“And I like, when the breeze blows, and like, all the tree leaves move … and then you hear that sound,” she said.
Amiya focused on the people she met.
“I really like how the camp helps us make more friends and has a community of people,” she said. “We learn a lot of new things.”
She’s not alone. It was Gatlin’s first day with the camp and she called the experience “amazing.” Raivo-Lynch introduced her to new sites she has never been to and a wealth of historical knowledge. She specifically noted the history of the Dakota and Ojibwe people.
“I feel like I walked away with something good,” Gatlin said.
Restoring the old camp
Phyllis Wheatley officials want a new generation of youth to feel the same way at a revitalized and operational Camp Katharine Parsons.
The campground at Oak Lake near Watertown closed down because the organization did not have the funding to sustain the property. Raivo-Lynch, senior director of the camp, visits the site twice a month to mow the grounds and trails to maintain the property. The grounds’ five buildings are not up to code, he said.
Phyllis Wheatley officials have made efforts to restore and improve the camp by seeking funding. In July, the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund awarded $75,000 to Camp Katharine Parsons. The funds will pay for structural engineering assessment and the restoration of the buildings.
During the 2023 legislative session, state lawmakers set aside $550,000 for the organization to restore the camp. Raivo-Lynch said he hopes the camp will reopen and ready to host campers some time in late 2020s.
In the meantime, there’s still one last stop, St. Anthony Falls. Campers stand by guardrails to watch the Mississippi head south toward the Gulf Mexico. They can hear the force of the water as it travels.
“I think it’s really cool,” said Hayden Strawmatt, 9. “I really haven’t seen a waterfall like that before.”
Chaperone Kaylah Meadows has been on the job for two previous cohorts of campers.
“They love seeing it,” she said, referring to the falls. “They see it, they take the awe in, and then after that, they’re ready to go.”
