The precursor to primitive camping at Maqua may well have been in the early twenties’ when Meg Dahlem talked of their trips overnight by truck to the AuSable. They would sleep on the ground on a hill with no sleeping bags, but probably makeshift bedrolls. The appeal for outdoor camping of this sort waxed and […]
Dorthe Balaskas
Campcraft
The first mention of campcraft was in the “Loon” 1949, from a paragraph by Kay Cochran. They learned to make boiling kettles from no.10 cans, and stoves to fry their hamburgers. Nature lore and campcraft were combined that summer with Marian Musolf in charge. In the early sixties’, Bonnie Baker guided her campers to plan […]
Nature Director-1968
Audrey Delcourt was a first-year biology major at Albion College in 1968 and had a few classes in her field when she was hired as the Nature Director. She had relatives in northern Michigan, and had often gone up to Oscoda. She saw the sign as she passed through Hale, and her Mom wrote the camp […]
Nature Directors 1959-67
For many years the nature center was housed in “Dutton”—the original farmhouse on the property by the lake. It was never in great shape, but every year renovations were done to keep the building standing just a little longer. Karen (“Billie”) Kaiser was the first director of nature that was mentioned in archival notes. Karen […]
Sports and Staff–
Some years were better than others for staff, and the sports section at Camp Maqua was not immune to the ups and downs of hiring qualified counselors for tennis, archery and riflery. In one of the directors reports in the sixties’, Dorthe Balaskas wrote that sports was a let down, as she felt they had so […]
Hiding With The Horses–
“It was a transformational experience at camp because of the animals, “ said Nancy Weber (1962). “ I was a girl born in the fifties in the city and I should have been a forties girl born in the country. I was just ripe for Camp Maqua. It was the first time that I […]