Camp is a dream come true
Spring Creek is new home of Learning Camp
Scott N. Miller - Eagle Valley Enterprise
July 25, 2002

Most people dream. Ann Cathcart's dream has become her life's work.

Cathcart and her family this year opened a permanent home for her dream - The Learning Camp - at the top of Spring Creek Road south of the Eagle County Regional Airport.

The camp tends to the needs of students who have a variety of "challenges," that make learning difficult in a standard classroom setting. Those challenges can include attention deficit disorder and dyslexia.

During each three-week camp session, students spend their mornings in four-kid groups. Each group gets the attention of one teacher. Academic work focuses on reading, writing and math. Afternoons are for kid stuff: soccer, swimming and field trips for rock climbing, swimming and camping, among other activities.

The focus on both mind and body helps build a knowledge base and students' confidence, said Cathcart.

The Learning Camp includes a lodge, teepees and yurts for the students teachers and counselors, and 35 acres of ranch land with a pond.

For the past five years, the Learning Camp was located near McCoy on a site, hard against the
Colorado River in the northern part of the country. During that time, the camp began to thrive, and to attract repeat students.

The Learning Camp is the kind of facility Cathcart tried to find for her own son several years ago.

Cathcart's son - who will enter college this fall - was having trouble learning as a young middle schooler. Cathcart looked around for summer enrichment programs, and was unable to find one that combined both academics and activities. A businesswoman with no background in education, she started rounding up both academic and financial help, and, with the solid support of local teachers and FirstBank of Vail, the Learning Camp opened as a day camp at Edwards Elementary School in 1995.

The next year, the camp's mission expanded. More students applied, and Cathcart found the site near McCoy. The camp began to thrive. Over the years, teachers and counselors started to return. So did students. A web site helped bring in both students and faculty from around the country.

As the Learning Camp started to turn into a full-time job, Cathcart began to search for a full-time home for the facility. After a lot of looking in Eagle County, she had essentially given up, due to the high cost of local real estate. A contract was signed on a parcel near Buena Vista, but that fell through just before closing.

That's where Mallie Kingston entered the picture. Kingston, a Realtor with Dreamcatcher Real Estate, brokered a deal between Cathcart and property owner Jerry Best for his 35-acre ranch on Spring Creek. Once the deal was closed, with the help of both FirstBank of Vail and Best, work began on the new, improved, Learning Camp.

The early reviews are positive.

"I love the new place," said Anna Lebar, a middle schooler from Madison, Wisc. This was Lebar's third summer at the Learning Camp, and while she and fellow return campers Tim Healy and James Sams all agreed they missed being by the river, all pronounced the new place as "cool."

The three also agreed that the academic lessons they learn at camp help them through the next school year.

Healy said his grades have improved most in reading; Lebar and Sams said their biggest boost has come in math. Those academic jumps come due to the intensive instruction. Campers avoid School work only one day a week.

While younger students engage in more traditional book work, the older kids' lessons are often more personal. Cathcart noted that one of her students met his math requirements by designing and helping to build a deck.

Students and teachers like the more personal approach. Martha Waterhouse and her husband, Mark Cavaliero, teach near Bailey. They have served on the camp's faculty for four summers now. During those years, they've come through several stages of their relationship, including the birth of their daughter, which got them a lodging upgrade, from a tent to a yurt with a wooden floor.

Waterhouse recalled coming to the camp when she was dating Cavaliero. "I fell in love with the camp, its mission and the families," she said. "I kind of got addicted to it."

Camp counselor Keith Kravec, a senior at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, found the Learning Camp on the internet. Looking for a summer adventure, he applied for a summer job and landed it. He's spending his summer getting kids up and ready for breakfast, supervising their chores and getting them ready for class, then supervising afternoon recreation.

Asked if he likes this summer job, Kravec hesitated for a moment, then said, "...it's different. But I came out looking for something different. I don't regret it at all."

Kravec may be one of the Learning Camp staff who gets the summer routine under his skin, like the boss.

"I hope to do this 'til I'm an old Lady," said Cathcart, who added she has even bigger plans for her new home base. "This year I want to start a foundation to support kids."

That foundation will pay for a few Learning Camp scholarships, of course. Cost of a three-week Learning Camp is $2,800. Cathcart said families who can afford to send their kids to her camp can find the academic support they need.

The kids she wants to help through the foundation are those whose families can't afford the Learning Camp or other private resources.

"I want to be a resource for those kids and families," she said. That might include grants to other programs, or using the Learning Camp as a base for those programs.

The important thing, she said, is to help more kids; and the more the camp and foundation grow, the more kids can be helped.

That future scenario will probably make Cathcart more awestruck than she already is.

"I didn't dream this big," she said. "This is all cooler than I could have imagined".

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