Camp Dudley: overnight camp for boys in the Adirondacks

There are no language or academic lessons at Dudley: the day is built from activity blocks. Each morning holds two scheduled blocks — one of the camper’s Majors and a Team Activity — followed by choice time, and the afternoon brings one more activity block and a second, longer choice time. Activities are grouped by the four programme pillars: Arts (drama, stage tech, music, pottery, print making, drawing and painting), Athletics (basketball, soccer, baseball, lacrosse, flag football, ultimate frisbee, tennis, golf, archery, riflery, strength and conditioning, yoga), Outdoors (sailing, paddle boarding, canoeing, kayaking, skin diving, fishing, rock climbing, camp craft, challenge course, hiking and overnight camping) and Spirituality.

A stay covers tuition, cabin accommodation, all meals in the Dining Hall and the full activity programme; a camper may come for one session of 25 days or for the full season of both sessions. Tuition is paid to Camp Dudley Inc., and the camp runs a tiered tuition table together with a Tuition Assistance Program, applied for through the camp office.

Campers live in log cabins on the 640-acre campus — 41 cabins among 100 buildings, the oldest of which is the Avery Boathouse. The cabin group is, in the camp’s own words, “the family unit for campers while at Camp”: it grows together through shared living space and chores, daily discussion, meals and events attended together, and each cabin has its own leaders.

All meals are taken together. The day begins with breakfast for the whole camp before cabins return for inspection; lunch follows the morning activity blocks in the Dining Hall, and the last meal of the day closes the afternoon choice time. The campus is nut-free.

Majors and Team Activities are chosen by the camper and run on a daily rhythm, with open choice time twice a day. On the arts side there are drama, stage tech, music, pottery, print making and drawing and painting; on the athletics side basketball, soccer, baseball, lacrosse, flag football, ultimate frisbee, tennis, golf, archery, riflery, strength and conditioning and yoga; outdoors there are sailing, paddle boarding, canoeing, kayaking, skin diving, fishing, rock climbing, farm to table, camp craft, a challenge course, hiking and overnight camping. Leaders and staff add special events through the summer, and Sunday brings Chapel and the Hymn Sing.

The campus covers 640 acres on Lake Champlain with 41 cabins and 100 buildings, among them the Avery Boathouse of 1913, Beckman Hall, a Dining Hall for the whole camp, playing fields, tennis courts, a golf range, a challenge course and a waterfront used for sailing, paddle boarding, canoeing, kayaking and swimming.

Dudley is a brotherhood more than a timetable: boys arrive from 38 states and 16 countries, live independently with their cabin buddies and are expected to put, as the motto has it, the other fellow first. The programme asks every camper to try something new — sailing, a part in a play, a morning jog, cooking over an open fire, rock climbing — and leadership is learned by doing, with 200 leaders and staff alongside 300 campers each session. As one camper put it, the best part of Dudley is not the activities but the people.