Camp Walden - Overnight Camp for Girls in Denmark, Maine

The camp season runs seven weeks and is sold as a whole; a four-week option exists for first-time campers on a limited basis. Campers are grouped in bunks by school grade and follow a daily schedule of five activity periods built from a mix of elective and assigned activities, so a girl can deepen a favourite skill and try something new in the same day. Counsellors and coaches teach individually and in groups and meet each camper at her own level. The oldest campers take on leadership roles - planning evening activities and special events, captaining team sports, leading songs and the weekly campfire, and putting together the camp yearbook - and pass those responsibilities down to the younger girls.

Tuition covers the stay in a camp bunk, all meals and snacks, the full programme of instructed activities, the three overnight wilderness trips, evening activities and special events. Uniform - white logo t-shirts and brown logo shorts - is worn on activity days, with non-uniform clothes on Friday and Sunday evenings. Chaperoned travel to and from camp is offered separately by bus and by air from several cities.

Campers live in spacious wooden bunks set among the pines, naturally ventilated through screen windows, each with its own bathrooms and sinks. Between six and ten campers of the same school grade share a bunk with three or four counsellors who live in with them. The two oldest age groups have electricity in their bunks; the younger girls use flashlights. Each bunk holds a weekly Bunk Circle to reflect and talk things through, and younger campers are tucked in at night by an older Campsister.

Three meals a day are served family-style in the Dining Room. Alongside the main course there is always an alternative: a breakfast bar with yogurt, granola and fresh fruit, and a salad bar with vegetarian and protein options. Whole fruit is out all day, snacks are put out in the afternoon, and homemade cookies and milk close the evening. Every meal and snack at camp is nut-free.

Campers take five activity periods a day. On the water: swimming, canoeing, kayaking, paddleboarding, sailing, waterskiing and wakeboarding. On land: tennis, lacrosse, soccer, softball, field hockey, basketball, volleyball, pickleball, ultimate frisbee, gymnastics, conditioning for sports, team sports, archery, horseback riding and a climbing and ropes course. In the arts: arts and crafts, jewellery making, dance, drama, bunk shows and evening activities. Every camper also takes three overnight wilderness trips, hiking and canoeing in Maine and New Hampshire, which grow longer and more challenging from one summer to the next. Brother-sister days are held with boys camps in Maine.

The camp sits in a pine forest circling part of Sand Pond, also known as Walden Pond, in the central western part of Maine. On site there is a waterfront for swimming and boating, playing fields and courts, a climbing and ropes course, riding facilities, the Dining Room where the whole camp eats together, and a Health Center staffed by three live-in licensed nurses with a tele-medicine paediatrician and an on-call therapist. The nearest hospital, with an emergency room and urgent care, is ten miles away.

Walden has kept its own traditions and culture for over a century, and new campers are drawn into them from their first week. Some are light and silly - counsellors thrown into the lake at meals for saying the words of the much-anticipated Counsellor Show. Others are heartfelt: the oldest campers give speeches at the Final Campfire about what camp has taught them. Songs written for every part of camp are sung in the Dining Room, at team sports and at the Sunday campfire. Birthdays are celebrated with a decorated table, a cheer at breakfast, a homemade cake and a song written for the camper. The camp is deliberately unplugged - phones and personal electronics stay out of the bunks - and campers write letters home and speak with their parents on scheduled calls.