Adventure Camp

Northern New Mexico's mountains vault above desert skies painted bright colors from blue to tangerine. Dusk brings out the deer and pronghorn, elk and black bear. Mountain lions pad softly along the rims. You're just a long look south of Raton and, if you're lucky, you're still in high school.

The NRA Whittington Center sprawls across 33,000 acres of forest and red-rock bluff, prairie and desert. Once controlled entirely by the National Rifle Association, it's now an independent facility with its own board (though continued NRA affiliation benefits both groups). With the most extensive, varied and sophisticated shooting ranges available to the public, the center now accommodates 170,000 visitors annually while hosting dozens of shooting matches. It also conducts an Adventure Camp.

"We held our first camp in 1988," says Mike Ballew, Whittington Center director. He'd suggested that the NRA meet with representatives from the Boy Scouts of America, 4-H and other organizations to "fashion a camp for teenagers that would introduce them to the shooting sports." The resulting program included other field skills and an emphasis on self-reliance in the outdoors.

"It seemed only natural to use our facility for education," Mike says. "Here we can teach shooting and camping to youngsters from urban and suburban backgrounds; kids who'd never otherwise be exposed to the traditions so many of us cherish."

Whittington's Adventure Camp, now in its 19th summer, has changed surprisingly little. "We've fine-tuned it, of course," says Mike. "And we constantly look for ways to improve it."

Two years ago Wayne Armacost became the camp's program director, assembling equipment and instructors, establishing the fourteen-day curriculum and raising funds. John Wood now assists. Once the camp is underway, Bill Perkins serves as its counselor-in-chief. All are experienced outdoorsmen with a passion for promoting the shooting sports and a conservation ethic.

"We limit the camp's two sessions to forty-eight students each," says Wayne. "The forty-eight are divided into four groups, each group into two teams of six. That way, instructors can work almost individually with students. We have two instructors for every discipline, plus a counselor and assistant counselor for every cabin. Eight campers per cabin."

All instructors are volunteers, as are the counselors and assistants, who are selected from the ranks of camp alumni. Instructors must be experts in their fields and certified to teach particular skills. They must also attend a pre-camp training session to ensure that they're familiar with every phase of the program and that each class meshes with the others.

Students, ages thirteen to seventeen, come from many backgrounds and represent a huge geographic range, "from Alaska to Puerto Rico. We even had one from Burma," says Wayne. Both girls and boys are welcome and housed separately--the number of girls attending the camp continues to climb.

A camp day starts at 5 a.m., when students are expected to rise and make their beds. Reveille is at 6, followed by a flag-raising, then breakfast at 7. Students are at the ranges by 8.