From the City to a Cabin in the Woods; Program Takes D.C. Children Camping in a World Far From Home
The children's defenses lowered, and a sense of camaraderie and adventure rose to take their place at a campsite in rural Maryland. At once, 37 boys and girls were just a short ride from their fractured District neighborhoods -- and fully a world away.</br></br>Two boys wandered off from a blazing campfire and ran to a bench in the shadow of an old barn. They lay down on their backs and looked up into the black sky, taking in all the stars that are so hard to see from home.</br></br>"I've never been to a place like this before," Toribio Contreras, 13, told his friend Clayton Chatman, 12. "Why can't it always be this good?"</br></br>Toribio and Clayton, who both live in the Shaw neighborhood of Northwest Washington, met 35 other children from some of the District's most impoverished neighborhoods Saturday night to do something so removed from their everyday experiences that for some, it required an explanation. They went camping.</br></br>"Is there going to be a test?" asked Isaac McLaughlin, 10, as he found a seat on a school bus that picked up 12 children from an Anacostia apartment building. "Are we going to the Virginia? That must be five hours away. What if we fail the test?"