Camp Cowanbunga
The crew raising the posts of the pole-barn gazebo by the lake

Chapter Five · One project, every year

Leave It Better
Than You Found It

The defining camp rule: every year, build something the place needs.

Stewardship

Why We Build

The Robinsons cleared this shoreline with hand tools and patience. It would feel wrong to inherit ground like that and only sit on it. So early on, a rule took hold without anyone writing it down: every year, the camp builds something. Not to develop the land, but to take care of it, and of the people who'll use it after us.

Some years the project is glamorous. Most years it isn't. Earthworks through a swamp section don't make for a romantic photograph, but they're why the trucks get in. An outhouse is nobody's dream build, but ask anyone who used the woods before it existed. The work is the point. A week of shared labour is the mortar that holds the rest of the tradition together.

The whole crew at work on the gazebo deck
Many hands, one deck
The ledger

A Decade of Projects

  • Access road improvements so the trail stops winning
  • Earthworks through the swamp sections the least photogenic, most important work on the property
  • Dock projects built, extended, rebuilt, and lived on
  • Outhouse construction civilization, one structure at a time
  • Camp structures and shelter improvements because northern weather doesn't negotiate
  • The pole-barn gazebo the heart of camp, raised post by post
  • The CAMP COWANBUNGA signage routed letters, hung high, made it official
The big one

The Pole-Barn Gazebo

Every camp eventually builds its cathedral. Ours is a pole-barn gazebo at the edge of the meadow: posts set deep, rafters walked into place along the top plate, a roof big enough to keep a whole camp dry and a kitchen running underneath it. It went up the way everything here goes up: everyone on tools, the dog supervising, and progress measured in coffee breaks.

The finishing touch came on ladders: routed wooden letters, lifted and levelled one at a time until the sign read CAMP COWANBUNGA. The day it went up, the place had a name you could see from the water.

Setting rafters on the gazebo frame Installing the routed letters of the camp sign The Cowanbunga sign taking shape letter by letter
The skid steer meeting the swamp, and losing round one Sparks flying off the grinder during fabrication

Shared work is the mortar. The friendship is the wall.

Nothing here was contracted out that could be done together. That's not thrift. That's the tradition.

Browse the full build archive in the galleries, or read where all of this is headed in Passing It Down.