Camping Skeptically: Final Thoughts

Ben Radford, Author Jenna Marie Griffith, Laurie and Rob Tarr

My time at Camp Inquiry is over, at least for this year. It was an inspiring experience for the campers, counselors and staff. This is a place where kids are encouraged to think about everything — from the mechanics of  conjuring to the movements of the stars. Everything is open to questioning, evaluation and criticism.

Ben Radford was back at the camp for another lecture on Thursday, this time speaking about crytozoology.  He presented several glimpses into his own work as an investigator of cryptids, but encouraged the kids to think about the evidence and decide for themselves what conclusions could or could not be drawn from the information available. He spoke of  Champ, the resident Lake Monster of Lake Champlain at length, including instruction on the way he and Joe Nickell deconstructed the famous photograph taken by Sandra Mansi in the late 1970s. The kids learned how to use math to examine bigfoot tracks and even compared their own footprints to a cast of a sasquatch’s that Radford brought along to the camp. At each turn of this popular lecture, the kids were encouraged to think for themselves, evaluate evidence and be skeptical of eyewitness reports. Most importantly, they learned that applying science to cryptids doesn’t make them less fun, it simply translates the fun into more avenues of inquiry.

Thursday night brought the biggest headliner of the entire week to Camp Inquiry: the one and only James Randi. Randi spoke of his own history and interest in conjuring and how this led him to dedicate his foundation to exposing fraud and trickery among those that knowingly deceive others into thinking that they have paranormal abilities. He showed his own skill at sleight of hand and escape artistry, both live and with videos of his most memorable performances, including a truly “Amaz!ng” escape from a straight jacket while being suspended over a frigid Niagara Falls.  Randi’s talk was certainly entertaining for everyone at Camp Inquiry, but the underlying theme was most important: fraudulent deception in any form is never acceptable and anyone that trades on fraud must be stopped. In reviews of Uri Gellar and Peter Popoff, Randi showed the kids that conjuring is fun, exciting and impressive but trickery is an abomination to anyone that considers themselves to be a humanist in any form.  Randi was the most energetic and engaging that I’ve seen him in recent years and his boundless energy was readily multiplied by the curiosity and excitement of the young campers and staff alike.

Camp Inquiry is not just a place of excitement and learning when the headliners, national treasures that they are, speak to the campers.  There is always a fun, yet educational activity at hand. Whilst spending my waking hours in Holland, I saw kids learn card tricks, create art projects, examine foliage for flora and fauna, investigate the methodology of Tarot and sing songs about science around the campfire. They learned about states of matter by making gak, slime and silly putty. They stargazed, webt for hikes by only moonlight and even learned how to tell a good ghost story. This is a place where learning is everything and everything is a source of learning.

Camp Inquiry: Think. Learn. Grow.

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