Mitch, places like Falling Creek Camp have existed for nearly a century. They’re called Boy Scout camps. Interestingly, the TIME article mentions Scouting only briefly at the end of this piece, but for most of the last century they carried the flag for boyhood outdoor adventure when no one else did.
Here in North Carolina we have one of the best Boy Scout reservations in the nation, the Old Hickory Council’s 3,200-acre Raven Knob Scout Reservation near Mt. Airy. I’ve been there many times with my sons and our troop and there is no finer camp that I’ve ever seen, and that includes my personal favorite, Camp Freedom, the Transatlantic Council’s camp near Giessen, Germany. That’s where I went to camp in 1961 and 1962. Sadly, this very weekend was the last campfire at Camp Freedom. It is closing since there are no longer any military bases nearby for support. The new camp will be near Mannheim.
If the mainstream media and the left hadn’t spent 30 years demonizing Scouting, they might have realized these resources were there all the time, and doing damn good work.