Camp Fire's Burning

Around and above us the light seeps away, the wide sky deepening to black.  A red moon hangs silently above the horizon. Stars begin to appear, first one or two, then tens, then suddenly hundreds. The ghostly blur of the Milky Way bisects the heavens. As the temperature drops we huddle a little closer to the camp fire and put on more layers. The younger children have been put to bed, and the teenagers who had been off somewhere else in the field now deign to join the adults, if only to be closer to the warmth.  Conversations murmur around the crackle of the fire. John decides it’s time for some music; he retrieves his guitar and my saxophone from the camper van and he begins to sing some soulful tunes while I improvise an accompaniment as best I can. 

We are in the middle of a large raised and gently sloping field with views across Marshwood Vale to the west and south, just a couple of miles from Pilsdon. This field, of just under ten acres, is a private campsite owned by a co-operative, a group of friends who liked camping so much they decided to buy their own place to do it. When this field came up in an auction a few years ago they each stumped up £3000 and to their surprise, got it. 

They have built a couple of compost toilets at either end and installed ingenious foot-operated water dispensers which when pressed pumps water from a pipe up to the tap, emptying onto a sloping wooden channel carrying it away into the bushes. A climbing net has been constructed between trees for the kids. They tend to spend a week together here each year and make some income by letting it out to other groups, although the terms of the land use only allows it to be camped on for one month cumulatively throughout the year. The rest of the time it’s used to grow hay and occasionally sheep grazing.

I’m here because my friend John is visiting Dorset with his family and he knows some of these people from an annual gathering of home-schoolers near Poole which had happened just the week before. By a wild coincidence, this private campsite happens to be down the road from where I live. He and his wife and son arrived at Pilsdon with a large chunk of deer roadkill in their van, the leftovers from the entire animal they had found on a road near Poole and then barbecued at the home-schoolers camp. They had enough left to make into a venison pie that fed us well at Pilsdon, the rich smoked flavour of which still makes me salivate with the memory.

It’s only been the last year or so that I’ve met anyone who home-schools their children. John and his wife Jenny who I know from London used to do so until fairly recently. At Monkton Wyld community not far from Pilsdon there’s a family who are home-teaching two of their teenagers. They seem exceptionally well-adjusted and mature for their age, as did another home-schooled teenager I met who visits Monkton Wyld regularly.  There appear to be a variety of reasons why people choose to do it but it clearly takes a massive commitment from one or both parents in time and energy. Some parents link up with others to share the load and their areas of knowledge. In an age where mainstream education seems to be geared more and more towards turning our youth into industry fodder, if they’re lucky enough to find a job at all, giving these young people an alternative start to life can’t be such a bad thing.