After lunch comes cleanup and everyone pitches in. After cleanup, games. After games, a walk down Rattlesnake Swamp Trail, which stays level for a half a mile, then bolts up through a rock-strewn slope to an overlook that takes in miles of greenery.

The kids ham it up for group photos, marvel at the view, rest on rocks, and eventually fall silent. A turkey vulture with its distinctive finger-like wing tips negotiates the thermals, soaring clumsily through the sky.

“Ever seen anything like that before?” one counselor asks.

“Sure. Last year, when I was here,” answers Aaron Vasquez, a skinny kid who is not going to be rattled into a Hallmark moment. In fact, it often takes quiet, stolen opportunities for a child to give him or herself permission to express the epiphanies that grownups expect—and these kids seem to be more genuine than most.

“I always wanted to see a real snake, and now that I did, it’s totally cool,” said Pollab Das on Day Three, while his compatriots yawned at the idea that the timber rattlesnake that crossed the dirt road in front of their small group was even worth a mention.

In the morning, purposeful and taut-muscled AT thru-hikers hoist heavy backpacks and leave camp with weary smiles. The kids from Brooklyn have had a different experience. They are wildly fresh at breakfast, in spite of their lack of sleep, which comes from discomfort, stray elbows, a talkative tent-mate, at least one episode of chicken-wing flatulence, and the novelty of sleeping somewhere new.

Day Two is devoted to hikes and a canoe outing on Catfish Pond, where the armada of would-be paddlers takes off en masse, swirling around the water barely in control of their boats. But, one by one, the campers point their crafts toward the wind, and begin to explore.

I sit in the middle of a canoe steered by a two middle-school youth who have never been in a boat before and am thinking Lawrence West was right. Maybe Central Park is a safer place to be.

Jazheel Perea is in the stern. He’s the one who earlier looked at the gorp—which included cranberries, apricots, sunflower seeds, peanuts, and ripe local wine berries—and advised, “It might smell bad, but it tastes pretty good.”

He listens to instructions and learns a quick rudder stroke. He overpowers the young woman in the bow and begins to switch his paddle from port to starboard and back again to keep the canoe on course. He is digging hard and smiling at the light glide of the craft skimming through the water. And in less than an hour, I sense he’s on his way to becoming a real pro.

At the end of the pond trip, Nicoloff has the campers lash all 10 boats together by holding onto a neighbor’s gunwales and we head for home. The clumsy grouping of boats makes good time and holds a true course. By this point, I’m convinced that Perea could just about teach canoeing.

Seeing his smile was almost as poignant as witnessing the first—and just about the only—silent moment that occurred on the trip. It was earlier that day, when the group returned from a long hike and sat down to a genuine, replenish-your-batteries lunch. To a camper, they were too tired to talk. They were almost too exhausted to eat.

One began to wonder how long it would take for one of the kids to say something, anything—even a wise crack to break the mood.

It took a long while before one of them spoke. It was seventh-grader Daysi Castro, who seemed to have suddenly processed something and was ready to share what she now knew to be true.

She looked up and smiled. “I saw a red deer.”

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