Turn off Amy Belle Road in Hubertus, and you’ll be met by a looming wooden sign straight off a Wes Anderson set – “Camp Minikani” in carved wooden letters, propped up by tree trunks and sticks.
A walk around Minikani takes about 30 minutes. You’ll pass firepits and cabins, an archery range and a disc golf course, a dining hall decorated with bright arrows pointing to Swimming, Boating, Archery. You’ll stroll along the clear waters of the 30-acre lake, through wooded trails, past an old farmstead built in the mid-1800s, and by the base of the camp’s massive, somewhat frightening climbing contraption.
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At 150 acres, the camp isn’t that big, it isn’t all that secluded, and it’s not necessarily breathtaking. If you’ve spent any time in semi-rural Wisconsin, it’s a decent slice of land you might find anywhere in the area: trees, fields, suburban homes visible across the lake. The cabins are tiny – four sets of bunks crammed together with just enough room for eight people to maneuver – and the facilities are rustic (read: old and a little worn down).
In short, Camp Minikani the place isn’t all that special.
But Camp Minikani the experience – that seems to be a different story.
“People spend one week here when they were 8 or 9, and they still talk about it 30, 40 years later,” says Elijah Fyksen, the camp’s executive director.
Each summer, the YMCA camp hosts almost 4,000 kids ages 8-13 on its grounds for day camps and overnights that last one or two weeks. Some of those kids just remember it as a few days in the woods, but many remember it as one of the best times of their lives, even a formative moment that helped shape their future. And they will gladly tell you about it.
“I still remember getting the call that I was chosen as a counselor,” says Nina Shully-Darling, a former camper. “I felt like I won the lottery. … I’m married, I have two kids, all these things, and it’s still one of the greatest days of my life to this day. Because it truly changed the trajectory of my life.”
Minikani alumni often act as evangelists of sorts, discussing the camp with a fervor often reserved for religious conversions or life-altering epiphanies. Middle-aged men and women rave about long nights with cabinmates, laugh at the memory of sliding into a mud pit, and often tear up explaining how much that time means to them.
Minikani isn’t the only summer camp that evokes these kind of responses. You’ll find devotees of many such camps across the state – and country. And if you haven’t spent so much as a sunny afternoon at one, you might wonder what in the world would inspire such zeal.
IN 1919, THE YOUNG MEN’S Christian Association of Milwaukee was expanding. A major part of the effort included buying land on Amy Bell Lake and opening Camp “Minikani,” an Americanization of Native American words the camp describes as meaning “a place where seeds are planted” or “a place of beginnings.”
For nearly five decades, the camp was a place where boys in the throes of adolescence could spend their days competing in outdoor athletics. In 1967, Minikani welcomed its first group of girls for overnight camp.
In the summer of 1970, 22-year-old Bruce Rasmussen was looking for a seasonal job. The high school science teacher interviewed with the Boy Scouts and with Camp Minikani about counselor positions. “The Boy Scouts had their staff sleep in tents; Minikani had their staff sleep in cabins. I thought, well, I’d rather sleep in a cabin. And that started 22 years of spending my summers at Minikani,” he says.
Rasmussen – who worked his way to Minikani’s program director – witnessed a changing philosophy. Minikani was becoming more inclusive – scrubbing ugly vestiges of racism and evolving from the competitive, boys-only approach of its early years. Minikani, Rasmussen says, began focusing “on the individual, on making sure they had fun, learned some skills and got something out of the experience.”
At first, he was somewhat overwhelmed at how much relentless, frenetic energy it took to be a good camp counselor for a seemingly never-ending brigade of kids, their usual brand of rambunctiousness enhanced by the wilderness. But he found the work exhilarating and grew to love seeing the kids he worked with thrive in the camp atmosphere.
Campers were (and still are) divided into cabins, each one staffed by a counselor – almost always a former camper themselves – who leads the campers in daily activities, games and outdoor skills training. As it was back then, no screens are allowed. Older campers attend “Explorer” camps Up North in Rhinelander where they take on more strenuous wilderness training, camping and canoeing.
“You’re kind of forced to be independent and self-sufficient,” says Pamela Simon, a camper in the mid-’90s. “You need to take care of things on your own and make new friends really fast. … It’s an emotional rollercoaster. … You almost get addicted to the feeling of camp.”
Over his two decades, Rasmussen, who helped found a group of over 600 former staff members called the Minikani Alumni Community, saw thousands of kids, counselors and staff pass through the camp – but he didn’t see much change in Minikani. The camp’s facilities are much the same as they were decades ago, save some necessary repairs and the installation of a few new features. And the core philosophy has remained the same as well – focusing on each individual child and working as hard as possible to ensure they had a good time and learned a thing or two.
“I remember one kid stopping me on the last day to ask if I would be coming back next year,” Rasmussen says. “I said, ‘I’m like the totem poles – I’m here to stay.’”
A 13-YEAR-OLD GRACE WEBER was hurtling down a challenging river rapids in a canoe with fellow camper Dane Bjorklund. Suddenly, a less experienced camper in another canoe lost his paddle in the water, the current sweeping it away. The campers stopped on the shore.
The counselor, knowing that Weber and Bjorklund were strong canoeists, suggested Weber give her paddle to the other camper. And how could Weber replace hers? The counselor crafted a makeshift paddle consisting of a branch with a lifejacket tied around the end. Weber, wielding her new “paddle,” once again pushed away from shore in her canoe. “I put the paddle in the water and instantly the stick broke,” Weber says. But it was too late to turn back; the current was taking them down the river.
She yelled for help, and her counselor, still on the shore, tossed her a small log. Weber caught it, brought it down into the water, and with Bjorklund’s help, steered the canoe through the rest of the rapids to a peaceful stop down the river.
“We nailed it!” she recalls, decades later. “It’s this strong memory I have – God, I did something really hard, and it was so cool, and I was so proud of myself. I felt so accomplished.”
Weber’s other strongest memory of her years at Camp Minikani isn’t quite as high-octane – but it’s quite meaningful.
“At night, around the campfire, I got to sing,” she says. “And the other campers would chant, ‘Grace, sing a song. Grace, sing a song.’ … Going to school, sometimes I felt like I had to hide my talent. I felt sort of embarrassed to sing because people would judge me. Then, at camp, it was the exact opposite.”
Weber is now a Grammy-winning singer-songwriter based in Los Angeles who has performed on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and worked with artists including Chance the Rapper and Francis and the Lights. “I never really thought about it much until right now, but [Minikani] had a huge impact on how I felt about myself as a singer and as an artist,” she says. “You get to show your entire self, and everybody is open and accepting. … That’s something you take with you.”
Weber still has a “Camp Kids” group chat with her friends from Minikani. Oh, and Bjorklund – the boy who paddled that canoe with her – is now her husband.
MARQUISE REMEMBERS BEING NERVOUS HIS FIRST DAY at Camp Minikani. A second-grader at Hopkins Lloyd Community School, he and his twin sister, Markia, were brought to camp by Marquise’s former kindergarten teacher, Jessie Peters. Peters had signed them up for a program offering a heavily discounted stay for families who otherwise couldn’t afford the opportunity.
The two kids had never spent a night away from home alone. “I was definitely nervous. … It was kind of rough for me,” Marquise says. “But it didn’t take me long to settle in the first week. … The counselors were great. They made sure we were happy.”
Over one week at camp, Marquise and Markia explored the woods and the lake, played capture the flag, made new friends, swapped stories around the campfire, and left excited to come back.
Peters still remembers picking them up. “Everybody was running up to them and hugging them, telling them how happy they were to meet them and how much fun they had, and they were both smiling and laughing,” she says. “A lot of the kids I’ve worked with in 36 years of teaching don’t have those experiences because families are too busy trying to make ends meet. … It was a beautiful thing to see. … I actually just sat and cried. Both of the kids looked at me like I had lost my mind.”
She applied for scholarships with Minikani and paid for the two to return the next year, and the next, and the next – for seven total years. In 2020, Marquise went to Explorer camp in Rhinelander. “We kayaked down the Wisconsin River – the views were the best,” he says. Marquise and Markia are now sophomores in high school, and are both considering college or trade apprenticeships after graduation.
“I think a lot of people think of camp as this place to have fun, but there’s all of these things that are intertwined, these intrinsic values that you don’t get other places,” says Fyksen. “You’re increasing your self-confidence, your independence, your resilience. It’s not just climbing a rock wall – it’s having your cabinmates cheer you on while you’re doing it.”
Peters knows that most kids aren’t fortunate enough to have a teacher make that happen for them and wishes more parents knew about Minikani’s scholarships. “I wish they had more underprivileged kids in the camps,” she says. “I think it’s so important for kids to have those experiences, and for the most part, if they don’t go to a camp like Minikani, they don’t have those experiences.”
IN THE MENOMONEE VALLEY SOUTHWEST of Downtown Milwaukee, you’ll find one business that owes its existence to Camp Minikani. Third Space Brewing, best known for its Happy Place pale ale, was founded in 2016 by Kevin Wright and Andy Gehl, both campers and staffers who met at Minikani in the ’90s. They host annual fundraisers for the camp, and Wright is on the camp’s board.
“The lessons we learned from camp were, I think, central to the kind of people we became,” Gehl says. “To this day, it bleeds through to the kind of leaders we try to be.”
One of Gehl’s earliest memories of camp is terror over Minikani’s horses – he didn’t want to be anywhere near the toothy, kicking-prone, big-headed animals, much less try to ride one. But with the gradual prodding of his counselors, he not only managed to get on one, he became good enough at riding that when he became a counselor, he taught kids to do the same.
That’s a common theme when it comes to Minikani memories. Whether it’s horses or swimming or climbing or even just talking to other kids, a bad experience – when a kid is scared or miserable – is turned into a foundational, positive memory.
In 2020, a terrible piece of Minikani’s past went viral on social media. A 1942 Minikani brochure advertised a game called “Hit the [N-word] Baby,” in which white children hurled objects at a human target meant to look like a Black baby. An image of the brochure, on display at the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia in Michigan, drew widespread outrage and condemnation.
“There were racist things happening at Minikani and at camps around the country – especially with African American and Native American people – and it’s not excusable at all,” says Elijah Fyksen, the camp’s executive director.
Camp Minikani released an apology in response. “We condemn the previous racist actions taken on our grounds, and any current discrimination that takes place is not tolerated,” the statement read in part. The YMCA’s core values “compel us to be an anti-racist, multicultural organization.”
Fyksen is continuing to implement mentorship, membership outreach and other DEI efforts in Minikani’s strategic plan. “We want to serve historically marginalized populations here at camp. Camping has historically been very white and suburban. How do we change the culture, both locally and nationally? We’re pretty consistently working on ways to move the needle.”
Michael Jurken remembers a rough start to his first summer at Minikani in 1999. His cabin didn’t get along – personalities clashed, and the boys were already fighting and arguing just one day in.
Packed in a room smaller than some utility closets every night and forced to participate in activities together every day, this looked like a recipe for misery, and maybe a black eye or two.
“Then the staff came together late one night, and they snuck us all out of the cabin,” Jurken says. The counselors spirited the group off to look at the stars in the pitch black, encouraging the boys to make up and find common ground. What they lost in sleep, they made up for in bonding over the illicit midnight memory.
Similarly, Elisabeth Rees was the “odd man out” one year at camp. She found herself in a cabin with seven other girls, all of whom knew each other from school. “I felt super homesick,” she says.
Rees felt excluded, lonely and stuck. She was committed to stay at Minikani that week, and the only way out would be to ask the counselors to call her parents, a mortifying thought. Instead, she “made it work,” forcing herself out of her comfort zone. “I went back the next year and had a wonderful experience,” she says.
Rees went on to attend The American University of Paris and founded Chasing Paper, a successful wallpaper company. “I think I learned a confidence in being able to rely on myself at Minikani,” she says.
“I think one of the greatest gifts you can give a child is resilience,” Rees says. “I had to have some struggles and some conflicts to overcome to get to where I am now.”
Like Rees, Jurken is also now a successful business owner, operating Majic Productions, a sound, video and audio production company that’s done work for the NBA Playoffs, Super Bowl and Ryder Cup.
Pamela Simon, who’s held several C-suite roles at businesses, remembers a seminal conversation during her time at Minikani. “My counselor and I sat on a log near the cabin, and we just talked about what my goals were,” she says. “No one had ever asked me that before. ‘What are your goals? How are you achieving them?’ It was so interesting to me at that age.”
The conversation slowly, but surely, sparked a focus that continues to orient Simon to this day. And her later time as a counselor has a direct – and just a little bit funny – influence on her work. “[As a counselor] we talked about these ‘negative leaders.’”
Certain kids in the group would single out shyer or less popular ones, or try to discourage the entire group from what they were trying to accomplish. “We had certain tactics, like giving them a special job of their own, separate from the group, things that would keep everyone positive. … I still use that one today … when I deal with adults,” she says.
Shully-Darling credits the powerful lessons and experiences from Minikani with shaping her character. She remembers camp as a freer, more open place than school – a place where you could stand on a chair and cheer for your cabin at dinner without self-consciousness or embarrassment. “There’s this emphasis – You don’t need to wear makeup, it does not matter what you look like; what is important is who you are as a person.”
THE WORST DAY OF CAMP, JUST ABOUT EVERYONE SAYS, is the last one. While parents have joyous memories of kids smiling and laughing, counselors and alumni remember tears as they said goodbye. “The last day was always sad and bittersweet,” says Rasmussen.
Simon still chokes up when she recalls the first of many last days. “You grow up really quickly at camp,” she says. “You learn so much about yourself. I didn’t want to leave. I remember my mom walking up on the last day, and I felt different. … Years later, she described it to me like this: ‘We dropped you off, but then we picked up the girl that we always knew you would be.’”
So in the end, what makes the camp experience special?
It’s multi-faceted and hard to describe. It’s ditching your phone and sitting by a fire. It’s jumping in the lake and running through the grass. It’s trying to shoot a bow and missing and missing and missing, and then finally, with aching arms and a sharper eye, hitting a bullseye.
It’s standing on a chair in the mess hall and cheering for your cabin until you lose your voice. It’s not worrying about how you look or who might judge you and just diving straight into a mud pit for the fun of it. It’s being scared of the woods at night, and then facing those woods and coming out the next morning braver. It’s crying in your bunk because you miss home and don’t know any other kids there and you don’t think you fit in, and then crying again a week later when you have to say goodbye to your new friends.
It’s arriving a kid and leaving one step closer to the adult you hope to become.
