POW Summer Camp 2025 Recap
Words by Faith Stanton
FRIDAY
After a six-hour car ride turned into an eight-hour car ride, complete with long stops for world-famous Fairlie pies and some minor car trouble, my carpool crew of four climate passionate girls and I made it to the Craigieburn Environmental Education Center for the Protect Our Winters Summer Camp. I don’t know if it was the excitement to explore the gorgeous cabin or the rumble in our tummies from being late to dinner, but we unloaded the car at a record pace and bounded down the pebble staircase with our sleeping bags in hand, an open mind, and an eagerness to learn. And learn we did.
Luckily for us, dinner prep was a breeze. Backcountry Cuisine was kind enough to send us lots of camping meals to fuel us for the weekend, which were surprisingly delicious for a dehydrated meal! As we dug into our mushroom bolognese and Thai chicken curry, we did some introductions and shared some positive climate news from around the world. Almost all the climate news we see these days is negative, and I really appreciated hearing some good news about environmental happenings. It restored my faith a bit in the state of our world and set an uplifting tone for the weekend.
Arrival at Craigieburn Valley a.k.a POW Summer Camp home base.
SATURDAY
Our beautiful Saturday started with Marian – lead POW advocate – giving us a presentation on Climate Mythbusting. She explained how mis/dis/mal information is spread on climate change and how to gently fact-check a climate myth. We know all too well the dinner party conversation started by someone’s well-intentioned uncle, making a bold statement based on a Facebook post they saw that solar panels cause cancer. It’s easy to get passionate quickly and immediately disagree with these suspicious claims, but Marian reminded us that to truly debunk the myth and convey the truth, patience and sympathy are the way to go. Instead of going for “That’s not true! Solar panels don’t cause cancer!”, she offered us to consider “I am glad you care about your health, I do too! Although there might be a lot of misinformation spread about solar panels, I can assure you that they are safe, well-studied, and more beneficial for both the climate and your health.”
Maintenance work with the Craigieburn Reforestation Trust.
We then set off to meet our friends at the Craigieburn Reforestation Trust for some trail maintenance. For those who are unaware, early December last year, there was a devastating fire in the Craigieburn area that burned through almost 1000 hectares of beautiful beech trees and about 100 ha of native tussock grassland in what’s known as the ‘frost flats’. It was described as an ecological disaster for the area. It was jarring to see the clear distinction between the lush, green forest on one side of the hill and the crisp, black, dead beech trees on the other.
In the wake of the fire, the Craigieburn Reforestation Trust is mainly focused on the regrowth of beech trees, but the main issue they face is the growth of weeds in the burned area, particularly lupins and broom. Our job on this beautiful Saturday morning was to pull out as many brooms as we could to make way for the beech seedlings to sprout and rebuild the forest. And of course, because most of us are outdoor athletes, we decided to make it a competition. After a couple of hours of crawling on our hands and knees and getting enough dirt underneath our fingernails to build a castle, we collectively pulled out 2,782 brooms. I personally lost count, I think I landed somewhere around 250, but our most committed member -and winner of the first annual POW broom pulling contest- reported a whopping 521. Although we didn’t pull out every broom in that forest, we sure as hell tried our best and bonded over our shared commitment to protect the outdoors that we love so much.
View from the burned area in the Craigieburn Forest with the green, untouched forest in the background.
Later that day, it was time for the event I was most excited for that weekend, Cave Stream. I had zero expectations. I was told to bring a wetsuit and a headlamp if I was interested in wandering through a cave, so those were the first things I packed. I cannot even explain how unique and exciting the experience of walking through this cave was. As my trusty group of four and I navigated twists and turns by torchlight, we could not stop giggling in awe and admiring the high cave ceilings and smooth rock that genuinely looked too perfect to be made naturally. I could not stop thinking about the fact that this cave was just there, on the side of the road. No commercial guiding, no ticket booth, no long lines, just enter at your own risk and make sure you have the right gear so you don’t get hypothermia. I wanted to tell everyone I knew, but also tell no one at all. I wanted to protect this small, quietly known masterpiece that nature has created without letting the greedy moneymakers take advantage of it. But I realized that tension -between access and protection- is exactly what Protect Our Winters stands for. It shouldn’t be about locking nature away or turning it into an exclusive privilege; it’s about ensuring these places remain upkept, public, and accessible for generations to come. If you find yourself in the Craigieburn area, this is a must-do activity; you won’t regret it.
A two-page spread from my personal zine.
Although most of us were exhausted after our long day of activities, we caught a late-night burst of energy with our closing activity for the night, Zine-Making led by the amazing Melanie Joan Lloyd. If you don’t know – don’t worry I didn’t – A Zine is a small book, decorated using little magazine cutouts, your own drawings, or quotes that inspire you. Our Zine theme was Envisioning 2125. For hours, we sat at a table, listening to Olivia Dean and furiously cutting, gluing, and scribbling our Zines. If you could bottle up the brain power in that room, you could use it to fuel your EV car for weeks. I loved how creative everyone was getting, even those who had never collaged or done something artsy in a while! All the zines we created that night forced us to think about what we envisioned for 2125 and how we are currently making an impact on the outcome, whether positively or negatively.
SUNDAY
Sunday morning consisted of some more listening and learning. We had the pleasure of having Andrea Davis from the Canterbury Regional Government join us to give us some insight into how climate change has been affecting the Canterbury region as a whole and what we can do individually to lower our carbon footprint. She encouraged limiting air travel, eating less meat or opting to go vegetarian, choosing to buy from local, unprocessed grocers, only purchasing secondhand clothing, or joining a forest and bird catchment group that steadily works on biodiversity. I hadn’t considered the last option, and it was a good refresher to hear new ways I can be environmentally conscious in my everyday life!
Talks in POW summer camp home base.
We were also blessed to have a very insightful presentation from Jenny Sahng from Rewiring Aotearoa. Jenny covered a plethora of valuable things to note on the topic of electrification. She explained why going electric is not only much more cost-efficient but also essential to cut transport emissions at the speed and scale climate action demands; how solar panels get a bad rap and are actually an affordable, secure, and environmentally conscious way to fuel your home, farm, or business; and how long-term, low-interest energy loans can be the missing rung of the ladder needed to get more people electrifying their homes. Listening to Jenny explain just how simple it is to electrify a lot of everyday things that use fossil fuels, it suddenly didn’t seem like a distant policy issue, but something people can actually do right now to cut emissions and save money.
Walking through the Craigieburn forest.
After our education session, a couple of us went for a small walk in the Craigieburn Forest to stretch our legs and get a little exercise in before our long drive home. As the weekend came to a close, I felt overwhelmed with a sense of gratitude for the opportunity to learn from and be inspired by other climate-passionate individuals. I started to feel as though I hadn’t done enough for our environment and could be doing so much more. But then I thought back to what Marian told us on that first night, as we were eating our dehydrated meals, about how one of the core principles at POW is “Progress, Not Perfection”. It reframed that negative feeling of guilt into positive motivation. It’s not about doing everything right all at once, but about showing up, like we all did this weekend in Craigieburn, being willing to learn, and taking the next small step forward. It’s about sharing your love of snow, nature, and clean water with others and instilling that passion into the next generation so they, too, can continue to Protect Our Winters.
2025 POW Summer Camp crew.
