A little over a mile from where the road officially ends, the sanctuary away from the busy world begins.
Springvale Road in Great Falls curves away from Georgetown Pike, north toward the Potomac River, past homes and fields and ends just around the corner from Beach Mill Road. A gravel road continues, plunging into the woods, barely wide enough for a single car, winding through untouched forest, over a small stream, up bumpy slopes, to a long, gray building and a one-level home.
Welcome to Camp Fraser, a summer camp that serves children from the Washington, D.C., area and gives a glimpse of a simpler, quieter life away from the noise and grime of the city.
"According to the Nature Conservancy, before the colonists came the natives lived here," said John Thayer, who acts as caretaker of the camp with his wife, Nancy.
The camp is located on the more-than-300-acre Fraser Preserve, owned by the Nature Conservancy through the gift of Bernice Fraser after the death of her husband, George.
"Mrs. Fraser was always interested in working with children and was a former Girl Scout troop leader," Thayer said. "She loved nature and didn't want anything up here to be destroyed."
After her death, the land was given to the Calvary Baptist Church in Washington under the strict premise that it be kept pristine and available for children from the church to experience nature.
"Back then we only had a trail leading from the road up here. There wasn't an office or the house or anything," Thayer said. "Now we have hundreds and hundreds of tons of gravel so it's at least passable year round."
SOON, GROUPS OF children from the church and surrounding community were taking day trips up to the camp, some staying overnight to see what the night is like without the glare of street lamps.
"Eventually the county got involved, and since we had people sleeping here occasionally, we needed to follow sanitation codes, which is when we built the lodge," he said. "There's a commercial kitchen in there, a dishwasher, some bunk beds and showers. But we decided the kids wouldn't stay in there to sleep, so we built six 12 feet by 14 feet platforms for tents," he said.
And so Camp Fraser was born, in the early 1970s, and for more than 30 years it has continued to provide city children the chance to sleep under the stars.
"The church has been running the camp since the lodge was built," said Thayer's wife, Nancy.
"We have a staff that comes in every summer, but the church has it organized in a way that it allows the camp to happen," she said. "We get college kids who essentially volunteer to work here so we can have our camp every summer."
Their staff of 10 counselors and one cook is responsible for up to 36 children for each of the six-week camp sessions held each summer. Any maintenance work needed before the season starts is done by camps of teenagers and young adults from various parts of the eastern United States, usually church youth groups or Boy Scouts working on Eagle Scout projects.
"Last year they put roofs on our cabins, and this year they're going to be building bunk beds for the cabins," Nancy Thayer said.
Neither of the Thayers had any idea when they first agreed to be caretakers of the farm that it would last five years.
"John retired from his work in 1995 and started to spend a lot of his time here," she said. "It was a 45-minute ride here from our house. In the meantime they were starting to build this house, and we agreed to stay and take care of the camp."
John Thayer had always been active in the church and community, he said, but this was a whole different kind of project.
"I was asked to become a committee chairman, thanks to all the work I was doing there," he said. Before he and his wife knew it, they had signed on to become the caretakers of the park and the camp through the winter months. It was time they decided to retire and look for a new pastime — caring for the camp and continuing to serve their church community.
"We offered to be interim caretakers so we could take care of the job and let whoever was hired to be the caretaker know what to expect of the job," John Thayer said.
"It's been a wonderful five years," Nancy Thayer said. "There are some neighbors who we see regularly walking through and sometimes bringing their pets."
The camp itself features a low and high ropes course designed to foster trust and teamwork amongst a group, Nancy Thayer said. "We also have a zip line and a tower as parts of our challenge courses," she said.
Additionally, one night per week of camp, the campers take their sleeping bags and settle out under the stars to watch a movie on a drive-in like screen set up in one of the large grassy areas in the camp.
THE PHYSICAL CHALLENGES teach the children how to think, plan, problem solve and work together as a team, she said. "There's always talk about how one kid didn't seem to be able to be helped out of anything at all, but by the end they all sit down and talk about why their plan worked or didn't," she said.
The children are also taken on nature walks in the Potomac River's tributaries in the area and perform a talent show near the end of the week, she said.
When the campers arrive, bused in by a dark bus with a white line down the side, there's a lot of excitement, she said. But if any of the campers has a bout of homesickness, she and her husband are always on duty to help however they can.
Some campers become nervous by the lack of noise or light so common in urban areas.
"The children are affected by different things," she said. "One child wrote in a book of ours that they felt safe here. This is a very different place than what they're used to in Washington."
Spending a week in the woods also gives the campers a chance to see a variety of animals they might not see other than in the National Zoo: deer, turtles, fox, raccoons, snakes and dozens of varieties of birds flock to the wooded area.
"There's a different kind of danger here for the kids," Nancy Thayer said. "There's the unknown, things they're not used to. It's different for all of the kids, but they really seem to like seeing the deer that walk around here."
When Bernice Fraser left the land to the church for use, "this is what she had in mind," John Thayer said. "She wanted to do something to make sure the kids had a place to go to experience nature like she loved to do."
Because the camp is owned and run by the Cavalry Baptist Church, the week-long sessions have a religious underlining, but participating children do not need to be members of the church in order to attend.
"The kids do say devotions each night and in the morning, but there's also the chance for them to talk with their counselors and ask questions," Nancy Thayer said.
Many campers return for a second session during the summer, but each camper can only participate in a maximum of two sessions, she said, in order to give more children the chance to enjoy the experience.
"I'd be happy to stay here forever," John Thayer said. "But we agreed to stay for a few years. This might be our last summer at the camp."
Nancy Thayer agrees that the experience of working at a camp with children is a great opportunity, but the time has come to pass it along to others.
"John loves the work. He loves being here and making it the best it can be and better than it was before," she said. "I'm just along for the ride. I love being out here and interacting with the kids."
As the director of youth and outreach activities, a good part of John Mein's summer is spent at Camp Fraser.
"It gives kids the chance to spend a week outside the chaos and noise of the city," he said. "It allows God to work in their lives for that week, through the staff and their fellow campers."
The simple act of driving down Georgetown Pike en route to Camp Fraser from Washington often has the children in awe, he said. "So many of them have never been outside the city, they've never seen deer or anything," Mein said. "It's a real treat for them."
When the bus arrives at the camp, more often than not the children suddenly realize what being out in nature means: no electricity, no telephones, no in-house bathrooms in every cabin.
"That makes some of the kids nervous, but by the end of the week, they don't want to go home," he said. "They want to stay there for the rest of the summer."
As the years pass, more and more people who were once campers come back to revisit their happy memories.
"That's the best part of my job," he said. "You can see that spending a week or two here really has an impact on their lives. Some of their favorite memories are of floating on a tube in the Potomac or sleeping out under the stars."
Having a place to allow city kids to enjoy nature is a blessing, said Amy Butler, senior pastor at the Calvary Baptist Church.
"It's a great camping experience made even more wonderful because most of the kids who come here have never been out of the city," she said. "Watching them experience nature like that is really a gift."
She takes a few trips out to the camp during the summer and has had the opportunity to see children have their first interaction with wild animals.
In her two years at the church, she still gets a thrill from the transformation in the children between their departure on Monday morning and their return on Friday afternoon.
"The big blue school bus pulls up at the corner of H and 8 streets in Washington, where our church is, on Monday morning. As I come into work, I see all these kids pull up with their moms and backpacks, getting on the bus tentatively," She said. "I'm also there when they come home on Friday, grimy from a week of rolling in the mud and full of tales from what happened at camp. It's wonderful."