The Acorn People

Camp Wiggins is an archetypal summer camp, suited most commonly to Boy Scouts learning how to brave a more rugged terrain than any of the children with disabilities are accustomed to. It’s full of trees and shrubbery, dirt paths, inaccessible restrooms, and cabins with stairs that are difficult for the children in wheelchairs to navigate. Every aspect of the camp is symbolic of structural ableism, as Mr. Bradshaw and the camp investors saw fit to open the area to those with disabilities without providing any customized accommodations for them. Some kids can navigate it more easily, like Martin, who is blind, but even he is frequently tripped up by tree roots. Consequently, the kids are often uncomfortable in their surroundings, and the counselors must work harder to ensure that the campers can participate in activities during their time there.

Nevertheless, an underlying implication in the story is that nature levels the playing field among people, forcing them to rely on their bodies and find their own ways to thrive. In society, infrastructure, education, work, and other institutions may offer limited means of advancement, particularly for those with disabilities. In the camp, however, the children are allowed to swim and hike like other children in whatever way suits them and their bodies. The pool is the favored activity of all the campers. Just like any child, they each had to learn to swim, only several had to do so differently. Those with less significant disabilities and those with more significant ones, like Thomas, can all navigate the pool and play, allowing them equal opportunity to participate in this camp activity.

Lookout Mountain, similarly, offers this chance: Martin may be able to physically hike the biggest incline because he has full use of his body, but those in wheelchairs can’t, at least at first glance. Ron reflects, “This must be the exhilaration that drives explorers. The surprise of always finding another vista, a new thought, an unexpected strength” (41). The book implies that the climb is difficult for everyone: Even Boy Scouts are awarded a merit badge if they reach the peak. While they may have to cautiously hike their way up the steep, rocky, and unstable path, however, the Acorn Society’s method of scooting upward is, if anything, more stable and less dangerous. Nature thus offers all people the same challenge, but each has the space and freedom to meet the challenge in the way that best suits them.

Much of the time at camp initially shows the children with disabilities how they lack the ability, by the common definition, to do something. These children all have disabilities and are often unfairly defined by them; each feels like they have become nothing more than how they, specifically, aren’t capable of doing some things that others are. Some can’t walk, others can’t see, a few can’t talk, and all are limited in one way or another. However, the campers prove that they can still move, navigate a space, and socialize, just like those without disabilities. What’s crucial is offering them opportunities to do so.

The first example of this is Spider swimming. Some would consider a child with no limbs as incapable of accomplishing most physical tasks, particularly a recreational one requiring the entire body. He takes cues from other creatures, though, mimicking the actions of a dolphin to dive in and out of the water and twisting his body to weave his way through the pool. Other people with this disability in the past and the modern day can move, work, and accomplish various tasks, like Spider, but this is the first chance that Ron (and, later, many of the parents) has had to witness this happening because, in the era when these events took place, people with disabilities were still gaining equal rights and often lacked opportunity.

Activities like the mountain hike, the camp dance, and the water ballet highlight Spider’s capabilities. The natural terrain of Lookout Mountain makes the Acorn Society’s trek to its top slow, arduous, and daunting, yet they find ways to make it work. At inclines, they roll forward, hold their brakes, and then roll again to keep their wheelchairs from rolling backward. When they near the final summit, several leave their chairs and scoot backward on their bottoms, a few carrying campmates in their laps. At the dance, Ron remarks that the dances they do resemble common ones, though not all can participate in the same way. They all dance and have fun regardless, creating square dances and a conga line, and they end the night positively.

Finally, they put on the show for their parents, a mix of theater and water ballet, complete with “[f]ilm. Reporters. These kids [have] never been news. Most [have] been family secrets. They [have] been observers. Now they [have] the chance to be performers” (65). This helps teach the parents, reporters, and Mr. Bradshaw the same lesson that Ron quickly learned: What these children are capable of can be surprising. Ron comments that many of their families underestimate them, in some cases keeping them “secret” because of how they think the child’s disability might reflect on the family as a whole. The show, however, allows the camp to demonstrate how “able-bodied” they truly are, fully capable of performing and thriving if they have the opportunity to do so in their own way.