In addition to formal academic work in literature and writing, staff and students offer non-credit instruction in canoeing, camping, art, and nature studies.
Work responsibilities rotate among the groups, which prepare meals, wash dishes, and clean common areas.
The program emphasizes the writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, Frederick Douglass, Sarah Orne Jewett, Robert Frost, Galway Kinnell, Louise Glück, Ruth Stone, Wallace Stevens, Carolyn Chute and other 18th through 20th century writers of various backgrounds.
The academic program requires completion of a reading list, active work in the journal, and extensive participation in classes and groups.
Among those are Bruce Weber and Mark Leibovich, writers for the New York Times; Diane Cook, formerly a producer at Public Radio International's This American Life and author of Man V. Nature, a 2014 book of short stories published by Harper Collins; and Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn.