The Widji Way Website
What do you get when you combine a love of history, website development, and YMCA Camp Widjiwagan?
An incredible project that is more than a record of dates and events, but a way of honoring an entire community by preserving their stories, their work, and the values they carried forward.
Drew Barker was a Widjiwagan camper from 1979 - 1984 (when he took his Voyageur trip), on staff from 1986-1990, a board member (first in 2010 and starting again last year), and a camper parent. He loves Camp Widjiwagan.
Years ago, as he was walking through the Trail Building, looking at the names displayed on paddles commemorating each Voyageur and Mountaineering trip, he wished there were a way to see all that history in one place.
And so he built it.
The Widji Way is “a site dedicated to YMCA Camp Widjiwagan, located just outside Ely, MN, on the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. The primary purpose here is to collect, archive, and share 70 years' worth of routes, photos, and stories from the many post-high-school adventures, the vast majority of which have taken place in the Canadian Arctic and Alaska.”
There are facts about how many trips and where they’ve gone, a page dedicated to families with multiple people who have taken trips, photos, routes, and a page called “the Trail Building” which he describes, saying, “How many times at camp have you looked over the trip plaques in the Trail Building to remind yourself of when and where your friends and family traveled across the Far North?
The goal here is to make the walls of the TB available to anyone who may not be able to journey to camp and to share as much info as we can.”
Drew has been gathering data and continues to update the site as Widji alumni get in touch with him and share information. He is also eager for feedback about what features people would be interested in seeing, as well as how he can improve the current site.
If you have photos, routes, or other information to share, consider reaching out to Drew- https://thewidjiway.com/contact