By Pierce Harris
IN THE RURAL town of Otisfield, Maine, sits the Seeds of Peace Camp, a rustic sanctuary for cross-conflict relations. Seeds of Peace was founded [3]0 years ago by the foreign correspondent John Wallach, with a vision of bringing “the next generation of Arabs and Israelis together before they had been poisoned by the climate of their region.” That first year — the year of the Oslo Accords — Wallach hosted 15 high school-aged kids each from Egypt, Israel, and the Palestinian Authority. This summer, 198 children from conflict regions, including Israel, Palestine, India, and Pakistan arrived in Otisfield for the same purpose, and I was fortunate enough to be one of them.
A central feature of camp was a portion of the day we called “dialogue”: two hours spent talking, listening, and, with any luck, reaching a point of understanding with a small group of campers from different backgrounds. Those sessions taught me just how pointless arguing is. One side will say: I’m right. The other will say: No, I’m right. And, in most cases, they both are right. Multiple truths can exist, and we have to acknowledge that if we want to find a way to move forward.
Last summer, after weeks of dialogue — and canoeing on Pleasant Lake, and performing camp chants during dinner, and playing Gaga, a game that involved hitting a ball at another player’s shins — my fellow campers and I boarded buses bound for our outside lives. We worried that leaving camp would weaken the bonds we had developed, so we traded contact information, determined to keep in touch despite great distances that would soon stretch between us. By the time the buses pulled out of the parking lot on August 15, many of us were already chronicling our journeys home on a shared WhatsApp group.
Read American Seed Pierce Harris’ article in Rolling Stone ››