GUILDERLAND — The Woodlawn Sportsmen’s Club in Guilderland offers scholarships each summer for two selected Farnsworth Middle School students to attend a summer camp run by the Department of Environmental Conservation.

Selected to attend this summer are Palmer Stewart and Aiden Hanzalik, both seventh-graders.

Students at the camp spend one week on Lake Colby in the village of Saranac Lake in the Adirondacks.

Nellie Cordi, who attended after receiving a scholarship from the club in 2016, said, “It’s like science class, but you weren’t sitting down.” As an example, she offered, “One day, we walked out into the lake to look for bugs.”

She also went on a seven-hour canoe trip and into the woods on an hour-and-a-half hike. Every morning when she woke up, she joined the group practicing yoga on the shore of the lake.

Nellie said that she enjoyed all of the activities at the camp, which included wilderness training. Kids there learn, she said, to build a fire, set up a tent, paddle a canoe, and learn techniques to help keep them from getting lost in the woods.

All of the kids at the camp, she said, not only liked learning about science and the environment but also had some other driving passion in life. Nellie’s is writing. Her favorite books are the Harry Potter series.

She wants to write novels. “I read a lot of books that really changed my life, and if I could do that for other people, that’d be really cool,” she said recently.

She has stayed in touch with many of the kids from camp, including one young woman who lives in the Adirondacks and whose family runs a sled-dog business; the kids keep in touch through social media and got together once during the summer, to see a movie, after camp ended.

Nellie plans to go back this summer — she has been awarded a scholarship from another rod-and-gun club — and hopes to become a counselor-in-training the following summer.

This summer she may try archery, and she may decide to join the overnight hike to the top of a nearby mountain; kids spend the night on the mountain peak.

Kids who hope to receive a scholarship from the Woodlawn Sportsmen’s Club fill out an application, which includes a short essay. The winners are chosen by science teacher Jennifer Ford. Ford said that the essays are so good that she prints them out without names on them and has several other teachers read them and give her their advice about which to pick.

She let students know about the scholarships in the fall, applications were due just before Christmas, and applicants were notified of the results after winter break, Ford said.

Camp Colby is open to 11- to 13-year-olds; it is one of four DEC summer camps, and two of the others are open to a larger age range, of 11 to 17. Camp starts in June and runs through August; campers can attend just one week, or as many weeks as are available.

The cost per week for one camper is $350.

Scholarships are paid for out of a fund set up for the purpose about 30 years ago by member Fred Fink. The fund is gradually getting depleted, said club member Steve Zahurak — who retired in 2000 from many years of teaching social studies at Guilderland schools — and club members are just starting to think about ways to replenish it through fundraising.

In addition, members pool their own funds each year to send one other child — usually the son or daughter or grandchild of a club member — to the camp, Zahurak said.