Summer Camp 4ever
Nostalgic vignettes of my youth
The summer I turned twelve, my parents sent me away to camp and I had a fit about it. My only previous experience with the concept was a few days spent at the same Girl Scout camp in Ohio that my mom and aunt had attended. I was meant to become a horse girl whilst there, but upon meeting the horse I was assigned to, I was asking to call home and get permission to switch to an arts and crafts focused week. I made it through with plenty of friendship bracelets and mediocre paintings rolled up in my backpack, but still, my ideal summer was one spent mostly at the pool worshipping whatever babysitter was stuck with me.
So in 1999 when my mom and her friend, Kate, made the decision that their daughters should go to camp and it should be something of an educational experience, Interlochen Arts Camp in northern Michigan is what won amongst the slew of brochures Kate’s secretary had pulled together. Kate’s daughter, Nora, and I both loved art, choir, and theater, and Nora had the extra skill of being an aspiring flutist. To our parents, four weeks in the woods with other artsy kids seemed like just the ticket. The night before we were to be dropped off with duffle bags full of clothing with our names written in Sharpie on every tag, Nora was full of excitement, and I had a meltdown. I accused every adult involved in the matter of being horrible because “what kind of person sends their child away for four weeks?!” My show of defiance didn’t work, and off to camp I went. By the end of the first day, I had drunk all the Kool-Aid and was in. I returned the next summer for the full eight weeks. Nora hated the place and never went back.
In all, I spent six years as a camper at Interlochen. What follows are vignettes capturing the summers of my youth.
There’s the anticipation of camp and that it will once again be the best summer of my life and I will thrive as I’ve never thrived before. I won’t call home once because that’s a waste of my precious time. I’ll receive more mail than anyone else in my cabin because my mom and aunt have some sort of competition with the parents they met briefly while unpacking my bags on opening day, but I won’t respond to a single postcard. I have too much to do. I have nine disposable cameras in my locker — one for each week of camp, and one reserved entirely for the last day when there will be group pictures galore and I’ll be sure to get a picture with my arm around every boy I had a crush on.
I’ll write in my bunk each night recounting the earth shattering importance of every hour I lived that day: what I painted, what the lake looked like, who I talked to, who flipped their badge upside down to indicate they’re now dating a boy in cabin 14. Every day will feel like it’s own universe, but I’ll still be panicked as I see the summer inch closer to August, to that day when I am crying with every ounce of my body in the backseat of my mom’s car wailing that it was the best summer of my life and she can never understand what I’m feeling. That’s all I’ll say for the first three hours of the drive where she’s not allowed to speak but must play the CDs that I’ve been listening to nonstop on my Discman all summer. And when particular songs come on I lose my mind even further.
In the first week of my fourth summer, Chelsea compliments my bag and ignites a decades-long friendship. It may be her first summer, but she’s part of an Interlochen legacy family so she’s not shy. I don’t think Chelsea’s ever once been shy. She’s loud and brazen and unabashedly herself through and through. We’re a perfect match. We talk for hours on end about everything under the sun. We steal plastic letters from the Melody Freeze ice cream menu to turn into bracelets. We crash cabin mixer nights and unabashedly flirt with the boys’ counselor, feeling victorious when he agrees to take a photo with us. We gossip and giggle and are completely convinced that everyone in our circle will be famous. We swiftly become best friends and are obsessed with each other in the way that only teenage girls know how to master.
Christie and I were in the same cabin two years before, when I used my Sally Hansen mustache bleach to give her highlights. Globs of pungent cream applied in streaks with a plastic spoon, subsequently dying sections of her black hair orange. Somehow she forgave me, but I’m sure that was not the case with her mother. Emma and I met my very first summer, when crackle nail polish was our cabin’s beauty obsession. In 2001, when my acting class was going to put on a production of Our Town and I was less than enthused, she and I tried to write an entire play over the course of a rainy weekend, sure that whatever we’d muster up would be better than Edward Albee’s classic. We wrote six pages that were essentially a scene from The Breakfast Club and that was that.
At fifteen, the summer is divided into two sessions, and throughout session A, I hate my cabin. They never win me over. It’s only a matter of time before Chelsea, Christie, Emma, and I pretend we’re in our own made up cabin: cabin 17. We write it in notes to each other, shout it as we pose for photos, declaring we’re the best cabin ever. How could anything else be more true? We have whole heaps of friends, but we always gravitate back to one another — finding each other at breakfast, sitting together at concerts, watching the sunset side by side atop a picnic table. On the last day of session A, as campers who are staying for only four weeks pack up their bags, we believe the rules no longer exist and saunter over to the boys’ side. We get to enjoy the rare privilege of stepping inside a boys cabin. Sure, they’ve all moved out and every bed is striped of evidence that a boy once slept there, but still: it’s a peek behind the curtain and we are thrilled.
It seems like nearly every girls cabin has some variation of “I love Logan Bean” written in marker on the walls, in the rafters, along the leg of a bunk bed. He’s my generation’s heartthrob that just about everyone has a crush on. He’s tall and cute, plays trumpet, grew up on a farm in Alaska, and actually holds some maturity as a teenage boy. He’s at camp for several summers, so his popularity flourishes and more and more girls feel compelled to write their hearts out on the surfaces of their cabins — for posterity’s sake. Because their love for him is eternal. He’s a friend of mine and nothing more, but still: when he dates Abby one summer and then Margaux the next, I feel blessed to hear the details of how he kisses.
The “I love Logan Bean” scribbles are tucked into a sea of love declarations, inspirational quotes, favorite artists, little phrases, inside jokes, and simple signatures of who was living in that cabin each year. They cover every inch of the interior and serve as an intimate wallpaper detailing the lives of the teenagers who came before you. I heart Spencer. Molly + Ben = love. Percussion boyz 4ever!!! Sarah Smith, musical theater ‘82-’84, Boulder, CO. Cabin 11 1979 - We are the champions! Diane Miller, viola ‘91. I love Scott. I love Jacob. Dance it out! Susan + Sam heart heart heart. Liz Brown, Chicago, cello ‘88-’93. Tyler is so hott! Theater majors do it best! Cabin 1 in 1992 ruled the camp! I love Andrew. Paint is life! June Mertz Oboe ‘78. Dream big baby! Marissa & Amy best friends foreverrrrr 1990. Amanda loves Curtis. I heart Tom. Sound the call!
As campers we all wear badges. Small discs pinned to our shorts, color coded to identify which division we’re in, with a little window revealing a piece of paper with pertinent information like our name and where we’re from. They also serve as a means to carry out an important ritual concerning the love lives of campers. If you’re single, leave your badge as is. If you’ve been successful in manifesting your crush’s affection by declaring your love via permanent marker upon your cabin walls, you get to flip that piece of paper upside down. Within seconds of agreeing to be someone’s girlfriend, I was then saying “well we’d better flip our badges.” We did so, I gave him a hug, and quickly walked away to eat lunch with my friends — doing everything I could to flaunt my badge in the dining hall.
Caroline and I are both in Meadows Cabin 3 and have a morning ritual in which we belt out Ben Folds songs while we perform our morning capers. No matter the upkeep, there’s always a plethora of sand on the weathered wooden floorboards and it’s more fun to sing while we sweep. She’s a theater major who lands leading roles and is dramatically animated in just about everything she does. She’s a proud Texan and speaks with conviction and gusto, whether it’s about her latest crush or her theater troop’s rendition of The Odyssey. Abby’s a pianist from rural Washington who has ambitions of performing in jazz groups while also becoming the next Katharine Graham. I’ve known her since our days in Lakeside Cabin 7 when I plucked her eyebrows after an orchestra concert and we found both activities to be equally moving. She’s deep and introspective and asks questions I can’t muster up good answers to, but she loves me all the same.
I adore Caroline and Abby to no end, but will be supremely jealous when the following summer they’re in the same cabin and spend their Sunday mornings reading the New York Times. They’re intellectual in a way I won’t be for a few more years and seeing them read the paper and acknowledge the outside world feels like the most grown up thing I’ve ever witnessed at camp. Still, they’re my muses that summer. I’m a photography major and convinced I’ll be the next Richard Avedon. We spend an entire afternoon and three rolls of film on a photoshoot in the laundry hut. I messily smudge eyeshadow on their faces, and they pose this way and that. They each stare back into the lens, looking pensive, then laugh. I play with composition, they make suggestions, we all think we’re geniuses.
I find a sense of purpose that summer. I’m obsessed with photography and in the darkroom all the time, listening to Radiohead as I develop prints. I’m eager to understand all the technicalities behind the craft, to be able to casually talk about f-stops and exposure times, to know when the fixer chemicals need to be changed. Barry runs the show and he doesn’t take any bullshit from anyone. He’s modified the rules from Fight Club to apply to photography students and written them on a chalkboard — I copy them into my notebook and take everything seriously. Within the second week he’s introduced the 4x5 camera: the film is big and we focus our image upon a glass plate, tucked under a velvet cloth. It makes me feel like an Artist with a capital “A.” My first photograph on the 4x5 is of three bagpipers standing in the street staring back at me whilst taking a break from performing at a gallery opening next door to the photo studio. It’s actually a compelling image and makes me realize I may have a real talent for this medium.
There are at least three performances every night. Jazz ensembles and acting troops, gallery openings and ballet recitals. It never occurs to me that this is the fullest my calendar will ever be. I think that my future holds ample free orchestra concerts in which I know the fourth chair cellist really deserves to be first chair but she didn’t practice enough last week to earn it. Practice huts dot the campus. Each day as I walk through the woods, I hear music. Violins and harps and French horns. Later on, whenever I hear the trumpet or piano played al fresco, I’ll think of Interlochen.
Most of the musicians fight for seat placements in orchestra and band each week — devastated when they fall behind, carrying their instruments in defeat. Every musician spends ample hours holed up in practice huts and rehearsal spaces. The dancers always have slicked back hair tied into buns and pink tights descending from their shorts as they walk around with obscenely perfect posture. Paint, charcoal, clay, and ink stains cover the clothes of the visual artists — markings half made by mistake, half made because they believe it makes them look more artistic. The theater kids… Well, you don’t even have to guess who’s focusing their time on musical theater, they make a show of everything, everywhere. And the writers? I never really see the writers. They’re shrouded in mystery.
We eat ice cream each afternoon and slip into jazz concerts after dinner. We greet one another with hugs and pile into tight circles with every interaction. We wear uniforms all week and rely on our accessories to showcase our personalities. At each weekend mixer, we agonize over which outfit from our real wardrobe gets to see the light of day. We braid each other’s hair and paddle canoes and swim in the lake and make up dance routines. We sit in our bunks at night and go through Roses and Thorns. We develop crushes at the drop of a hat and work intricate games of telephone to find out if the feelings are reciprocated. Each day feels like a week and we view every last thing that happens within a day as a major event. We thrive as teenagers let loose within the confines of summer camp — our immediate surroundings are all that exist. We love each other fiercely and shout our affections constantly.
2004. My last summer. I walk into my cabin and claim a top bunk as always – I could not fathom ever being relegated to the dark corners that are found in bottom bunks. I meet my counselor and immediately clock that it’s her first summer. She has no idea. She’s flying by the rulebook she learned three days ago. I’m quick to point out that it’s my sixth summer and tell her so with the cocky bitchiness that seventeen year old girls specialize in. I have my uniform down to an exact science that melds art kid quirkiness with teenager eager to get a boyfriend. My polos all have paint on them, my shorts are Abercrombie and tiny.
I spot friends from summers past and on every single occasion we scream and cause a scene and make sure every new camper who sees us realizes that we are veterans and demand to be respected as such. We are overflowing with confidence, sure that this will be our best summer yet. We spent our younger years idolizing the oldest high school campers, and now we are them. Without question, a halo follows our every move. I’m as wild and free and obnoxious as I’ll ever be. I’m either adored or completely loathed by anyone who has to deal with me, and the latter never once crosses my mind because I’m a seventeen year old girl at camp, and who would be so obtuse as to not consider my pompous behavior charming?
Despite the exuberance, I have no idea that this summer — these six precious summers — will always remain a highlight of my life. That I will reflect back on them on a regular basis. That I will have nothing but affection for the teenager I was, inflated ego and all. Camp was my mecca. It’s not to say I wasn’t a fan of high school, but camp was this magical realm in which every day was somehow more spectacular than the last. I still don’t understand how that was possible, but it was. We were optimistic and spectacularly intense teenagers who lived in fragrant woods tucked between two lakes, and art reigned supreme. For me, and so many others, it didn’t get much better than that. It was an oasis. It was ephemera at its best, forever and ever amen.
Loveee and another level with the pictures