Ode to Summer Camp

My mother and grandmother used to drive me to North Carolina every summer for camp where, as memory serves, the squirrels were white, the dawns were dewy, and the threat of lake snakes never did come to fruition. Each morning, the sound of a trumpet would wake us up. Before we could get out of bed, our teenage counselors would make us recite the camp motto: It’s a great day and I feel terrific. Blinking into the Carolina morning, some more cheerful than others, we murmured our greats and our terrifics. The nimblest girl would claim the first flush; the sleepiest would be shaken awake. Then we were off to breakfast, the line of us, wearing shorts and sneakers. No flip flops, said the handbook. The nurses were tired of wet grass and sprained ankles.

On weekends, the home-cooked breakfast was scrapped in favor of cereal. We’d enter the canteen and scour the tables for our favorites — Cheerios, Fruit Loops, Life — nosing in like puppies for a styrofoam bowl of hastily scooped chow. It was chaos and debris, that cereal circus. To this day, I can still see the great big jugs of milk and the weak elbows of my fellow campers trying to pour them. By the time we skittered off to botch archery, the floor was a Kellogg’s galaxy of milk and ruin. I think eggs would have been easier on the staff.

At night we’d lie on our bunks — top, if you were lucky, bottom if you were late — and listen to Bible stories. Jonah and the whale, Esther, Moses. Some of our counselors still had braces, but darn it if they didn’t make salvation sound cool.

While there were many things to love about camp — Fruit Loops, fireflies, and the ritualistic trading of nail polish colors — by the time I hit fifth grade, I was over it. I still loved the white squirrels and the long, winding drive with my mother and grandmother, but my period had arrived and I had no idea how to navigate swim class anymore. Or sailing. Or the water slide. Or the mandatory white clothing on Sundays. Resigned, I took a fishing course. My sister mailed me the latest installment of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, and I read it while half-heartedly coaxing minnows from the green, green lake. Once, I caught a pair of glasses. It was the highlight of my summer.

Had my period come later, I might have enjoyed many more summers at camp. Heck, I might have been a counselor, whispering with a fellow underpaid teen about which campers wouldn’t stop wetting their beds and which received an undue number of care packages. Instead, I spent the summer after I left biking around my neighborhood in a big pink t-shirt, restless. I was still a kid, but only just barely and all by myself. The neighbors I usually went creek wading with were far away in their bunk beds, waking to the sound of a trumpet.

And so, one morning, in boredom or desperation, I went running with my mother. It wasn’t so bad. She seemed happy to have me along for the ride. This went on for the rest of the summer, the pink shirt getting bigger and bigger, until August when I woke up and realized I had become, seemingly overnight, a teenager. My back-to-school shirts touched my stomach all the way around instead of billowing around it like a sail; my hair responded to the straightener. Never again did I approach the creek, which at the time seemed natural but now strikes me as rather sad. I had so much more bare-footing to do.

What do we lose when we deny ourselves the water slide? When we stop capturing the flag and braving the rope swing? I can recall the night of camp when we were given bags of Fritos and scoops of ground beef, aka “tacos in a bag,” and set free to wander and eat. Miraculous! Mobile! I couldn’t wait to get home and share the taco gospel with my parents, who, I felt certain, would also delight in the discovery. I imagined us strolling around the neighborhood at dusk, eating our dinner with happy plastic forks. As soon as I got home, I forgot all about the tacos. I’m only just remembering them now.

Maybe the trick is just to remember. Because, as gated and defunct as childhood may seem, all the artifacts are still here for the taking. What’s to stop me from swimming in Percy Priest Lake or canoeing down the Harpeth River or simply walking down to Richland Creek with a net and a dream? I can sleep with the windows open, pour cereal with clumsy abandon. Maybe I’ll even send letters to my parents, who live five minutes away, requesting candy-filled care packages. It didn’t work the first time, but hey, you never know.

Or maybe I’ll simply crack open a bag of Fritos and pour in some ground beef. As I recall, it’s a dinner that can take you anywhere.

 

Copyright © 2025 by Mary Liza Hartong. All rights reserved.