🧵Thursday Thread: Did You Go To Camp As A Kid? Let's Cook Up A Dream!
They say in the wilderness of summer camp, kids find themselves. I'd love to hear from folks who had that experience (or not & why! or from folks like me, who never got to go to camp at all ... )
I never went to camp—neither day camp nor a sleep away camp. But the photo above is of the fire pit at our wilderness cabin in the BWCA in Minnesota, where I’ve been learning to breathe with the birch and cedar.
And now I have a thing up my sleeve, a thing brewing, a thing I’m excited about. It’s going to be unlike anything I’ve ever done before.
I’m planning a writer’s camp for 2025.
It’s true. I am! A place to write in the dark together for real. I’ve led group retreats for about 12 years now, in Mexico, on the North Shore of Lake Superior, on Madeline Island, and on a tiny island in the middle of a good old fashioned Midwestern summer lake.
But those retreats were smaller, and, well, fancier. This one will be a little different, a real summer camp kind of vibe.
I’ll let you know more about it soon, in the weeks and months ahead.
Meanwhile, I need your help! I need to hear from people who actually attended summer camp as kids and teens, etc., and who loved it. Who found themselves there.
Can you tell me about the shapes and textures of your camp experience, the woolen threads that stayed with you, the fragments of night sky that never left your skin and bones, the moments you shared with other humans or alone with yourself or the silent woodsmoke or the crickets or the north star that sent you, guided by your heart’s desire, in the direction of your future self?
Thank you, thank you, thank you. I can’t wait to hear your stories, whatever they might be, even if you, like me, never got to go or had a bummer of a time.
Love,
Jeannine
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What an amazing experience you're curating! When I'm super strung out or can't sleep, I still mentally walk the paths of the farm camp in Western North Carolina I went to as a strange little girl. I wrote about a small snapshot of it last August: https://whatkindofmagpie.substack.com/p/just-a-pinch
An excerpt about our rainy days there:
"When it rained, our tired counselors let us choose how to fill the day. The frenzy of friendship bracelet braiding inevitably petered out after an hour or two as girls would start mouthing 'I’m so boooored' exaggeratedly to one another, feigning elaborate deaths from ennui on their respective bunks. While I might not have been the most impressive mountaineer, I was a hell of a reader; I plunked myself cross-legged on the worn wooden floor of the cabin and read Roald Dahl aloud, plowing through chapter after chapter of James and the Giant Peach. Our ramshackle cabin was set adrift on a sea of possibility like James on his floating fruit. With the curtain of rain around us, we were hidden away from the looming world of logic and sense. We were mistresses of our peculiar domain: no longer children, not quite young women, utterly convinced that if we lashed enough gulls to us, we, too, could take flight."
I never went to a summer camp, nor are they as popular in India. I remember one summer, my mother was unhappy that her daughters are only buzzing around the TV all day. She decided to host a summer camp in the empty apartment next door. The one with the mosaic tiles and dull yellow walls. She found and filled so many kids into it that colours burst through and through, and so did sound. Each of her friends took up one day to offer us snacks like noodles, idlis, puffed rice. We would chat, eat, show each other magic tricks. We learned how to craft blossoms with crepe paper and sang patriotic songs. Limbs everywhere - jumping, dancing, making things. Joy for my school-bruised being. Thank you for reminding me of it. 🌸