Mia K


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     It’s the end of July, which for me means the same thing every year for the past three summers. I take my suitcase full of clothes that has accompanied me on the five-hour plane ride from Arizona to Massachusetts. I take the suitcase, dump out its contents into a black plastic trunk and shove it into my uncle’s blue, Ford pick-up truck. My aunt fills two grocery bags with bagels and fruit for the road, my cousin fills her trunk which is identical to mine and says goodbye to her brothers. We load into my uncle Scott’s truck, Uncle Scott at the wheel, my Aunt Nicolette in the passenger seat dosing off to sleep, and my cousin Sophia, and I in the back seat. Then we drive the two-and-a-half hours of highway to Wolfeboro, NH with nothing but trees in sight. This year there was one change to our master plan; my friend Caroline sat between my cousin Sophia and I while we drove. This was the first year any of my friends from home came, and so far it had made the trip that much easier.

 

     Wolfeboro is one of the smallest towns you will ever see. They have a population of 6,531 and the entire town lives around one lake, Lake Winnipesaukee. Nestled five miles from the main town, out in the middle of the woods, is where Pleasant Valley Camp for Girls and North Woods Camp for Boys are located. They have acres and acres of land and you drive by most of it on the long road to the main camp area. The main road is a long winding dirt road, the only way to get back to civilization. This is where you meet Liz. Liz DeSemone is the camp director, and the most intimidating person I have ever met. You see her at the camp entrance, where she gives you the name of the cabin that you will stay in. One thing I have learned from my camp experience is, don’t cross Liz when she is trying to find one of her cats in the bushes. Her cats are like her children, and when one escapes to the bushes, not her happiest moment. 

 

     This year, we got to the camp early. This is a rare occasion for my cousins, since they are more often then not late for everything. But this left us sitting in a line of cars backed all the way up to the main road. It then took us a half hour to finally get to Liz and find out our cabins. I was in Gemini. At camp, the cabins are all named after constellations, like Orion, Polaris, and Aquila. 

 

     My aunt says that PVC is like the image you think of when you think about a sleep-away camp. We're in the middle of the woods, were not allowed to have cell phones or laptops, we have to walk every where, and we eat in a dining hall. And yet, it's one of my absolute favorite places in the entire world. It’s my second home, where my friends are like my family. I didn’t really realize this until this summer. I knew that camp was great, but I didn’t know quite how much it meant to me until the entire camp was standing on one side of lake-view It was the only Sunday of our two week session at camp. We sleep in, eat breakfast, do capers, and then its time for vespers. Every other year, vespers had always been something that we were forced to do. Something that we didn’t really wanna do but we had to. That's how I went to vespers feeling, that I just had to do this and then it would be co-ed day and we could have fun. At first, that's how it was, we just talked, nothing special. 

 

     Now we're standing on one side of lake view, squished together, and Veronica, one of the counsellors, was saying something like “If you have ever felt left out of a group go to the other side." The whole camp went to the other side. “Go to the other side if you’ve ever felt part of a group." Everyone went to the other side. “Go to the other side if you have ever felt that the whole world was against you." The whole camp went to the other side. And that's how we all sorta figured out that we weren’t alone. Then we all stood in a circle and said something good about ourselves, because Veronica said that part of being a good friend is by accepting yourself first. So we all said something we liked about ourselves. That’s sorta when I began to realize that my camp friends understood how I was feeling. They really got me. Then I realized that if my camp friends do, then my home friends must too. This is really the first time it really occurred to me. I mean I knew that my friends got me and everything, but I never really thought that we would be going through the same things.

 

     Camp is special. It's funny to say that, but it is. Everyone who goes there always leaves with this really good feeling. And this summer I figure out what that good feeling was about. It's really that you know when you leave camp, and you get home, and you are a million miles away from camp, that you can log on Facebook, and there will always be someone to talk to, always have a camp best friend there. Or another way I’ve thought about it is this, when I die, I’m going to have a lot of people at my funeral, and they're all gonna be sad to see me go, even if that is a very sad thought. I mean who wants to think about dying yet? 

 

     Camp has sort of impacted my life outside of camp too. It helped me realize that I have really amazing friends here, and they mean a lot to me. All my friends mean a lot to me, and I think that by going to camp I realized just how much. 

 

     There are a million other things I could say that camp has done for me. I think it has somewhat changed me as a person, or I would think improved but that may just be me. It has made me a more responsible person, wouldn’t seem like it but it has. The older girls, are looked up to by the younger girls. And trust me, that can have a lot of meaning.

 

     This summer was my second year in the

 

     For my LGT friends, two things happened. First, one girl said a swear word and three little juniors were heard saying the same things when they “dropped something”. The girl who was an LGT had dropped her paper in the lake, so the girls pretended to drop something. Second, an LGT who was helping with the middler village activity was sitting down reading a magazine, and a girl came up to her with make up all over her and asked to use one of her magazines. The LGT said not this one sorry but I see that, that girl over their has one why don’t you ask her? Later the same little girl wouldn’t give the magazine back because the LGT didn’t have to share her magazine so why should she? It made things complicated, but through there problems I have learned a few things.

 

     If someone asked me about camp, I could go on for days, weeks even, and then that person would probably be so bored they wouldn’t want to come to camp or they’d be so ready for me to stop talking they’d say they would go just to make me stop talking. Still, I think no matter how hard I tried I wouldn’t be able to explain how great camp is, that's something they would have to find out on there own.