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Reporter's Notebook

A Letter from Camp

As camp season arrives in earnest in northwest Montana, I’ve been flooded with memories of my own experiences at a wide range of camps and experiential outdoor education programs I attended in my youth

By Tristan Scott

The blaring din of Camp Tanadoona’s outdoor emergency siren frayed my 12-year-old nerves, but I kept calm, striding purposefully toward the mob of junior campers, scanning urgently for signs of my little sister. Moving with an athletic celerity that I dreamed I possessed but had never actually demonstrated, I spring-boarded off an upcycled truck tire and shimmied up the attached tetherball pole to gain a better vantage point overlooking Birch Lake Beach, where the throng of campers queued up for rollcall.

For Tanadoona’s youngest set of campers, this was their first sleepaway weekend, and the counselors’ body-count had come up short following noon-hour electives, which included the Plunge ‘n Play activity in which my sister had enrolled.

Do. Not. Panic.

As a counselor-in-training (CIT), I’d spent the past two weeks developing leadership skills and equipping myself with the tools to handle new challenges and social pressures. I was midway through my metamorphosis from camper to counselor and I was about to put those newly minted skills to the test.

Hanging from my crow’s nest perch, I sensed the toll my anxiety was exacting on my composure but, just as I felt my resolve eroding, I spotted her along the edge of the sand, the cuffs of her camp sweats gathered around her calves, her fists balled into the sleeves of her royal-blue hoodie. I dropped to the ground and broke into a sprint. She saw me and burst into tears. I wrapped her in my arms. Glancing up at the lifeguard platform where Magic, the senior counselor, was surveying the group, he met my gaze and nodded approvingly. The body-count checked out, the caterwauling siren keened its last decibels, and I hugged my sister goodbye. Everyone was safe.

As I walked over to the dining hall to calm my nerves and toast my bravery with a cup of bug juice, I felt a full foot taller. My jawline was more pronounced, my shoulders rounder, my chest deeper. I was a hero.

My memories of summer camp appear to have been preserved in amber. They remain so rich in detail that I can still taste the bricks of government cheese we purloined from the walk-in fridge while pulling KP duty as junior campers — squirreling it away as a forbidden midnight snack during all-night games of “Magic: The Gathering,” we topped our meager rations of canteen crackers with thick-cut filets of the vivid-tangerine dairy byproduct. I recall noodling through guitar chords on a warped acoustic in preparation for the talent show, imagining how I would command the audience’s attention and earn their admiration with my rendition of Weezer’s “In the Garage.” I remember my camp crush, Shannon, and how, when she leaned in to loop a braided lanyard around my neck, she smelled like Coppertone and camphor, liberal applications of which she used to treat her bug bites.

As camp season arrives in earnest in northwest Montana, I’ve been flooded with memories of my own experiences at a wide range of camps and experiential outdoor education programs I attended in my youth. The memories have gurgled up as if from a spring, which, I think, is testament to their potency. I’ve shared them in conversations with parents who are preparing to ship their own brood off for the first time, mainly to emphasize just how formative these experiences can be for a young person.

Receive them with a deft touch upon their return, for they’ll have been on a hero’s journey. And they’ll have much to absorb.