Camp Stanford?

Ellen Roper

July 19, 2018

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One of my favorite places in the world is a summer music camp in Maine where I was a camper for three consecutive summers during high school. Each year, I would spend four technology-free weeks sailing, doing archery, playing music, and just being around other people who loved music just as much as I did. It was always sad at the end of camp saying goodbye to friends I had made; it’s amazing how quickly you make friends with others if they have the same interests as you do and without the distraction of technology or outside worries. While the usual trope with many camp friends is that you say goodbye to them after camp ends and then you rarely see or talk with them again, my experience has been different. I got to see them every year when we all went back to camp together, and we all grew up and had the same experiences together every summer. Even though we would not see each other for an entire school year, things seemed to pick right back up where they left off every summer when we were all back at our favorite place in the world.

I stopped attending camp in the summer between my junior and senior years in high school, when my parents told me I should get a job and work on college applications. That was my last year of eligibility to go to back to camp before I reached the age limit of being a camper, and it was incredibly difficult to watch my friends go off without me. It was FOMO to the max; I remember crying on what would have been the first day of camp when I knew they were all 2,680 miles away having an amazing time all together. My only consolation was that I knew that we would all go back together as counselors and that everything would surely be the exact same.

Each year since then, I have contemplated applying to be a counselor. Unfortunately, something always pops up to stop this plan, whether it be family obligations, work-related issues, or simply that I want to be home after being away at college the entire year. I was wholly unprepared for what I would feel as a result of this string of extenuating circumstances. At first, I mostly felt a bit of reluctance that faded as I grew busy in the summers. Then, I started seeing my friends posting about how they couldn’t wait to be counselors together for the summer and how they were so excited to be going back, and the same feelings of sadness I thought I had left behind started creeping up again.

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About two weeks ago, I talked with one of my good friends from camp (we’ll call her Blair) about this feeling. Blair and I had both not gone back as counselors, and we found out that we were feeling the same thing. However, Blair told me something that changed the situation. She said that one of our mutual camp friends who goes to college with her (and who had been a counselor last summer) had told her about a side of camp of which neither of us had been aware. This friend had decided not to go back this year because the head counselor (who had been there while we were campers and who is still there now) was not a good person and that there was a lot going on behind the scenes, particularly in the camp administration, that we as campers had not been aware of. She assured Blair that nothing explicitly bad had happened, but that the situation was clearly problematic. She hadn’t specified and I don’t think Blair had pushed her on it; regardless, I decided not to ask Blair for more information. In a way, I don’t think either of us really wanted to find out more. Call it naïve, but my memories from camp are some of the best memories I have, and it feels like it could change everything if I broke the shell of blissful ignorance I had as a camper.

Blair and I talked about camp for a long time, practically the rest of the afternoon, and we ultimately came to a conclusion: the memories we have of camp are ours to keep for the rest of our lives, and while it would be, in theory, amazing to go back again as counselors, it would not be the same. Even if they changed the head counselor and fixed the underlying issues surrounding the camp administration, we would be there in a completely different context and in different company, with different responsibilities and with different mindsets. Ultimately, it is perhaps better to let our camp memories be just that; if there’s nowhere to go but down, why ruin something so beautiful? I know I’ll likely never find quite the same place or the same situation as I did at camp, but I can find (and have already found) the same quality of friendships in my life. Every time I spend time with the amazing people I have met in college (here’s looking at you, Serra!) or when I meet up with good friends I had in high school, I feel the same happiness I remember feeling when I used to go back to camp. So yes, I may never find something like it again, but does that really matter? It’s time to find new adventures and new experiences, and nothing says that those can’t be just as great.

So, while it still gives me a little pang of sadness when I see my camp friends posting their pictures as counselors, it’s nothing more than just that: nostalgia for something that is past, which quickly turns into gratitude for all the wonderful people in my life and for all the wonderful times yet to come.