Camp

Camp. Such a simple word that has meant so much to me. I started as a camper when I was in the fourth grade. Why my parents thought it was such a wonderful idea to send their only child 7 hours away for two weeks I will never know, but I am so incredibly grateful they did.

Growing up in the city I was used to concrete and asphalt paving my way. We walked to the store, we walked to school, we walked to church. Walking was a part of life, nature was not. Sure, we had parks. Those great huge areas filled with grass and trees where people went to toss a ball, but the homeless people lived in the parks, and I did not have a ball, so we avoided them. We instead walked to the Center. We would grab a slice at Theresa’s Pizza, head over to Woolworths, and check out the new weird stuff at the shop that could screen print a playboy bunny on your jacket for only $5. We were preteens before preteen was a thing and a felt iron on playboy bunny fascinated us. Did I mention we were 10? My mother never would let me get the playboy bunny on my jacket, but she did let me get a purple rabbit’s foot, so life was good.

When my mother announced I was going to camp I did not know what that was. She explained I would be on an island in the middle of a lake in the beautiful Adirondack mountains where I would learn how to do amazing things like sail and canoe. Have you ever had a moment in your life where you can feel your mouth open, but you have absolutely nothing to say? This was that type of moment. Learn how to sail and canoe? Did she not understand that we did not live near water and you cannot canoe on concrete?

Before long she had packed up a duffel bag, complete with mess kit and mosquito netting and I was put on a bus with 40 other girls all headed to Camp. I won’t lie, the mosquito netting scared the crap out of me. What kind of place requires you to have a mesh netting to protect you from bugs? The bus stopped at the best restaurant on the planet, McDonalds, and without my mother there to supervise me I was able to purchase not one but THREE boxes of the chocolate chip cookies. I decided I could deal with the bugs at the camp if this many cookies were involved.

We turned off the road into a dirt parking lot, disembarked the bus, and were ushered to a dock where a huge boat awaited us. We were told to put on these smelly, grungy looking, orange life vests and board the boat. I took a deep breath and read the name of the boat. The Ark. As in Noah’s Ark, there were even paintings of animals on the side walking up a plank going two by two. Noah’s Ark, swarms of bugs….I was fairly confident at this point that my mother had registered me into a bible camp and she just didn’t tell me. I was ten, and this made total sense in my brain.

We broke up into our assigned units. I was in the Aquatics, and we were assigned to Lakeside. Our luggage had been dropped off at the waterfront. We were to retrieve our luggage, find our tents, and make our beds. I basically just followed the crowd at this point all the way to Tent 5 where four cots had been placed on a wooden platform under the most gigantic tent I had ever seen. There were no lights, I checked my bag and sure enough my mother had packed me the mother of all flashlights. This thing was so huge it had its own handle. By placing it in the center of the tent I was able to illuminate the entire place. I made my bed, introduced myself to my new tent mates, and reluctantly shared by beloved cookies. I was also incredibly happy to notice that none of the other girls had set up their mosquito nets, perhaps I would not be eaten alive by biblical plagues this summer after all.

Camp was unlike anywhere I had ever been. First and foremost, there were no concrete or asphalt paths. There were paths around the camp, but they were all made of dirt or pine needles covering dirt. When it rained you had to stay on the pine needles so you didn’t get muddy, and when it was hot and dry you had to stay off the pine needles or you would find yourself on the ground after slipping on said pine needles. True to my mothers’ word I learned how to sail and canoe, but my favorite part of camp was the arts and crafts shed.

This building, using the term “building” loosely here, had the most amazing items I had ever seen! There were pieces of wood with nails in the them that you could use to create a picture using thread. There were thin pieces of plastic that were hundreds of feet long on spools in various colors used to make lanyards. Paints, brushes, pipe cleaners….so many things…. but my favorite were the embroidery flosses. I had to start out small, only three colors, and with those three colors I created a bracelet, sort of. It turns out as you tie the knots to make the bracelet the amount of floss you thought would be sufficient is drastically reduced so my first attempt would fit a dolls wrist, but wasn’t nearly big enough to fit mine. I got better at judging the size I needed though. Three threads turned into four, then five, then six! This was so exciting, I could take strings and create bracelets, anklets, necklaces!!! The repetitive motion of knot tying that resulted in an actual tangible item brought me such a sense of accomplishment and peace.

I learned to tie the floss I had chosen together with a knot, then I would put a safety pin through the knot and attach the safety pin to my pants near my knee. This created the tension needed to make tight knots, which made the best bracelets. I became extremely fast at making three color bracelets, and it seemed like everyone at camp wanted me to make them one. Pick out your colors was a phrase I must have said 100 times over those two weeks. I made some amazing friends that summer and was sad to leave the dirt paths behind. The thing I knew I would miss the most though was my beloved floss. On my last day of camp, I gathered up materials for a six-color bracelet and I worked on it the whole trip home. When I greeted my parents I had a 4 inch bracelet and floss dangling from a safety pin on my pants, I was happy a little bit of camp had come with me.

Over the next few weeks, I thought about camp often. Every time I told a story about camp something about bracelet making would come up and my mother took notice. One day, she asked me to come to the store with her to pick out some new skeins for a baby blanket she was making. As we approached the knitting area she veered off to the right and walked towards the back wall. When we got to the wall I looked at her and she pointed at the shelves, MY FLOSS!!!!!! There were hundreds of colors, thousands of colors, so many more colors than the camp shed had. There were some that started off blue and changed to purple then black, some that were white, yellow and orange, there were over 20 shades of red, and more blues than I knew existed! I started crying, it was like getting my best friend back when I thought they were gone forever.

That day, my mother purchased a floss box, several empty cards, small scissors, and a box of safety pins for me. I was allowed to pick out 20 colors. This was by far the best day of my life. I agonized over what colors to pick. Did I want to get the fades, or the normal colors? Was this blue better than that blue? How many whites and blacks, staples in almost every bracelet, would I need? My mother began to get a bit impatient with my indecision and promised we could come back next weekend and get some more. I grabbed my top 10 colors, 5 whites, and 5 blacks; and began to think about all the possible color combinations.

I returned to that camp for several years and eventually became a counselor. Every year I brought my box of floss with me and introduced new campers to the wonder that was the arts and craft shed. That camp closed in 2008. I have heard it recently reopened and I have often wondered what became of the arts and crafts shed. Is there a new shed inspiring the next generation to appreciate the simpler things in life?

I am now 44, and I still have my box of floss. I have shown my daughter how to create beautiful bracelets, although we now stick the safety pin in a stuffed animal to avoid the holey pants issues I had growing up. When I am stressed, I break out my floss box and am transported to a simpler time in my mind filled with purple rabbits’ feet, cookies, and pine straw beneath my feet. This year for her Birthday I gave my daughter her very own box of floss, complete with fades, several reds and every blue I could find. Hopefully when she is older, and life is piling on the stress, she can open up her box of floss and be transported back to a simpler time of making bracelets with her mom and listening to stories about an old shed that brought her mom so much peace.