Thirteen Reasons Why Life Should Be Like Summer Camp

I was a Girl Scout from Brownies up through high school. We spent a lot of time in the Adirondacks, being based in Albany. I went to Camp Little Notch starting in, I think, 1992. I was a CIT in 1997, and was on staff there for two years. In 2001 and 2002 I worked on the sailing staff at Raquette Lake Girls Camp. In 2004 I was Head of the Small Crafts department at Camp Matoaka in Maine. Consequently, this is the longest time I have gone without summer camp since I was roughly... seven. And I miss it. I think a part of me is secretly counting down the months till I get a teaching job and can go back.

1. At CLN, we used to live on Girl Scout cookies because the food left something to be desired. We used to joke that there was a cheese element in every meal. In the walk-in there was, I swear, an entire freight truck's worth of Girl Scout cookies. We weren't allowed to have food in our tents because of raccoons and mice. We were NOT allowed to eat the Girl Scout cookies except when they were served for dessert at every lunch. But some nights we could not take it anymore. We would dash into the kitchen after dark in an oversized sweatshirt, raid the walk-in, shove four boxes of Girl Scout cookies up our shirts, and dash back to the staff tent, where we would share the booty. And hopefully, live on Girl Scout cookies until we were rescued by a passing steamer. Arrrrr...

2. Taking boats everywhere. This may not be everybody's cup of tea, but a place where one must take a boat EVERYWHERE is kind of my dream that I drool over at night. At CLN we didn't have anything with a motor on the lake, so maybe not so much there... except the way Tall Timbers, the camp unit where we ran the sailing program, which had its own dock, felt like an island cut off from the rest of the camp by a mile (OK, it was more like 1/2 a mile, but let me tell you, it was fun trying to get to meals on time). Raquette was way cooler, though, because there was a "boys side" across the lake. Boats were always zooming back and forth from boys camp to girls camp. You couldn't get to boys camp by road. We had a giant pontoon boat called Raquette One that used to cart our kids across the lake for socials (and carted the male staff to our side, where their cars were parked, for nights off). You could also take Raquette One to the bar at South Bay every night, but if you missed the boat back at 12:30 you were S.O.L. There was also a trash barge-- a real barge! On the 4th of July, they took the whole girls camp across for fireworks, and every boat was put into use. My girls and I got to ride on the barge a couple times... which I would like to say was as cool as everyone wished it was, but man, that barge was slow.

3. Real life doesn't have any wacky traditions. Ones that outsiders are slightly frightened by. A birthday song, for instance, that is screamed so quickly and with so much foot thumping that it takes years to learn the words.

4. Three words: Water. Ski. Boys.

When I was at Raquette, strictly the staff who worked at Sail were at war with the staff who worked at Ski. They were always pissing around in our moorings, upsetting our Sunfish with their sleek Mastercrafts... and we only had a Whaler. I think we may have been resentful because all we got was that crappy Whaler. And it was the crappiest Whaler on girls OR boys side. Even Canoe had a bigger Whaler, and what the hell did they need a bigger Whaler for? But the water ski boys were hot. Oh, they were hot. (At Raquette, I only dated Ski boys.)

5. I think I slept better on a crispy Adirondack night on my creaky metal cot with sagging springs and extra blankets over my sleeping bag than I do in my actual bed.

6. Canoe trips. So during my CIT summer we went on a canoe trip from Blue Mountain Lake to Raquette Lake. We spent the night at the lean-to on Utowana Lake, which is a sort of widening of the river about 2/3 of the way to Raquette. This particular lean-to had three priceless pieces of graffiti I will never, ever forget:
Cryptically, "Jake the Nightcrawler... Jake the Snake."
Hilariously, "The Shitter is Full-- Call 911!"
And, scrawled on the rafter, "THE BULLFROGS DROVE ME MAD."

I wonder what it says these days. And whether they took care of that shitter.

7. Covert Ops. At CLN when we didn't like the furniture that came in our tent, we used to try to surreptitiously exchange it for the furniture in other people's tents without them noticing. My CIT summer we got caught carrying a shelf across camp. Once in a while, as a prank, someone would get drunk and pass out, and they would wake up in their bed... except that bed, staff member, and belongings would be sitting, intact, on the floating dock. I think at Raquette, boys side stole all our canoes overnight once. The best thing we ever pulled at CLN was my last summer, when we made contact with the Boy Scouts. We had this horrible director, and she was so paranoid and mean that a third of the staff quit. This British girl and I had the sailing program out at Tall Timbers. Bordering our property was Camp Wakpominee, but we never had anything to do with the Boy Scouts. At night we used to have to check in with these stupid walkie talkies. We hated doing it, because the procedure was lame and the words we had to say were lame too. One night, we hear this male voice pop out of the walkie: "Get the chocolate sauce. That seemed to go over well last time." It occurs to us that the Boy Scouts can hear us on their walkies at Tall Timbers because we're so far out! So we started to communicate with them. It turned out their code words were lame and cryptic too, and we had great laughs over them. Then we started sending letters back and forth, and they called our staff house. They sent me this ridiculous package, and that was when the director caught on and gave us a lecture on "the frivolous use of emergency communications devices."

7.(a) Thrilling Near-Death Experiences. Twice at Raquette I was within ten feet of a bear. And I mean a really large bear. You would be surprised at the little thrill you get at being alive once you've looked a bear in the eye. Once at CLN we dark walked (you know, it is shocking how many of these stories involve being in the woods with no flashlight) from one overnight campsite to another... only to wake up and realize the next morning we'd been walking along the edge of a huge cliff we never saw!

8. Really, really great rolling-on-the-floor jokes. Once we wore T.P. to dinner at Little Notch.

9. Intrigue. Life is SO MUCH MORE FUN when you have 60 people stranded in the woods all dating everyone at once! It's like a microcosm. You can date for 10 years, have a harrowing breakup, and betray your ex with his or her best friend and shock the world, only this all happens in eight weeks and thus is fraught with immediacy and tragedy! So juicy.

10. I am so tan at camp. At Raquette I vividly remember that every day at shower hour I would take off my life jacket and my uniform T-shirt and lie out in my bikini on the bow of the O'Day. And the ski boats would go back and forth from the office to boys side. And the O'Day would rock in the wake. And the Adirondack air smelled of pine trees.

11. I have all these crazy skills that I desparately want to brag about but that have no place in the real world. Like once at CLN we lined up in order of who had gone the longest without a shower (I held my own). Like I can swim over a mile. Like I have a wicked sense of balance in boats. Like I build a very technically proficient one-match fire. Like I can beat you in eating a bowl of Jello with my face. I surprise people by my ability to right a turtled Sunfish in 5 minutes even though I weigh 110 pounds (it's physics, bless me, what do they teach them at these schools?). I can tie a bowline around myself with one hand in under 6 seconds. Also, I know a song called The Aardvark Song. Which goes to the tune of the Danube Waltz as follows:

"It starts with an A, aardvark, aardvark
And ends with a K, aardvark, aardvark
Not easy to say, aardvark, aardvark
But try anyway, aardvark, aardvark
It starts with an A! A-R-D-V-A-R-K, aardvark!"

It is very popular at parties... with people age 13.

12. I am, seriously, an amazing cook on the open fire. I have the well-honed ability to make anything out of ground beef, cheese, and a roll of foil. Unfortunately, these formidable skills are not matched in the real kitchen.

13. The songs are better at summer camp. I still know all the words to all the verses. Sigh.

"I'll return to the woodlands, I'll return to the snow
I'll return to the hillsides, and the valley below
I'll return as a poor man or a king if god wills
But I'm on my way home to my piney wood hills"

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Tags: thursday thirteen, camp little notch, raquette lake, camp matoaka