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A Camping We Will Go!
One Mother's Journey Back to Camp By Jenn Director Knudsen
As a kid, I loved camp. Dirty. Grimy. Group showers. Sub-mediocre food. No chocolate.
Chasing boys; 20 girls to a cabin; learning how to water ski in fetid waters; creating key chains out of gimp; living out of a footlocker and singing songs endlessly singing songs all day and into evenings of crackling campfires.
A native Oregonian, I went for a couple summers in a row to a three-week, sleep-away, co-ed camp on the Oregon coast. I loved everything about it.
And then I hit puberty and young adulthood and, quite frankly, nothing about camp appealed to me any more.
I wanted my privacy, whether it was getting dressed, using the bathroom or showering and primping. I wanted good food, not burnt eggs, or meal after meal of cereal substituting for a more substantial repast. I wanted to feel clean all the time and not gritty in the way living nearly every waking moment outdoors makes you feel.
So I stopped attending camp and instead opted for getting jobs during summer vacations.
I didn't really enjoy my first "real" job as a frozen yogurt jerk in a popular suburban mall. (I even endured the horrid visor I had to wear as part of our pink-and-black uniform.) Even while fashioning reams of waffle cones or presenting a cup of perfectly swirled frozen yogurt to often-unsatisfied customers (read: "Can't you put more toppings on that?"), I never wished instead to be at camp.
Actually, I was honored to be asked to attend this specific weekend of my cousins' camp in hot, sticky, overly humid Western Massachusetts.
My cousins, Shelby and Deena, were attending a three-week overnight camp, one weekend of which was for mothers to spend with their daughters.