I miss camp. It is hot and dry and the sky is endlessly blue. The grass is turning brown and there are eagles overhead. The woods of Quebec feel very far away.
Growing up, I spent all my summers at camp in Quebec. Yes, we’re talking a good old Presbyterian summer camp with moist cabins, the outdoor chapel overlooking the lake, canoes and mosquitoes galore, cabins and campfires and all that. My parents put us on a school bus in the church parking lot, bravely waved goodbye, and the cord was cut. Camp was freedom at the end of the highway for all of us. My older sisters worked in the kitchen when I was a camper, and, once I had graduated to staff status, it was my younger brother’s turn as a camper. A bit of a family affair. We even have an ancient photo of my parents standing on the beach in their bathing suits as brand-new parents, cradling my eldest sister in their arms the week of the first moon landing. Camp felt like a constant for us. We’d always been there and we always would be.
But here I am, spending my summer on the other side of the country. The sun off a lake is different from the sun on the sea. And, as I said, I’m missing camp.
Part of the allure of camp is the sheer magnitude of time spent outdoors. At camp, you wake early and see the morning when it is new—whether you like it or not. You spend time outside throughout the day and experience the growing heat and the trees overhead. The afternoon lengthens and you are in the lake, and evening creeps up as you watch the stars appear over the campfire sparks. When I was on staff, I was among the lucky few who got to sleep in the boathouse. We could listen to the loons calling back and forth in the dark outside our bedroom windows, and the gentle lapping of the lake against the shore throughout the short night.
When thunderstorms came, the boathouse porch was front and centre, and everyone who could would gather there on the broken-down second-hand sofas to watch the lake. The wind would force the rain through the screens, and the whole world would flash bright as the thunder rolled around the bowl of the surrounding hills. And we were all huddled together, laughing, in the midst of it all.
Camp was the place where I learned about love, about friendship, about mistakes, about God, about boys of course, about broken hearts and forgivenesses. I learned what grace meant. I learned that, though nature is beautiful and can teach you a lot, nature isn’t God. Nature can be random and violent. God is bigger than thunderstorms and sometimes harder to see. God is closer and love is harder and life is real when you think about it. These things are good to know.
And I learned what it was to be in close community with others who believed what you believed and had questions as big as your own. I remember my first night in university residence after a long summer at camp. I lay in my new bed, hemmed in by the painted cinder block walls of my tiny room, and I felt utterly amputated. I wasn’t quite sure who I was, alone and inside anymore. My community was scattered. I’m not sure if my parents sensed that when they waved goodbye after unpacking the car. Maybe they did. I was child number three, after all. The road had been paved.
My own kids are still small, and camp, for them, is still far away. I hope that they will find their way to these outdoor growing places. I really do. There is a lot to learn, and I hope that they can learn it in beautiful places like I did.
