Camp for Grown-Ups

The view from the top bunk.

I lay on my bunk the other night feeling the breeze wash over me.

I don’t mean bunk, really – I mean bed. It’s just that my bed (my side of the bed) is right next to a double window, always open in our unairconditioned New England house. And on nights when the breeze is up, which is most (we are just a mile or so from the sea), I feel like I am back on my top bunk at camp. I can sense the comfort of the heavy white cotton sheets, starchy and just back from the laundry in Arapahoe. On top is a bristly grey wool blanket with a wide ribbon of satin across the edge.

I am slung into the sagging mattress, which is so compromised as to be practically a hammock. But it is cozy, and my head is just above water, so to speak, so I can feel the wind on my cheeks. I am turned towards the screens – the cabin “walls” are just screens – Raggedy Ann is in my arms, and I can hear the gentle snores of my cabinmates.

It is the night breeze coming off the Neuse River, bouncing over the lake and moving the outside air in and over me, that makes me feel like I am on a boat. Eventually I fall asleep but usually not until I hear one of the counselors come in from her night off.

I sleep like this for 12 summers, halfway outside and halfway in, forming a kinship with the night air and the dreamy promise of time on the water the next day.

At camp – I was nine, turning 10, my first summer, and a rising senior in college my last – I also spent most of my waking hours outside. From the time Reveille blew in the morning (7:30 a.m.) to the time Taps played at night (9:30), I was in the lake, on a boat, on a horse, on a jeep ride, around a campfire, hanging clothes on the line, hunting for sharks teeth, walking to and from the mess hall, gathering for evening programs in a screened hut, sitting on the grass in a circle singing songs or tying knots or telling stories, shooting a bow and arrow, paddling a kayak, crabbing down on the pier. Later on, as a sailing counselor, there were days I spent hours waist-deep in the muddy-bottomed river, helping kids learn to rig and furl a Sunfish.

I blame camp more than anything for my attachment to the outdoors. Though obviously there’s something more to it, something innate.   

Perpetual motion. My husband has started to call me Romper Room Susie in honor of my most infamous behavior, a refusal to sit still that nearly led to me being kicked off my week-long gig on the children’s TV show. (I was bribed with ice cream to sit down.) I’ve told that story a thousand times, but I come back to it because I am fascinated by how early my personality exposed itself. Again and again. We actually did get kicked out of the movie theater when I was brought to see Mary Poppins as a tyke. I was running up and down the aisles that time. As an early-to-walk toddler, I once unlatched the back garden gate and went trotting off – down the middle of the street with a car coming towards me and my father sprinting from the driveway.

My mother’s pleasant days at the beach were ruined the summer I learned to walk; there would be no playing in the sand for me. I was off to seek an adventure along the shoreline. Worse than a puppy.

What is that thing? I’ve looked at all the definitions of attention deficit disorder, and I just don’t line up with them. So it’s not that, I don’t think.

I can sit still – when I’m reading a good book or filling a blank page with words or pictures. And the reality is that I have to sit still, at my computer, for hours at a time. I get through that with the promise of a walk or a bit of gardening at the end of the day. 

This afternoon I came inside covered in dirt, my back barking at me for bending over forking soil, my arms scratched from wrist to elbow by fighting with chicken wire. Happy.

My husband said, “You’ve been outside working the entire day – that’s like nine hours. And look how content you are.” 

It’s those darn endorphins again. I had a small dip recently, just came out of nowhere, like a low-pressure system muddling up the sky. It probably was compounded by the vein of bad news that exposes itself on the little portable computer devices we carry around in the name of communication. Constant alerts, compelling us to consider whether the end of democracy is looming or a foregone conclusion.

The only thing that really works for me when I’m mildly depressed is physically engaging with the outdoors. It’s hard for me to describe what happens when I do. I’ve tried over and over again in these essays to put words to it, and the language I have is inadequate. (Perhaps that’s due to its spiritual nature, and the fact that the part of the brain responsible for feelings of spirituality developed before language. There may not actually be a way to express it.)

It goes something like this: I experience the outdoors as if I am slipping inside of it. It’s not like slipping into a different skin, though I do leave the veneer of sadness behind; it’s more like slipping into another dimension. I most definitely feel like I’m closer to a spiritual energy. That’s as near as I can get to describing it with words.

For me the catharsis is in the energy of nature. The sea breeze imprinted on me as a small child will always make me feel calmer and safer when it touches me. The smell of low tide, the swaying of spartina grass, the smooth heft of a beach rock — the shore was my first home.

But my time on the Vineyard has brought me the refuge of fields and woods, too. Now I am happy walking into the sun along the hedgerows. Following Farmer on his favorite route through the tick grass. Building a fairy house of twigs on the moss. Picking wild blueberries. Talking to the dragonfly in the hoop house (this week – a new and bigger one!) or watching the bees buzz in the lavender. Digging holes for dahlias, hoeing weeds in the field, tying up tomatoes, filling a bucket with flowers.

Camp was the perfect place for someone who couldn’t sit still. And it also gave me the gift of outdoor living. As an adult, I don’t think I’ve ever recovered from the fact that there is no longer such a thing as summer vacation. There is no camp. But that doesn’t mean I can’t pretend.

I think if I must sit at a computer for the better part of most summer days, I simply have to plan a camp activity for the early morning or the end of the day. A swim, a walk, a craft, a group activity.

Yes, I think that’s the secret.

I hope you can make your own camp, too. 🫐