Rafy’s had a crazy career. On top of running her Holding Court Substack, she started her professional life running digital for the Sway House, aka one of the first ever content creator hype houses. Housemates included Bryce, Hall, Josh Richards, and Noah Beck. After a few years doing digital content and strategy across the creator and fashion worlds, she’s landed in what she told me is the “best job she’s ever dreamed up for herself” as Head of Digital at Good World Creative.

But before all of that, she was running a YouTube channel at an all boys’ summer camp. It was only a month, but it changed the trajectory of her life. It changed her from camp hater into camp lifer.

Rafy, over to you:

Tell us about camp! Where was it, how long did you work there?

My camp story begins and ends with Camp Menominee, an all-boys camp located in the beautiful north woods of Eagle River, Wisconsin. Unlike most who venture into the camp business, I was never a camper as a child. I only worked on staff for one summer in 2019, spending 4 weeks as a videographer/media team member. My job was literally to make weekly YouTube videos out of the happenings at camp and the summer experiences of the young men attending. I ideated, shot, and edited all the footage into Top 10 highlight montages or MTV Cribs-style cabin tours. It meant that everyone actually wanted me around, wanted me to capture their big moments and by proxy, I captured the smaller, intimate ones too.

Got any camp traditions you remember?

I loved all the traditions I didn’t expect, like the talent show night where the same all-star boys that were top athletes were also beautiful piano players and/or singers. But my favorite tradition was that every year they played a rival boys camp in the North Woods, Kawaga, and made the biggest deal out of it. They made jerseys to wear during competition and with summer nicknames on the back. My job was crucial that particular week, because all the moms wanted to know how tan and well-fed their sons looked in the photos/videos and all the dads wanted to know if Menominee was beating Kagawa in-real-time through content. Another time that this life would later prep me as a content producer/social media manager / video girl.

As far as my own traditions, I always edited videos on the back porch of Cabin 19, facing the fields. I signed my name there too on the wood when I left. The camp WiFi wasn’t strong enough so I drove 15 minutes to McDonald’s in Eagle River to be able to post my final videos to YouTube. The other girls would come with me to get iced coffees and fries while we waited for the uploads. I had just gotten my driver’s license earlier that summer, which camp staff didn’t know, but I couldn’t believe I was trusted to drive as often as I did. I vlogged literally every day of my experience just into my own camera roll. You can see a little bit of that here.

What’s your craziest camp memory?

Maybe learning to wrestle? Then participating in a competition match against another girl at camp, my friend the photographer, Mell. Pretty insane. It just looked too fun to pass up and not something I would likely do ever again, if not in this moment. Everyone was supposed to be learning to wrestle through different techniques, but it was really just a way for campers to work their (very minimal) beef out against each after the summer. Imagine just young boys just body slamming each other on mats for an afternoon! Eventually the counselors joined in, so Mell and I decided to play along too. A full crowd gathered, not realizing at the moment that girl-on-girl wrestling was probably a new spectacle for this camp.

Runner ups are that I almost killed a deer while driving with a van full of fourteen year olds in the back one night, thankfully I didn’t.

Any camp romances you can share lol

I made out with a counselor that was a little too young for me (obviously 18+, don’t be weird) on our last night who was camp royalty and also totally obsessed with me. His campers would put my name into the lyrics of their songs, make references to me in jokes told to him. He got very nervous when I was around and would do anything he could to be near me, talk to me, or have me capture footage of him. It was all very sweet from my perspective. But also, being 1 of 4 girls on the grounds, the odds were definitely in my favor.

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I particularly enjoyed the role I played in camp socials, the “dances” that were held between our camp and neighboring girls’ camps. I took so many pictures of brothers and sisters pairings that were reunited for the evening, but I also played wingwoman to the boys who wanted to talk to cute girls. They cleverly would come up to me, ask me to pretend to take a combined group photo, just so the boys could stand closer to them and if lucky, put their arm around a girl’s shoulders.

Do you stay connected to camp in your adult life?

I follow the socials and check in every year around Kawagaa to see how the boys do :)

I had a wonderful experience recently where one of those once-fourteen-year old campers-I-didn’t-kill-when-driving is now in college, and he reached out to me via email to connect professionally. We got on a zoom call and he said he had been following my career on Instagram/LinkedIn and that I’m the reason he went to college to study Advertising/Digital Media. I cried when we hung up.

What kind of impact did camp have on you as a person?

It’s interesting to think that one month in a random place with random people can change everything you’ve thought about yourself. The camp director used to tell parents of campers that “Menominee is where boys turn into men”, an experience I feel I also shared.

It’s transformative. Going on to start a professional career only months after that was centered around young men, all about connecting with them, being able to reason with them, even have fun with them, wouldn’t have been possible without Menominee. Like I said, I felt confident that I was the only person in the world with the right experience to handle the job in front of me. I knew how to be comfortable around only boys, often the only woman in the room, supporting young men while being a protector, collaborator, and even guidance counselor. Those were all roles I felt I understood because of my time at camp. I even knew how to edit YouTube videos, which was helpful for my new gig too! I owe it to Menominee for giving me the lessons to be successful in that role and for the experience that allowed for my overall career to flourish.

Something else I’ll mention is that seeing the way these young men played, confidently, without shame, with one another, was deeply moving. I didn’t know any young men that didn’t just make fun of each other or tear each other down. But they felt supported enough to not fear making mistakes, approached challenges fiercely, explored new parts of themselves whether it was physical or emotional. All lessons I needed to witness and learn, I found myself braver with their influence. I left telling myself that if I ever had a son, I’d send him there.

What’s your favorite book or movie about camp!

Addam’s Family Values! Theater Camp! Camp Rock!?!?

Can you draw a camp map from memory?

Tell us about what camp means to you, broadly?

Full disclaimer, not only did I not grow up a camp girl, I was actually a bit of a hater. It was a foreign concept to be spending the summer away from your family. But my camp story is actually an unemployment story. A risk-taking-spirit story. Because when I graduated from college and couldn’t get a job, I got a call from my college best friend’s dad about a “media” job opening for a summer camp in Wisconsin. He told me it was across the street from the girls-camp he sent his daughters to, and it was a rival boys’ camp to the one he had grown up going to, and both of those strings made it feel like the universe had interfered in my stagnant plans.

Within three days of my initial interview, I found myself on a flight to Chicago before making the six hour drive with Tony (my friend’s father) to Eagle River. He’s the camp laundry king, a big shot in those parts, because the coordination of thousands of children’s laundry in a remote town is surprisingly a necessary business. We talked for a long time about what I was to expect of my time. It was one of the first risks I ever took, because I didn’t know what the role even entailed, but I was fueled by the drive of an unemployed college graduate that was sleeping in her childhood bedroom.

Funny enough, now I credit camp for being the start of my career.

It’s the reason I had the confidence to later move to LA. At the time I needed an experience that reminded me I was capable of having agency. Also being one of four girls at a boys camp was a dynamic that would later serve me in an entry level, male-dominated role. When I would later go on to be the MOST male-dominated spaces, (young men in a content house in 2020), it was a fascinating self-discovery to feel (kinda) comfortable around them. Now I feel like I’m one of the only people in the world that could’ve done my job, only because of the prior experience I had working alongside teenage/early twenties aged boys, and navigating their BIG feelings and lack of expressing them well.

I learned about myself that I am someone who can jump into any situation and get started. I learned that I can make friends with just about anyone, no matter how out of place I feel at first. That I loved documenting, loved MAKING things. That I could be healed by a place that wasn’t home to me and could make a family out of strangers. Most importantly, I learned that I care deeply about mentorship, tradition, and positive experiences.

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Dolly’s camp story is different than mine, Lane, and Toe Girl’s (sorry Kate, I’m leaning all the way in). Her camp was set on a Canadian lake, back before Sterling Point made it this summer’s hottest destination. But now that I think about it, it was similar to Sterling Point in that it was only accessible by boat…I digress. If you can’t tell, I spent the weekend staying up till 4 am to finish watching my favorite little Canadian teens.

Dolly’s camp was largely structured around outdoor canoe trips, which sounds actually sick as hell. They had a deep well of camp traditions and she spent 9 years soaking in everything camp had to offer. She’s the first to admit how deeply it affected her.

Dolly, over to you:

Tell us about camp! Where was it, how long did you work there?

I went to summer camp in Algonquin Park, Ontario, a small national park about three hours north of Toronto that’s only accessible by boat. It’s the most beautiful place in the world! It’s a co-ed camp and most people end up there because someone in their family went there - there’s a lot of legacy. Families go for generations. Neither of my parents went, but a lot of my cousins did (I have a huge family) and my aunts and uncles since my dad’s side of the family is from Detroit.

It’s a very typical Canadian outdoor tripping camp where a big part of the summer is going on canoe trips. Canoe trips are multi-day outdoor adventures where we travel from lake to lake in a small canoe and carry all of our gear across land called portages. The longest trip offered at camp is 15 days which you usually go on as a senior camp. It’s the greatest 15 days ever. You’re dirty, you get strong, you make all your food over fire, you sleep in smelly tents in wet sleeping bags, and you come back tighter than ever with your friends. It’s a real test of resilience.

I went to camp for 9 summers. I was a camper for 7 years, then a CIT, and then a junior counselor to the JSGs (Junior Senior Girls). I’d go for 8 weeks at a time.

What does camp mean to you, broadly?

It’s one of the most important things I’ve ever done in my life. My brother and I tell our parents what a gift it was. You make the most special memories and learn skills that last a lifetime. I was obsessed with camp and it was such a big part of my life.

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Can you doodle a map of your camp for me from memory :)

Got any camp traditions you remember?

Oh my god, so many. Of course we did taps every night, there are games we play to figure out who “stacks” the dishes after a meal, color war, Tamagama (the tradition that happens when you get elected in Beaver Council which is like student council, but at camp), shrecks (a practical joke), Monday cookouts where you would go to close-by campsites with your cabin for the day, touching the lucky log (this big stump that sticks out of the lake close by) with a paddle when you come in and out of camp to make sure you have a safe trip, and of course water boiling - a tradition where the color war captains have to build a giant hot camp fire with the goal of getting the water inside a can to boil over.

What’s your craziest camp memory?

I don’t know about craziest, but my fondest memories are from canoe trips. Just singing with my friends and counselors in canoes for days in the open giant lakes of Algoquin Park with nothing around us but beautiful nature.

Did you ever have themed parties? What was your best costume?

My brother told this story at my wedding about how we once had a “Noah’s Ark” themed day where everyone had to come dressed up as an animal, but both my brother and I were the only ones who came dressed up as Noah himself, ha! We must be related…

Are there any iconic counselors / campers you remember?

Oh of course. I’m not going to name them, but they were essential to the camp experience and carried so much lore.

Do you stay connected to camp in your adult life?

Absolutely! I’m still in touch with so many of my camp friends to this day.

What’s your favorite book or movie about camp!

Indian Summer.

What kind of impact did camp have on you as a person?

It taught me so many life lessons like resilience, problem-solving, tradition, silliness, kindness, the list goes on and on. It also credit my resourcefulness to camp. Whenever my husband doesn’t know what tool to use or what clothing works for the best climate or how to build something, I always joke, “it’s because you didn’t go to outdoor camp” to him. You’re really living in the elements, with no outside communication (we didn’t have access to phones or any communication outside of writing letters), and have to rely on yourself and the people around you to figure life out. That’s so important for a kid and helps build independence.

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Right after I posted that, I got a DM on Instagram from none other than Toe Girl herself, Kate Barefoot (who I still reference by her maiden name of Kate Serrao):

Kate’s from my neighborhood and we all grew up going to the same pool. But despite running in the same circles in our younger years, I didn’t know all that much about her time at camp. Without further ado, here’s Toe Girl herself to tell it.

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Tell us about camp! Where was it, how long did you work there?

I attended and worked at a camp in Goochland, Virginia called Westview on the James! I attended as a camper for 4 years and then worked there for 5 years. I spent 4 years as a counselor and 1 year supervising the senior counseling staff and helping to run camp activities.

If you’ve read Bailey’s previous article featuring Lane, I was the girl whose ingrown toenail got infected. It was just as gross as she described. That is, to this day, some of the worst pain I’ve ever experienced. I even had to get surgery on it after camp ended. Lane and my counselors provided much needed moral support that week, since I wasn’t allowed to call and talk to my parents. Thank goodness I didn’t let that week deter me from coming back, because camp ended up having a massive impact on my life! Special shoutout to Lane for introducing me to Westview.

Tell us about what camp means to you, broadly.

Camp helped me figure out who I am as a person, and helped make me (much) more outdoorsy. It built my confidence in my skills and helped me make friends that I am still close with to this day. I even met my husband (and most of our wedding party) while working as a counselor!

Got any camp traditions you remember?

Some of my best memories from camp are from the dance held the last week of the summer, both as a camper and a counselor. I remember getting ready with my cabin and screaming “Come Sail Away” at every dance. My husband and I played this song at our wedding, obviously.

What’s your craziest camp memory?

My friend and I planned a High School Musical flashmob during lunch involving intricate choreography and costumes. We worked on it secretly all week with a group of campers. “Stick to the Status Quo,” in case you need a visual. It was epic.

Any camp romances you can share?

When I was a camper in early high school, I met my first real boyfriend who was a camper the same week as me. We dated for about a year, even though we went to different high schools. A few years later, when I was working as a counselor, I started dating my now husband. I had a huge crush on him the first time I met him at a staff training event, but we didn’t start dating for 4 more years!

Did you ever have themed parties? What was your best costume?

There were SO many themes. We would do different theme weeks that we all took very seriously. Harry Potter, Marvel, Indiana Jones, Disney, geriatrics week, etc. All came with costumes and themed camp-wide activities. One of my favorite weeks was Olympics week (during the 2016 Summer Olympics) where each cabin was assigned a country and we participated in themed competitions all week to win medals. I wore my assigned country’s flag (it might have been Norway?) as a cape for a week straight. I also remember wearing a shark onesie a lot.

Are there any iconic counselors / campers you remember?

So many! Especially counselors. They had a huge impact on my decision to work at camp when I was old enough. Many I got to work with once I was a counselor, which was really special since they were such huge role models for me. Unfortunately, most of the campers I remember are because they were terribly behaved. There were a handful of good ones that I got really close with and still speak to occasionally! I used to love getting letters from campers and would write back each summer.

Can you doodle a map of your camp for me from memory :)

Do you stay connected to camp in your adult life?

Big time. When you work somewhere for 5 straight summers in crazy conditions, you get really close. Besides my husband (Zach), our best man and maid of honor were also camp people, along with at least half of our wedding party. My college roommate is also a friend I met while working at camp. Most of my close friends are camp people to this day. I just visited one of my best camp friends who now lives in LA!

I vividly remember being in college and grouping my friends by “camp” vs “other” friends. At this point in my life, they’ve all blended together but it’s safe to say that a majority of my closest friends are all from Westview. We still do a yearly river float on the James River; a tradition that started in 2017 while we all worked there. It’s crazy to think about. I feel really lucky to have found such lasting friendships. It makes missing working there that much easier!

What kind of impact did camp have on you as a person?

Besides meeting Zach and many of my friends, working at camp helped me figure out what career path to take. I’m currently in my 5th year working as a high school counselor as a direct result of the experiences I had dealing with camper mental health situations when I worked at Westview. I realized the impact you can have as a caring adult in a kid’s life, and wanted to continue making that impact forever. My job is (a lot) more serious than being a camp counselor, but I love getting to work with teenagers and help them figure life out!

Some of my biggest mentors came from camp, including Anna Muller who was camp director for 4 years and had a huge positive impact on me. She helped me get certified in all sorts of things that I never would have if she didn’t have confidence in my abilities. Camp also helped develop my love of rock climbing, hiking, and camping. We still make recipes we learned at Westview when we go camping as a group!

What’s your favorite book or movie about camp?

Wet Hot American Summer. No notes.

What questions about camp did I not ask you that you want to talk about

I think a lot about the impact camp had on me, and why that is. I think there’s something really special about spending an entire summer with a group of people who may never all be in the same room again. The relationships you build are incredibly strong, partially due to the hardships you experience being in the woods for 10 weeks straight with hundreds of children. There’s truly nothing quite like it.

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I’m sure most of you would expect our first Camp Kid to be someone who has lived and breathed summer camp like I have. Someone who considers it deeply formative to their personality, who could write novels about what camp means to them.

But that’s just not everyone’s camp experience! I like the idea of kicking this off with someone who just kinda … went to camp because it’s what everyone else was doing. Lane’s the first to admit that camp didn’t have a deep impact on her as a human, and yet she still recognizes the magic in it enough to confidently say “if I have kids someday, I’ll send them to camp.”

A friend of mine used to say “everyone has their own Lair” (about my old summer camp), meaning there’s no one singular version of a summer camp experience. Here’s Lane to tell us about hers:

Tell us about camp! Where was it, how long did you work there?

I’m going to kick this off by admitting that I have the worst memory of my own life and I love to embellish stories. Know that you have an unreliable narrator. I’ve never worked at a camp, and was only ever a camper. I went to a 5-day long sleepaway church camp in Virginia, Westview on the James, for probably four or five summers from ages 10 to 14. The camp was about 45 minutes away from my house, in Goochland, Virginia, and had this little lake off-shoot of the James River that we could swim and do water activities in.

My family was always pretty non-religious, generally speaking, and I genuinely only went to this church camp because my friend was going. I was fine to go through the motions of singing hymns and doing prayers and devotionals if it meant I could run around outside without my parents for a week.

The general schedule for camp was:

• Sunday: drop-off and Hogan (cabin) assignments. Hogans were split by gender, and had 12 bunk beds and two counselors.

• M-Th: 7am wakeup, 7:45am Sunrise circle morning meeting/affirmations, morning activities, lunch (noon-ish) rest, afternoon activities, dinner (6ish), nighttime activity, showers, lights out at 11pm.

  • Activities could include: pool, lake swimming, water trampoline, kayaking, canoeing, zip line, archery, obstacle course, ropes course, games

• Thursday night: dance for senior campers (7th-9th graders)

• Friday morning: activities, evening worship services and pickup.

Can you doodle a map of your camp for me from memory :)

Any camp traditions you remember?

The counselors woke us up at 7am every day with a boombox blasting that song “It’s a perrrffeeecccttt dayyyy nothing’s standing in my way!”

Also, at the worship services (Sunday night and Friday night, the beginning of the week and end) you really had to sell it by holding each other and weeping and getting super emotional.

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What’s your craziest camp memory?

One year, the friend I went with had an infected ingrown toenail and couldn’t walk around the camp or participate in anything, so I was flying mostly solo when I wasn’t sitting with her in the infirmary. It still makes me paranoid whenever I feel like any of my toes might be “off.” That thing was ballooned up and so gross. She was really homesick, she cried for most of the week (understandably), and I figured she was done with camp for good.

Her story has a happy ending, because she ended up going back to the camp in later years, worked at the camp as a counselor, and met her now-husband there. She still has the toe. Also, her married last name is (I kid you not) Barefoot.

Did you have any camp romances?

I don’t remember a single boy from camp. I do remember that as Senior campers (rising 7th and 8th graders) our real Christian mission was to find a date to the Thursday night dance. Being dates with someone only entailed meeting them outside of the venue/dining hall and walking in together. If you were brave, you’d maybe dance with your date (about 12 inches apart, to leave room for Jesus).

Did you ever have themed parties? What was your best costume?

No themed parties. We brought “special outfits” to wear for the Thursday night dance, which were absolutely just shorts and tank tops from Hollister or Aeropostale.

Are there any iconic counselors / campers you remember?

None, but I did notice in the group picture my dad sent me that one of your childhood friends was in my camp group one year. Small world.

Do you stay connected to camp in your adult life?

Not in the slightest.

What kind of impact did camp have on you as a person?

I wish I could say it made me more outdoorsy and low-maintenance, but that’s so not true. I avoid being in nature for too long, and I need to shower like twice a day. I also can’t really sleep unless the room is under 70 degrees and there’s white noise. Maybe camp helped create this monster, because I really do appreciate being clean and comfortable.

What’s your favorite book or movie about camp?

Trying my best to think of even a single book or movie about camp and I’m only landing on The Parent Trap. Can it be a favorite if it’s all I can come up with? I am, however, obsessed with the LARP Camp episode of the podcast Normal Gossip.

What food reminds you most of camp?

Jambalaya.

Tell us about what camp means to you, broadly.

Though I don’t feel too connected to the camp I went to, I’m still happy I did it and I’m a proponent of sleepaway camp. I think it’s a kid’s first opportunity to spend time away from their parents and their usual structured routines, and to try new things independently. If I have kids someday, I’ll send them to camp.

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I’ve loved summer camps all my life. I grew up attending local Vacation Bible Schools and sports camps for various weeks of the summer. In middle school, I had my first real sleepaway camp experience at Camp Willow Run on Lake Gaston, North Carolina, where we slept in repurposed train boxcars as bunks. It was a very Christian experience. Hundreds of middle schoolers singing terrifyingly upbeat songs about Jesus for three hours a day sounds like a cult a bit excessive, in hindsight. Some of them still echo in my head, like a haunted amusement park ride I can’t get off.

Despite all of the Christianity, camp was otherwise pretty standard. I swam, canoed, sailed in my allocated recreation time because I am a creature of the water. We pushed each other off a floating dock into the murky lake, each of us wearing hideous Speedo one-pieces. Catfish swam around our feet.

I only went to Willow Run for two years, but it was enough to get me absolutely hooked on camp. My camp friends became some of my closest friends back in real life — we’d share inside jokes and meet up for hangouts at the mall (dropped off by mom). I got a taste of what it felt like to hold a piece of the camp magic and I wanted more of it. With ideally less of the God part.

In high school, I spent a week or two at an adventure camp in the Outer Banks, where we camped on the beach between surfing lessons and slept in flimsy tents that somehow didn’t stop me from getting literally hundreds of mosquito bites. I loved being outside so much. Even growing up, all I ever wanted to do was play in the woods behind my house, read in the sun, splash in the pool. After getting a taste of what it felt like to live outside for weeks at a time, you better believe I wanted more of that.

Which brings me to: the Lair. By far my most formative camp experience, the Lair of the Bear is a family camp run by the Cal Alumni Association. It’s nestled in the Sierra Nevada between Tahoe and Yosemite, a little square mile of dirt and pine trees.

The place is run by one hundred and fifty college kids each summer, give or take. We staffers spend our entire summers at camp, running every single aspect of it: we serve meals, we put on full musical productions, we clean toilets (more or less), we chaperone teen dances, we play Gaga Ball, we lifeguard, we organize long hikes. You name it, it’s our job. The only thing that’s not our job is chaperoning the kids outside of our assigned programs, which is one of the beauties of family camp. In our free time, we’re released to hang out with our fellow staffers however we see fit. I’m sure you can imagine the shenanigans that one hundred and fifty college students got up to, sequestered together in a magical bubble in the woods for twelve weeks.

The Lair is a place that’s hard to describe, even on a physical level. Since my last summer at camp in 2019, I’ve thought about how I would put the experience into words. I think this may be helpful:

My first ever night at the Lair defined the rest of my time there. My mom had dropped me off earlier, looking around with concern at the ramshackle, A-frame cabins that would be my home for the summer. “Cabin” is a strong word (we actually called them “tents”). The tents had no walls or roofs — staffers hung tapestries from the overhead rafters to form makeshift privacy dividers, draping string lights around the staff area for light at night. We slept in lofts, on very dated, squirrel-chewed mattresses, which we’d cover with a tarp when it rained. But it never really rains in the Sierras, so every night we’d sleep under the stars in sixty-five-degree, bug-free summer nights (I have to clarify this as someone who grew up with East Coast mosquitoes. I could not for the life of me wrap my head around how you’d sleep outside without being eaten alive).

Everything was dusty and dirty and rustic. I loved it from the first minute I saw it.

The staffers were much the same. Our car was instantly swarmed by twenty of the friendliest, grimiest college students I’d ever seen. They wore giant Walmart t-shirts, Patagonia shorts, and Tevas. Their feet were blackened from the dirt. They had massive smiles on their faces, and before I could even blink they had our trunk fully unloaded and everything packed away in my tent. They didn’t even ask if we needed help — they just jumped right in. Many of them had strange nicknames — Taco, Fish, JPots — and their conversations were riddled with so much camp jargon that they were almost incomprehensible (“cheeseball”, “grovel”, “boffice”).

In short, I had been dropped onto an alien planet where I was expected to live for the next twelve weeks.

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After my mom had started her drive back to Berkeley and I had unpacked my stuff, the staff started a bonfire as a small welcome celebration for us rookies. We all nursed Coors Lights and played Hot Seat as an icebreaker. Some of the veteran staffers went first in Hot Seat, including one of our camp leaders, Keenan. The questions ranged from silly (“boxers or briefs?”) to serious, and Keenan’s closing question before we moved onto the next person was “have you ever been in love?”

I’ll never forget the way he rocked back in his camping chair, tipping his head to look up at the stars. “Twice,” he said slowly. “Once with a girl, and once with this place.” He gestured with his arms to the woods and the stars around us.

Even though it was my first day at this place, with these people, I just had this overwhelming feeling that I was on the brink of something amazing. It was the edge of a cliff, toes draped over, about to fall into the rest of my life.

The three summers that followed were the most amazing thing I’ve ever done, as well as the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It’s hard, running around from breakfast serve to a pool shift to lunch serve to entertaining kids to playing volleyball to performing in a show to cleaning the dishes to spending time with your friends, all while cramming in sleep wherever you can. And then you wake up again and do it all over again the next day. To top it all off, I was in leadership positions in my last year and it’s damn near impossible to lead your friends.

But at the same time it was the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done. Every single day of those summers was different, even though sometimes I would’ve rather eaten mulch than meatball subs for the twelfth Sunday in a row. There was just this feeling of spontaneity every single morning when you woke up. Sometimes I’d get dressed in my usual uniform of Tevas and dirty t-shirts and sometimes I’d put on a Teletubbies concert to serve breakfast. One Tuesday, we decided we wanted to go to Disneyland for our day-off, so we hopped in the car at 4 pm and drove the seven hours to LA, only to turn around and drive right back 24 hours later. And even though leading my friends was insanity at times, it was also amazing, being able to help give back some of the magic I found in my earlier years. Hearing them say things like “this was the best summer of my life!” as we cleaned out camp on our last day made it all worth it.

It’s easy to say the Lair changed me, that it was the single most formative experience of my life. But it’s more accurate to think in terms of love, like Keenan did. I was and am completely in love with it as a place. There’s an incredibly rich community of fellow Lair alums who feel this way too. I see them at Cal game days and bars in San Francisco. I even meet up with them in places like the Philippines and Portugal and Italy. Every single time we see each other it’s like no time at all has passed. I’ve always wanted to write about my time up in the mountains — I think a lot of us have craved a way to put it into words.

So I’ll be doing a lot more of it, here on Camp Kids! I can’t wait to get into this project. I’ve had it cooking for a while. I’ll be chiming in every so often with my own stories (read: lengthy ass novels) like this one, but I also mainly want to hear from others how camp has shaped them.

Buckle up. The next time you hear from me, it won’t really be from me. It’ll be from a fellow camp kid :)

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I’ve loved summer camps all my life. I grew up attending local vacation Bible schools (VBS, as my fellow high school alum Lucy Dacus immortalizes in a song) and sports camps for various weeks of the summer. In middle school, I had my first real sleepaway camp experience at Camp Willow Run on Lake Gaston, where we slept in repurposed train boxcars as bunks. High school brought me to adventure camps in the Outer Banks, where I learned to windsurf in the Currituck Sound and hang glide at Jockey’s Ridge. And in college, I spent twelve weeks each summer working at the Lair of the Bear, a family camp run by the Cal Alumni Association. I slept under the stars, sang Cal fight songs, put on sketch shows, cleaned toilets, lifeguarded, grilled burgers by the lake, and threw elaborate themed costume parties. It was the most formative experience of my life and the reason I’ll always identify as a camp kid.

I’ve always wanted to write about my time at camp. It shaped who I am as a person and I’m not alone in feeling this way. There’s this indescribable magic with summer camp, this crazy bond you feel the minute you encounter someone else who has spent a summer in the mountains or the woods. It’s like skipping ten steps of friendship. You instantly know what kind of person they must be, the work ethic that comes from summers at camp, the charisma it takes, the love for nature that’s inevitable.

But despite how many people have been shaped by camp, I don’t think it has been captured enough in books or movies or podcasts. There are some iconic representations of camp in fiction: Percy Jackson, Wet Hot American Summer, Camp Rock, The Parent Trap, Sleepaway Girls (deep cut of a YA novel, shoutout Jen Calonita), God of the Woods, even Ben Platt’s Theater Camp. There’s a dated episode of This American Life that tries to get to the bottom of “camp counselor charisma.” The children’s documentary Bug Juice had a brief run on Disney in the 90s. Nora Ephron talks about attending summer camps with her sister in the 60s. And people I admire right here on Substack like and are working on projects about camp.

You don’t have to be a camp kid to love these movies and books! Camp represents this aspirational, off-the-grid, return to nature and childhood for so many people, whether or not you’ve attended yourself. For many, it’s the first taste of independence, of finding deep relationships that span timezones and cross-country miles. It’s no coincidence that The Parent Trap is a fan favorite of anyone between the ages of 20 and 40 (and not just because we’re channeling Chessy’s wardrobe). The idea of spending the summer away in the woods and coming back with your life completely changed is intoxicating. It’s something many of us have felt and so many want to feel.

I think I’d love to figure out some longer project about camp one day. I’ve always wanted to write a book, so maybe this is the thing it’s about! But until I find the time or the inspiration to write something longer about my own experiences at camp and how they’ve shaped me, I want to hear real people talking about their real camp experiences! I want to hear the wholesome and raunchy and earnest and alcohol-soaked and magical stories of summer camp. I want to hear about the imprints it left on their lives and about the time that they powered through cooking camp breakfast with a hangover from hell. I want to hear about the friendships that have stuck with them, the people they’d travel across the world to see. I want to hear about the camp weddings. I want to hear about all of it!

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That’s why I’m starting CAMP KIDS — a love letter to summer camp. We’ll talk to some amazing people about what camp has meant to them. We’ll talk about their best memories, the parts they hated the most, and how it changed their lives. We’ll do some revisits of those iconic books and movies I mentioned above, like The Parent Trap or Sleepaway Girls. I’ll chime in with some of my own camp anecdotes (my friends will groan and skip that post. They’ve heard it so much they want to rip their hair out by now).

We’ll try to put this deeply specific yet universal experience that so many of us have had into words. We’ll talk to Substack colleagues of mine like , who met her husband at camp; my pal , who got so homesick she left her first summer and tried again later (camp’s not always for everyone!); and my new boss , who actually attended Camp Waziyatah, which is the star of Bug Juice season one. We’ll talk to some of my lifelong besties like , who spent a week each year at a summer camp on the James River. And we’ll talk to online friends who have told me summer camp is a big part of their respective lore, like the always iconic and our very own Substack celebrity, .

It’s going to be a blast. I absolutely can’t wait. Let’s ride. Yeehaw. Insert other trademark expressions of mine that I say far too often.

I’ll be kicking things off later this week with some tales of my own time at camp, followed by an interview with our first (mystery) camp kid. Subscribe to make sure you don’t miss it.

And if you’re a camp kid who’s been dying for a place to talk about your own time at camp, hit me up. I promise I’ll play nice. Send this to all fellow camp kids in your life who might want to talk about their time, or even just follow along.

As always … Go Bears!

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