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Another Day at Camp
As if my life wasn’t already dripping with privilege, in the summers of my childhood, I got to go to camp. And not just any camp. This was a fantasy-style adventure at Camp Gold Arrow, a luxury getaway just for children.
Once a year, my fiercely organized mama packed massive trunks for each of her four girls, complete with dried snacks, bandannas, military grade canteens and tightly rolled sleeping bags, and we sisters would spend a whole month in the Sierra Nevada mountains hiking, canoe-paddling, sailing, horseback-riding, and honing our skills around campfire-enhanced-story-telling.
My recollection of this recursive experience is a bit patchy, a mental mural of sensory experiences. It’s easy to pull up a mix of sights, smells and sounds: pine-needle-covered pathways, hay-stuffed archery targets, capsized sailboats manned only by children, and weekend trips to the little country store where I bought inexpensive penny candies along with a handful of Archie comic books to get me through the coming week without cartoons.
In the crisp early morning, it was thrilling to hear the call to line up in order of cabin numbers for the assignment of activities, once in the morning and again in the afternoon.
The suspense was gripping.
I was giddy when we were assigned as a cabin to water ski, or toboggan.
