First off, I would like to thank my editor at Hachette, Gretchen Young, for her meticulous attention to every word. Guided by her sharp insights and gentle hand, Gretchen helped me excavate the most detailed memories of the camp girl I was then and fresh impressions of the camp girl I am now. Because of her caring leadership, I was able to weave the past and the present into one book that is wholly about love.
Gretchen did not go to summer camp, though she attended an all-girls high school and understood the central message of Camp Girls from the start: that it is our girlfriends that keep us grounded and growing and entertained. I am proud to call Gretchen not only my editor, but also a really smart new friend.
I am hugely grateful to my next-door neighbors Gail and Stan Watkins, who allowed me to occupy a cozy den in their home, daily, for months, as my “writer’s cove.” In this room on the Severn River, spare and silent, I was able to access the most minute and precise imagery, with only my memories as company. Though we have the same river view, I wrote my best at their home, detached from my cell phone and refrigerator.
I spoke to Liz Weinstein, one of my camp besties, at least once a day, over the years I was imagining, then composing, this book. We talked on the phone while we were on separate walks in separate states, while we were having a glass of wine in our separate kitchens. We talked any time I needed a team game or cabin prank refreshed to spill onto my pages. It was Liz, a graphic designer, who helped me relaunch our camp magazine, Agalog, after it had been gone for thirty-some years. I could not have done this without Liz by my virtual side—her in Illinois, me in Maryland.
Another camp sister, Margie Gordon, deserves so much gratitude. For a long weekend each summer, several of our cabinmates from the 1960s and 1970s go up to Agawak for an alumni reunion. Margie loved being back so much that she went to work at camp the following summer, teaching yoga and leading overnight trips. What a gift to be approaching Medicare age and to be together as camp girls again.
Thank you to all our camp girls, many now grandmothers, who have come back to camp for our July reunions. As our iconic camp song “I’m Strong for Camp Agawak” goes, “No matter the weather, we will all stick together,” and we have clearly done that. We braved thunderstorms on canoe trips in Canada as children. As adults, we are braving illness and the loss of parents and siblings. Surrounding by this girl circle, I always feel hopeful and youthful and wildly alive.
So here’s to our aging, ageless Agawak tribe: Peggy Gilbert, Karen Schwartz Sutker, Terry Worth Sigman, Margie Worth, Jill Meltzer, Carol Hirschfield, Toni Chaikin, Laurie Holleb Klapman, Lori Gilford, Karen Feldman Edelstein, and Susan Wiedenbeck. They pay to stay, with donations to the Agawak Alumnae Foundation, which provides camper scholarship funds.
Terry Schwartz, my closest friend during our camp years, is not able to join us for these reunions. But our FaceTime and phone chats have made my life so much richer. I love you, Terry. You are always teaching me something.
Another huge nod of appreciation goes to Kathi and Eddie Lapidus, owners of Raquette Lake Camps, for boys and girls. They welcomed me as a staff member when our four sons attended their camp. I spoke to Kathi while researching this book, and we shared our enduring commitment to working with young children and teens.
As she puts it: “I love watching the self-esteem it gives campers, no matter who they are. Some might be great at songwriting, some may be great at dancing, some at soccer, some in the water. Camp is an opportunity for everyone to shine at something.” Kathi and Eddie gave me the opportunity to shine at something I loved deeply and had left behind, living in a camp community. This is a central part of me that I came to realize I must never lose again.
Enter Mary Fried, owner/director of Camp Agawak, who made it possible to remain at camp. I met Mary at our ninetieth reunion, and she invited me to come back the following summer to direct a writing program and resurrect the camp magazine that had died in the early 1980s. That first summer will turn into my seventh summer when I head to camp again in June of 2020.
What a gift Mary has given me. I got my literary start writing for Agalog at the age of eight, in 1963. My whole girlhood streams through me as I watch the children feel what I felt, how the words pour forth as the heart opens up under an open sky, in the hush of nature. This writer is without enough words to express just how very deeply thankful I am to Mary, for getting me back to Agawak.
And thank you to her husband, Bill Fuhrmann, the camp waterskiing director who serves as our Director of Fun when the alumni camp girls visit, taking us waterskiing and on long pontoon rides around our cherished Blue Lake.
Another thank-you goes to Mary’s brother-in-law Mike Fried. When I started this book three years ago, Mike connected me with key contacts in the camping industry that served as critical sources. Many of our awesome international Agawak staff members come to us through Mike’s work as vice president, camp counselor program, for Camp Counselor USA.
The camp associate director, Chris Garcia, is deserving of my unending gratitude. Chris is my go-to person at Agawak, for everything from getting me supplies for our writing activity to being my swimming partner to giving me answers on any camp question that comes up. She knows it all!
Though it was the pine forest of northern Wisconsin that intensified my passion for writing, it was my sister, Frances, who gave me the confidence to keep at it. We were campers together, and when my articles were read at the Sunday Agalog nights, she would always hug me and say, “You are such a good writer.” In college, I majored in photojournalism and was veering toward pursuing photography over writing as a career. Frances said to me, “You can take photos to go with your articles. You can’t give up your writing.”
Thank you, to the woman I call Sis, for keeping me on track. You believed in me as a child, and having your love and support throughout our long life together has always helped me believe in myself. I love you so much. And to my brother, Greg, you are the best at making me laugh and relax, which was so appreciated during the many months of hard thinking and writing.
In this book that stems from my own empowering experiences in camping, I branched out into research on the universal impact of sleepaway summers on the formation of successful adulthoods. Leaders at the American Camp Association provided me with layers of historical and statistical data. I am so thankful particularly for the generosity and expertise of three ACA leaders, who answered my many queries, during interviews on the phone and in person: Tom Rosenberg, president/CEO of the ACA; Harriet Lowe, the longtime editor in chief of Camping Magazine; and Laurie Browne, director of research.
My literary agent, Gail Ross, has been encouraging me to write a book about summer camp ever since we began working together some two decades ago. Here it is, Gail, because of you. I give you an enormous thank-you, my irrepressible agent and dear friend who never fails to get me to write what I was meant to write.
May our journey together continue to be fruitful—and long.
To my husband, Chuck, and our four sons, thank you for listening to my camp stories and to my camp songs all of these years. I love you so, so much. I have watched you boys, former camp kids, turn into young men who know how to deal in the woods, and in life.
And, Chuck, not every spouse would approve of a wife who spends summers at her old camp. You make my dreams come true. I know you think that camp is my everything. Camp is my most things; it is you and the kids who are my everything. To Chuck, my steadfast husband of thirty-three years, I thank you for supporting my pursuit of endless camp adventures. You help me become a writer and mother and wife who feels like she has it all!
Finally, I end with the most important thank-you of all, to my departed parents, Helene and Theodore Krasnow, creators of this camp girl. You sent me to Agawak at the end of third grade. I still go to camp more than a half century later. You were my first loves, and though you are not here anymore, you gave me so many lasting loves: for nature, for sports, for my camp-girl circle, for tradition.
Wherever you are, Mom and Dad, I know you are with me, cheering me on like you did when you watched me in the heat of Blue and White Team competition.