Thousands of parents across the nation have put their children on buses and planes in recent weeks, sending them far from home for the first time ever for that most American coming-of-age experience: camp.
One of those parents is our very own Peter Savodnik, who writes today about getting the “I don’t know anyone” text from the wilderness—how it reminded him of what it felt like to be 10 years old, tucked in the top bunk surrounded by kids he’d never met.
A version of that now-familiar feeling has returned throughout his career, his travels, his life—and, he writes, though it’s always uncomfortable, camp prepared him for it. —The Editors
Last week I deposited my 11-year-old daughter, Josephine, at Boston’s Logan International Airport, and she flew to Minneapolis alone, then boarded a bus and was driven five hours north to the sleepaway camp where she will be for the next month.
Before she left, Josie was excited to go: Her oldest cousin is a counselor at the camp, and she had heard stories about canoe trips and polar-bear plunges and late-night campfires, and she was eager to get away from her little brother, always bouncing on her bed, and her parents, always telling her to clean up her room or clear the dinner table or practice her violin.
After I watched Josie board her plane I shuffled off, feeling empty and kind of rudderless. Then I grabbed a coffee, picked up a rental car, and drove up to Portland, Maine, to report on the Senate race there. I reassured myself that, however much I missed her, she wouldn’t miss us. She would be distracted, having fun.
That evening, after having spent the better part of the day interviewing people demonstrating against the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who had fatally shot a Colombian man in Biddeford, I was about to grab a pizza and a beer when I felt my phone buzz. It was Josie calling on the flip phone we had given her for her birthday. By this point, I figured, she should be nearing camp after a long day.
