"There is a particular scent to the canvas tent with its pine platform floor, replete with eight 9 year old girls, the counsellor-in-training, Cathy, and our revered leader, Liz. After three years of these overnights, I can quite confidently say that, while the scent is unique to these circumstances, it varies little from camp session to camp session and from year to year and tent to tent. I can not fully describe it but I will try to lead you by the nose and give you some idea because it's beautiful and peculiar and, for me, both inviting and petrifying. If one were to mix brown sugar with sweet summer sweat, dry pine and sun-warmed canvas and blend it with stale peanut butter and jam sandwiches from lunches gone by, you'd have a reasonable facsimile of what I'm trying to get at.
I already know I like girls. I lay among them and I barely understand how it is I am an interloper in their midst. I have no idea how it is I am different or why I am the only one who feels like this. I am the only one awake though thousands of crickets and frogs trill beyond our fabric home. They call me, incessant as the sirens of Greek mythology. One more call, this time from the loon, and I silently slide from my sleeping bag placed purposefully by the zippered net door flap. My stealthy exit goes unnoticed or without comment as it is not uncommon for a young girl to require a night time trip to the outhouse; however, this is not my planned destination. I am equipped in my Keds, sweatpants, and hooded sweatshirt having planned my adventure earlier in the evening. I am restless and intense and night time sojourns both feed my sense of adventure and calm my troubled young soul."
-Gillian Cornwall, copyright December 18, 2011
1 comment:
Great! Can't wait for the rest of the story.
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