Stars in the Water

Memories of Summer Camp & Secret Wishes

Let the Wild Rumpus Start

June always hits me like this. The build up is so slow and unpleasant, but when summer truly arrives there are moments so perfect they make up for months of discomfort.

Let me give you an example. A few days ago I set up my backpacking tent in the grove behind the barn. It’s the same spot I have campfires, surrounded by trees and gardens right at the edge of the forest. It’s a beautiful little spot. The kind of backyard camping Max from Where the Wild Things Are could only dream of: the safety of your bedroom a hundred yards away and still lucky enough to sleep near paths bears walked along right outside your fire circle. Magical.

I have not camped for years. I missed it so much.

I was always a backpacker, even if trips were rare because of the farm. But my camping required distance - from houses and vehicles, town lights, and human voices. I was a little girl who dreamed of hiking the AT. Seeing the world on foot like Frodo, becoming a different person when the adventure was over.

When I injured my ankle so badly back in summer of 2022 without health insurance, I realized I may never backpack again. I couldn’t afford the surgery to repair the tendon I’d stretched. I knew recovery would be natural and slow, if at all. Hell, I was lucky I could still farm. I couldn't bear the weight of a pack anymore, or run the tens of miles I used to, or do much of anything hobbled. And the idea of backyard camping felt like a miserable consolation prize. A reminder that this was what I could have now. That I messed up my life in so many ways I couldn’t even enjoy the things I did for free.

I think that injury, the loss of wilderness and running, the inability to physically burn off my anxiety, and some other unspeakable losses were what swung me into that depression. Things were so dark I couldn’t even comprehend it.

Depression does that. It’s why you’ll find so much dust and cobwebs in the house of a sad person. It’s not about cleanliness. It’s undetectable to the people living with it. Your life has to be in such a great place that cobwebs even registers to clean them. You can’t see that stuff when your lenses are dirty. Or at least I couldn’t. Remember that when you walk into someone’s life, almost everything around them is a reflection of what is happening internally. When you walk into a mess, or even just see dust you would have wiped before company, use it for compassion not judgement.

I finally started dealing with it last fall. I had reached the point where I didn’t care if I lived or died. I wasn’t sucidal. I don’t mean to imply I was a flight risk, but I didn’t care if I got diagnosed with an incurable disease or my roof collapsed or forgot to eat a meal for days. My daily life was only fear, hardship, and loneliness with no sign of any of that ever changing, just getting harder, right before the holidays…

So I changed it. Or rather, decided I wanted to try.

I got medicated. I started writing again. I launched this substack and people started paying me for it, a kindness of dignity they can’t possibly imagine that sent the kind of hope through me that made me want to keep trying.

And now, half a year or so into regulating serotonin and feeling like I have started the foundational work here on substack that could save this farm, I wanted to camp again. I wanted to feel good about my life again in a way I created for myself. I wanted to enjoy this land more, not just be scared of losing it.

So, this 41-year-old woman set up a backyard slumber party. For the first time in years I felt the comfort of a campfire at basecamp, like fireflies circling around my heart. I don’t know if that would’ve been possible without medication. And while I’m a far cry from a Baggins, sitting by that fire in my backyard really felt like I had come a long way…

I set up my tent on the entrance to the path. It rested under a canopy of solar lights strung over a low hanging apple tree. At sunset I lit a fire and sat on a blanket with my ukulele.

For hours I sat there, strumming and singing with my dog. I cooked hotdogs and s’mores, the kind of comfort food that reminds me of camping as a Girl Scout, my happiest childhood memories.

From my fire I could see the pond on my property, down a ravine and through the forest. I could see the moonlight on the water, still as glass. The veeries trilled their calls well past sunset. The frogs near the low water belched out a chorus. Owls hooted. Horses snorted. The s’mores and music and moonlight on the water took me back to being a kid…

When I used to go away in the summer to camp, it was only for a week or two at a time, but it was all I looked forward to all year. I think it was the only place I felt like myself.

There was this ritual that happened on the last night of camp, it was called Wish Candles. Maybe it was just my camp or maybe every summer camp with a lake does this, but for 11-year-old me this was intense. All of us newfound best friends, the girls you bunked with and laughed with and adored all week would soon be strangers again. We kept lists of addresses for penpals letters, but no-one really followed up. This was before the internet, before we were all connected so easily, so there were stakes. That last night of camp was the last time we’d be together.

The Wish Candle Ceremony was so magical to me. It started in our base camps at dusk, the places we made home for the week. We’d find a best friend to line up with, two by two, and make our way through the woods holding little unlit candles in our hands. It was solemn, but not serious. I can still see the beams of my counselors flashlights ahead of us, leading us through hallways of blooming rhododendron. I can still feel their waxy leaves grazing me as a I walked by.

Imagine kids, new best friends giggling and laughing too loud for school but not too loud for trees, walking through the Pennsylvania forest to a lake. All these parades of girls converging together at this little beach as night fell.

In our hands were small discs of wood. Like someone had a round log and sliced it into thick coasters. We had drawn all over them with markers, the signatures of our new friends we made that week, stories and pictures about what we did. And on each disc was the stub of a candle.

We sat with our friends on the sand. A leader lit their candle on their little wooden disc and everyone took turns sharing the flames down the row until hundreds of little girls were holding fires at sunset, watching the moon rise over gentle water, with the voices of all the people they were going to lose tomorrow.

We all sang songs about memories and, group by group, set our little candle rafts onto the lake. We were told to make a wish before letting it go. I don’t think I’ll ever forget those hundreds of candles floating in the lake under the moon, girls singing and crying, and my emotional young self not understanding why this was so holy, but knowing in my bones it was more real than anything I ever saw in church.

How could church be real if it was indoors?

The candles spread out into the lake and turned into eye-level stars, distant and twinkling. Knowing I was losing these girls and having this last moment to sing and watch something beautiful together…I think that was my first true religious experience.

I had been raised to understand ritual, seen priests do all sorts of bits with candles and chalices in latin wearing ornate robes, but all that was all so much scarier and mean than this. I didn’t believe anything those men said, nor did I trust them. But This. This was home. And I think sitting on that sand, feeling like myself for the first time, feeling like I mattered to these girls because they mattered so much to me, praying for a little more time while knowing you already lost it.

That’s religion, baby.

And I felt a little of that sitting by the fire on my farm. My dog sighing against my thigh as I played songs I knew by heart, unafraid to sing with my whole chest because no one could hear me but the animals. The pigs were sound asleep. I could only hear the occasional mandolin playing on the local PBS stations’ airing of Thistle & Shamrock, from the boombox in the barn. The horses had walked down to near the fire area. They watched with silver eyes in the moon light.

I looked around at the lantern-lit forest path to the peaceful snores of my dog and closed my eyes. I felt like I was in some long ago place, before technology killed the parts of us music healed, and felt so incredibly wealthy I was embarrassed I had it to myself.

We were right next to Gibson’s grave. I think the life I gave that dog was the greatest thing I ever accomplished. I managed to keep this farm safe for him for his whole life, and he never once knew anything but love and sheep and his person and family.

There are only two thingsI feel no one can ever take away from me, can never question, and that is the fact that I am a writer and the life I gave that dog. I will always need to write. I will always have given that boy 14 perfect years on his own farm. A full life loving the place with his whole being while I took on the burden of keeping it. I have never had children, nor spent much time around them, but I imagine it’s a smaller version of that. Of allowing someone else to absorb the joy of the world you built for them without resentment or conditions. What a privilege that was, to give someone that.

Nature has always been there for me. Everyone thinks we run off to the woods to hide, but not all of us. A lot of us are here because it’s where we belong. Because it’s who we are. Hiding for me is giving up everything I built over my life, getting offline, never writing, and pickup up a paycheck so I never have to sling soap or convince someone my words are worth their time. I am not hiding. I’ve never been more exposed.

Oh, I almost forgot. I always made the same wish every time I placed my candle in the lake at camp. It’s the same wish I made at that campfire the other night, Friday sleeping beside me. The same wish that’s always a prayer and a spell and a plea.

To remember.

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P.S. Thanks to the folks who chose to reach out and support this farm, I managed another house payment. This farm is safe for another four weeks and I hope to make a second payment soon as possible. Your support is rebuilding a life on the edge and means so much. Thank you if you choose to pay for these words.