<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" MAINE Holding on to those badges from Wild Goose \u2014 and letting go. When we were packing our son Harry off for his first sleepaway camp last summer, I wanted to give him some sort of talisman, something more than a hearty &amp;quot;Take care and I&amp;#039;ll see ya in August, pal.&amp;quot; I was happy he was going to camp, but I wanted to protect him from snakebite, hypothermia, and mean boys. So, on the eve of his departure, I went down to the basement to retrieve my old camp jacket. My mother had preserved this relic of my summers at Wild Goose Camp for Boys \u2014 eight-week stays in 1969 and 1970 \u2014 sealed inside a dry-cleaning bag, and when she died a few years ago I repossessed it. Feeling a bit like Howard Carter on the threshold of King Tut&amp;#039;s tomb, I unsealed the bag and removed the baseball-style jacket, with its still-stretchy elastic piping at the sleeves and waist. I remembered soaked canvas sneakers drying in the summer air outside the bathhouse, the cedar ribs of the canoes, the musk of the climbing rope in the old gym, the wild scent in the Maine evenings, the smoke of campfires, and the chemical reek of the &amp;quot;fogger&amp;quot; that was supposed to keep the bugs down. I pressed my whole face into the soft but durable blue flannel. An olfactory map of Wild Goose lit up in my memory. Wild Goose, which closed in 1994, was located on a thousand-acre tract of woods, clearing, and lake in central Maine that belonged to the camp&amp;#039;s director, William E. Trauth, who was known as Commodore to campers and staff alike. Perhaps because of the sense of the immensity of the wilderness around us, especially at night, the buildings themselves seemed like sentient beings, and they all had funny names, a mix of Indian, ancient Roman and Greek, and Down East Maine lingo. About half of the 75 boys were from Buckley, an Upper East Side private school where, during the rest of the year, the Commodore was a popular and successful football and baseball coach. (His son Bill Jr., who later succeeded him, was even more successful.) The star athletes were the alpha campers. They had exchanged their cleats and helmets for water skis and the rolled wool hats known in Maine as &amp;quot;crushers,&amp;quot; but they had brought their manners and social hierarchy to the woods intact. I was a scrawny 10-year-old kid with Coke bottle glasses from a farm in southern New Jersey who had no idea what city boys were like, nor any clue how to get along in the Manhattan ecosystem that had been cultured here at the edge of the Great Maine Woods.  At first I was deeply unpopular. I had misheard the name of our esteemed leader as &amp;quot;Commodore Trout,&amp;quot; and when I referred to the saintly coach that way in front of some of his devoted players, they offered to beat the living crap out of me. I probably didn&amp;#039;t help matters by being sarcastic and negative much of my first couple weeks. (The archery counselor wouldn&amp;#039;t let me speak during practice, because I didn&amp;#039;t have anything nice to say.) I didn&amp;#039;t merit the serious attention of the young lords of Camp Wild Goose, and that was galling. But I soon learned how to acquire merit in their eyes. I brought the jacket upstairs and with some ceremony carried it to Harry, then 12. Sensing that this was an important occasion, he got to his feet to receive it. I pointed out the merit badges that had been sewn onto the sleeves and the back by camp staff, and explained in detail what I had done to earn them. Accruing merit badges \u2014 marks of distinction in riflery, archery, tennis, and canoeing, among other activities \u2014 was how I learned to quit moping and to love Wild Goose. Harry was headed to Farm and Wilderness Camp in Plymouth, Vermont (tuition: roughly $4,500 for three weeks), which was popular among our friends for its Quaker values and hippieish, back-to-the-land approach to boyhood recreation. Instead of tennis, archery, and riflery, there would be milking cows and weeding vegetables, and a boy who distinguished himself would be rewarded not with a badge but with a trowel with his name written on the shaft in black magic marker. For me, having grown up on a farm, in a sort of wilderness, camp was where I first encountered city life and the ways of city boys. But for Harry, a city boy born and bred, camp was supposed to be a respite from a tightly scheduled life of school, after school, and homework, and also rehab from texting, gaming, and YouTube. I helped him on with the jacket, pointing out that it had a lining, for chilly evenings. But the jacket looked awkward on him. His shoulder bones poked out, and it was too short in the sleeves. On a more fundamental level, it just didn&amp;#039;t suit him. Realizing this, he took it off and somewhat shyly handed it back to me. I carried it back down to the basement and stowed it in its bag. \u2013 John Seabrook VERMONT A city kid gets his jeans dirty at Farm and Wilderness. When my dad heard I&amp;#039;d be spending three weeks at Farm and Wilderness last summer, he wasted no time whipping out an old jacket of his that he had worn to his own camp, Wild Goose. Various badges lined the back, badges whose once-sparkling embroideries had darkened with age, whose fabric sinews had thinned and faded. On the front, riflery medals clinked against each other. Even to a cynical city kid like me, the coat was badass. I tried it on, but it was too small in the arms, too big in the shoulders. I handed it back to my dad, who, if only for a fleeting moment, looked heavily disappointed. It was of little matter to me, though; I was sure I&amp;#039;d get one like that at camp. On my way to Vermont, my head filled with thoughts of shooting arrows and bullets. As someone who had lived in New York City for 12 years and never shot at anything other than pixels on a screen, shooting at stuff was intriguing. I was eager to follow in my dad&amp;#039;s footsteps and join the ranks of disciplined archers and riflemen, medals clinking on my own chest. Upon arriving at the all-boys Farm and Wilderness I was greeted by a man with an earring through his lip and a stud through his tongue. He had no flashy badges, no worn jacket embroidered with achievement. Instead he was wearing a loose-fitting gray tank top that showed off his remarkably hairy forearms. I was wearing my standard uniform: skinny jeans and a Ramones T-shirt. I felt the first stirrings of dread. As I was shown around the camp, my stirrings grew. There were no bathrooms; rather, you had doorless wooden huts in the middle of the camp, where you were completely visible to everyone around you. (I didn&amp;#039;t see any girls around, but their camp wasn&amp;#039;t very far away.) There was a circle at the edge of the camp where, I was told, we would spend 15 to 30 minutes in total silence after breakfast, to find &amp;quot;peace with the nature around us.&amp;quot; And up in the distant reaches of the camp, there was the farm. The farm had goats and chickens and the unmistakable smell of cow manure. Camp was nothing like what my dad had described when he was going on about his merit badges. Through a break in the trees, I could just see the blue and white New York license plate of my parents&amp;#039; car receding into the distance. I didn&amp;#039;t talk much to the rest of my cabin that day. They were having a heated conversation about snowboarding. Like the counselor I&amp;#039;d met earlier, most of the kids were wearing loose-fitting jeans. One of the two counselors was wearing grass-stained Levi&amp;#039;s, which startled me. Why had this guy let perfectly good jeans go to such waste? The following day, the camp&amp;#039;s activities were shown to us. There was &amp;quot;wilderness survival&amp;quot; \u2014 swimming in the camp&amp;#039;s signature cold lake, rock climbing, and canoeing. And, of course, there was the farm. I hated the very idea of the farm. Surrounded by an extremely powerful electric fence, under the beating sun, the place felt like a prison. I resented the cows and the goats and the chickens. I resented having no music, no electronics to relapse into. I resented the whole farm situation. Except for the weeding. I took a weird pleasure in pulling those weeds. Down on my knees in the dirt, drenched in sweat \u2014 I hated to admit it, but I liked it. Something about being useful to the life of the garden felt very satisfying. Before long I had stopped writing letters to my parents pleading with them to get me out. The lake didn&amp;#039;t feel as cold. I started playing cards and cracking jokes with my cabinmates. I even brought myself to take a crap in the outhouse. One day I was wrestling with a particularly weed-filled section of the garden. I was covered with dirt; flies were buzzing around my ears. I was happy. Finally, the lunchtime gong rang in the distance, and as I stood up I felt a sudden draft of air on my knee. I looked down. A giant dirt-stained rip had gashed its way across the leg of my Levi&amp;#039;s. They were ruined. At the end of camp, for my good work in the garden, I got a trowel. It wasn&amp;#039;t anything I couldn&amp;#039;t have bought in a store, and I knew that in the city I wouldn&amp;#039;t have much use for it. But that trowel meant the world to me. My dad&amp;#039;s jacket doesn&amp;#039;t seem so badass now. The medals aren&amp;#039;t as bright. The badges don&amp;#039;t shine as much. I, on the other hand, came away with completely wrecked skinny jeans and a trowel, things that have motivated me to go back this year, and forever will be an emblem of the benefits of a simple, down-to-earth lifestyle. After all, what&amp;#039;s more badass than that? \u2013 Harry Seabrook /society/pictures-of-summer-camps   NORTH CAROLINA Learning to sink or swim, American-style, at Seafarer. When I was 13, my mother decided I needed to spend a month at an American summer camp to improve what she called my &amp;quot;can-do&amp;quot; spirit. Thanks to Hollywood, I was familiar with girls bonding over bonfire marshmallows, but having grown up in Paris and Milan, my experiences in America consisted mainly of wonderful jaunts to New York and Vero Beach. Even though my Philadelphia-born mother spent most of her life in Europe, she remains very American in spirit. She brought up four daughters in France and Italy with our very French father, but she always encouraged us to connect with our American heritage. My mother chose Camp Seafarer, in North Carolina, because it was relatively close to my grandparents&amp;#039; summer home in the highlands, and, as she excitedly told me, they offered sailing classes! Her closing argument was that it was a girls camp, and therefore there were no pesky boys around \u2014 which made me want to go even less. Instead of my typical summer vacation in Europe, my mother wanted to ship me off to decidedly unglamorous North Carolina to hang out with a bunch of girls? I had pressing questions: What would the food be like? (My days typically revolved around mealtime; smelly Epoisses cheese and steak were staples.) Did I have to wear a uniform? (No, thank god.) That July I found myself in a cabin, dizzy with jet lag and culture shock. I was expected to bond immediately with my dozen or so cabinmates. I didn&amp;#039;t have much time to wallow in my initial desperation, as the days were jam-packed with activities like archery and riflery \u2014 which, surprisingly, I enjoyed. Before I knew it, I had new best friends \u2014 like Rachel from Charleston \u2014 that I couldn&amp;#039;t live without. Before setting off I had packed a few essentials: blue plastic snakeskin pants and my father&amp;#039;s oversize white shirt. I soon found that my cohorts did not share my fashion sensibilities and ran around in shorts and a T-shirt. Our weekly dances with the boys camp, Seagull, were my one chance to dress up; a pair of pink taffeta pants attracted a fair number of suitors, with whom I engaged in daily letter exchanges. There were other cultural misunderstandings. I recall having to explain the difference between Mulan, the Disney movie, and Milan, the fashion capital. Also, everyone seemed to believe that all Italians rode around in Ferraris. I, on the other hand, didn&amp;#039;t understand the adoration for the Backstreet Boys or J. Crew. But a few weeks in, all I wanted was their new CD and a polka-dotted bathing suit. And though I never actually enjoyed the food, I did warm to toasting marshmallows. Who doesn&amp;#039;t like burned sugar? \u2013 Sophie Pera TEXAS Finding first love amid the Hail Marys at St. Anne&amp;#039;s. My excommunicated Catholic mother sent me to summer camp in 1963 in hopes it would save my soul. The camp, in Texas, was called St. Anne&amp;#039;s, but it might have been more appropriately named Jude, after the patron saint of lost causes. From September to May I attended a Protestant academy. The avowed purpose of St. Anne&amp;#039;s summer camp was to tutor kids like me in the catechism we didn&amp;#039;t get during the regular school year, thereby keeping us from succumbing to youthful sins and temptations and, later, adult pitfalls like the divorce that had compelled the Church to ban my mother. I met the girl of my dreams on my very first day at St. Anne&amp;#039;s. We&amp;#039;d spent the morning in separate, gender-segregated classrooms studying the iconic Baltimore catechism, and this was our first chance to go outside on the softball diamond, where boys and girls were briefly allowed to mingle. Her name was Sarita, and she attended a public school in a Mexican barrio. She had long hair black as licorice, caramel-colored skin, and, at least in my candy-coated conception of her, thin red peppermint-stick lips. Sarita was 11 years old, just like me, and naughty as could be by 1963 standards. Though she whispered sweet nothings about playing doctor, Sarita knew we couldn&amp;#039;t get away with such an indiscreet game under the eternally vigilant eyes of the nuns and the lay teachers. We could, however, listen to pop songs on her little transistor radio while we waited in the outfield for fly balls. The top 40 hits that year were rife with veiled and not so veiled sexual innuendo. The number one tune was &amp;quot;Sugar Shack,&amp;quot; by Jimmy Gilmer and the Fireballs. Sarita&amp;#039;s favorite song was the magic number 21\u2013ranked &amp;quot;Louie Louie,&amp;quot; by the Kingsmen. It was Sarita who first informed me that the song&amp;#039;s intentionally slurred lyrics referred to the act that had prompted God to cast Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden \u2014 and that the act in question was only metaphorically related to eating an apple. Summer ended with a series of thunderstorms out of &amp;quot;Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh.&amp;quot; To paraphrase Allan Sherman, St. Anne&amp;#039;s camp was very entertaining, but, alas, Sarita and I never got to experience the fun we hoped to have if it stopped raining \u2014 and that may have saved our preteen souls after all. \u2013 Harry Hurt III /society/pictures-of-summer-camps   NORTH CAROLINA Vade Mecum&amp;#039;s baptism by barbecue. As any serious carnivore knows, pork barbecue is a veritable religion in North Carolina, and what better place for a young Tar Heel like me to have been indoctrinated in the sacred ritual of its preparation and consumption than at an Episcopal church camp called Vade Mecum in the Blue Ridge Mountains, where I was sent every summer as a lad. What we campers always looked forward to was the sight of 40-pound dressed and split hogs being slowly barbecued on a huge grate over live hickory coals and the delicious aroma of roasted pork and spicy vinegar sauce wafting in the chilly air. What we did not especially relish, however, was being routinely awakened, one by one, from a dead sleep by counselors all during the night to perform &amp;quot;mopping duty&amp;quot; on the barbecue, and taking turns stirring the heavy iron pots of Brunswick stew that were simmering over the fire. &amp;quot;Mopping&amp;quot; meant groggily basting the pigs with big kitchen mops around the clock, and while this obligatory rite of passage could result in painful splatters on sensitive young arms and legs, it also provided the first chance to pick sapid cracklings off the tops of the glistening carcasses, pull shreds of succulent pork from the meaty loins, shoulders, and hocks, and lick tangy sauce off fingertips. Mopping and eating that early barbecue with bowls of Brunswick stew, creamy cole slaw, and fried hush puppies created memories that would linger for decades, build lots of moral character, and contribute mightily and shamelessly to a lifetime of sublime porcine gluttony. \u2013 James Villas CALIFORNIA Saddling up \u2014 and growing up \u2014 at Mountain Meadow Ranch. At summer camp a young girl inevitably discovers boys, or she discovers horses. (Freudians might argue that these are merely two versions of the same phenomenon.) My first encounter with boys and horses both was at Mountain Meadow Ranch, in Susanville, California. I must have been about eight years old, nine at the most. I remember feeling completely flummoxed when, one evening behind the dining hall, where inside awkward teenage couples were doing their best to slow-dance to &amp;quot;Stairway to Heaven&amp;quot; without appearing to touch, a freckle-faced boy named Lucas asked me to &amp;quot;go with him&amp;quot; and then made a move to kiss me on the mouth. I spent the rest of the session avoiding the situation by signing up for far-flung activities like riflery (which for obvious reasons was located away from the main camp) and hanging around the barn, where I channeled my prepubescent tumult into a relationship with a horse whose name, I am sad to report, I can no longer remember. Despite the fact that people like Jimmy Stewart and Ronald Reagan sent their kids there, Mountain Meadow (established in 1956) was not a particularly fancy summer camp. It was more like a working ranch that took on underage boarders, and the equestrian activities on offer were limited to trail riding, more trail riding, and, for one exhilarating afternoon, a gymkhana, where our timed competitions had us navigating an obstacle course of oil barrels or traversing the roping arena in tandem with another rider while trying not to tear the crepe paper streamer we held between us. The festivities concluded ceremoniously with the castration of the year&amp;#039;s crop of young bulls at the hands of the wranglers. This might explain why riding seemed to be more popular with the girls than the boys. I did not meet what I would call my first real boyfriend until I was in college. But between the ages of eight and 12 I had more than my share of flings with horses. I was promiscuous when it came to camps \u2014 rarely returning to the same one twice and always looking for more time in the saddle. From Mountain Meadow Ranch, it was on to Kennolyn, where I was required to bring real riding boots and the well-rounded program even included vaulting (essentially gymnastics on the back of a moving horse), and then on to Foxfield, where I opted to bring my own saddle \u2014 but not my own horse. (By that time I had one of those, too, stabled elsewhere.) My poor father. It probably would have been easier, and a whole lot cheaper, if I had just found the wherewithal to kiss Lucas back. \u2013 Alix Browne "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/tradition/a874/summer-camp-profiles/>