Leaving a Mark at Summer Camp
Why is it that that there will always be a stubborn connection between campgrounds and graffiti? There seems to be something rooted in our cultural DNA that makes us want to commemorate our visits to nature by carving our names all over it. Or the summer camp equivalent: gouging our names into dining hall tables, or drawing on the beams of our bunks and tents with lavender ball point pens.
Camp directors and counselors learn quickly that this mindless property destruction is somehow instinctive at camp. It has a little to do with the general shabby state of camp property to begin with, which can invite disrespect. And it also has to do with a recognition in campers that the circumstances of summer camp are inherently temporary, and that memories made in this place are not designed to last without active preservation. One’s passage through this place, no matter how momentous, will be forgotten once one leaves. The wind and rain will wash away one’s footprints. All things on this earth are fated to change and fade, let her paint an inch thick to this end she will come, make her laugh at that… and so forth.
The philosophical weight of this can be heavy for a child. Also, there are times at camp when one happens to have a magic marker in hand and one is bored.
At our camp we would combat both of these realities by turning a set of campers loose each year on a few of the unpainted wooden benches of the dining hall. Our dining hall was big, and there were a lot of benches. Even after more than forty years of letting campers paint a few benches each year, most of the benches were still blank.
Also, at the horse barn, we designated one wooden wall panel of the tack shed each summer to be doodled on by anyone who felt the urge. A black sharpie hung from a string thumb-tacked to the wall, ready for a summer of uninhibited scrawling. Swears were gently discouraged. The only rule: stay on that year’s panel.
What did we say on that wall? Only the most important things, things guaranteed to represent us at our best to future generations:
Bun-Bun you so fat. Jersey rulz!!!! She aint fat she fluffy. I don’t think you can evn knw t….Binky was here. Australia!!! Beauty = my baby boy! I love Indonesia forever. Camp sux. All outward wisdom yields to that within, whereof no creed nor canon holds the key. Beauty is not your’se, jerk. I love you Muffin. Hey I’m writing on the wallllll!!!!!!
Plus many, many repetitions of the year and of the exact date the words were written. It’s interesting to note how graffitied comments, like everything else, are influenced by trends that change with time. But mainly I’m glad somebody thought of this plan early enough to keep the back wall of the tack shed aesthetically harmonious. Year after year, the only color scrawled on the pine wall is black. The sharpie line thickness never changes. The exclamation points are persistent and evenly distributed. The effect is subdued, therefore, and continuous, and fades into the general ambiance of the tack shed interior. As one sits alone on an overturned orange crate polishing a saddle, one is surrounded by the muted hum of generations of predecessors, their voices preserved, their company ever present, quiet, constant, murmuring, alive.
- Erin Sweeney