Camp Friends

A few days ago, one of my childhood best friends asked me to be a bridesmaid in her wedding.  Laura is the first of the girls I grew up with to get engaged, and so of course, her engagement has caused me to reminisce about all of our childhood adventures.  Laura and I met at church when we were three, and grew up going on church trips and playing handbells together.  We also went to elementary school together for a few years, but I think most importantly, we went to camp together.  From the time I was seven to seventeen, we were constantly recounting stories from our last camp experience, or planning for the next summer.

In the almost twenty years Laura and I have been friends, we have shared many experiences, but some of the most vivid in my mind are our summers at camp.  There was a camp that was a little more rustic than our tastes (outhouses and a hose tied to a tree for brushing our teeth), and there was a camp where we had a slightly traumatizing canoe experience.  There were counselors we didn't really like, and counselors we adored; there was a sailboat we managed to capsize in approximately three feet of water, countless inside jokes, camp songs and cheers that we sang year round.  There were new friends we didn't want to leave, a lot of tears on the last night of camp, and our first real experience with tragedy the summer one of of our fellow staff members was killed in a car wreck.  

I think that camp is one of the main reasons our friendship has continued over the years;  camp is an environment that fosters friendship in a way that school or other activities just can't.  The friends you make at camp are friends that see you in an environment where the rules are different;  it is a world of it's own, complete with unique trends and slang, and because it is a different world, the friendships you make there are different from those you make elsewhere.