Most people would argue that home is where you live, however, mine home is away from home. Four hours away from home. A no technology home. On the river home. It’s my camp home. I go to Camp Alleghany for girls in Caldwell, West Virginia. Alleghany has been my home for the last 11 years. My great grandma, my grandma, my mother, my sister, and I have all gone to this camp. I started to go to a family camp at Alleghany in late August with my family when I was just three years old. I started to go to term camp when I turned 10 years old. I’d go for 3 weeks at a time and I would sleep in a tent with wooden platforms and white canvas flaps that droop over the wooden bar supports with the little strings to tie the flaps up for when it gets too hot. Camp is home to me because it’s where I feel the most comfortable in my own skin. We’re not supposed to wear makeup or really care how we look. It’s a camp and no one is there to judge you.
However, one of the things that I love most about my camp is the empowerment that it gives each little girl. I used to be a small little camper who always looked up to the 15’s, which is the oldest age group. Now I will be a 15 and it’s hard to think that I will not be a camper for much longer. I was so excited to grow up that I forgot to stop to look around me. Although it’s my last year as a camper, I have started to realize that I get to share the magic and support of Alleghany.
There is so much teamwork as well as competitiveness with our two teams, blue or gray. All of the games and activities that determine who wins the name on the banner. Me personally, along with everyone in my family, is a gray. Yet, most of my friends are blues. Although we are on different teams, at the end of each competition we shout our team cheers, then we hug the opposite team members because in the end, we are all friends.
I only see my friends once a year for three weeks. The excitement of seeing them on the first day of camp is the best feeling one could have. The late night talks, waking your tentmate up because you’re too scared to walk to the bathroom alone, the walk to milk and cookies, the getting up for hopping which is another word for waitering, and the songs. The songs, I could go on and on about the songs we sing. They make you feel like you are really at home. With one song lyric saying “it’s the place I call home, all summer long, and you know all the words to every song”. Whenever we sing this song, I resonate with who I am no matter if I am on Vesper Hill looking out on the rest of junior camp, or if it’s the concluding song of campfire. Then, when the final night comes, we have something called babys boats. Babys Boats is a tradition on the last night of camp where we put candles on top of boats with our wishes on them. We then release them into the river. We cry, laugh, and my favorite, sing. One of the final lyrics we sing is “I want to linger a little longer, a little longer with you, this is the perfect night, it doesn’t seem quite right, this is my very last night with you.” Camp has been such an important puzzle piece to me. I’m not sure what I will do without it. However, the one thing I wish I could do is become a little girl again and to soak in every last second of it, because those years have been the best years of my life.
– Madeline Hoover, Camper
