Going Back To Camp

Last summer I lived for eleven weeks in the mountains just west of Yosemite National Park. I moved everything out of my fabulous studio apartment in the city, shoved two huge bags of worn-out hot weather clothes into a borrowed-for-the-summer Subaru, and made a new home for myself in a tiny cabin next to the Tuolumne River on the grounds of the largest Jewish residential camp on the West Coast. While there I got two terrible infections, one thorn stuck in my foot, and a fabulous tan including some adorable freckles. I read from the Torah, ate food that had fallen on the ground, perfected my hora and even got touched on the leg by a (not very) large and (only somewhat) ominous-looking fish on the one and only brave trip I made down to the river to go swimming.

Last summer, showering in public and with hair as dry as hay from the wind and heat and high-altitude sun I swore there was no way I would go back again. No sirree Bob, not me. I am a grown-up and I am a city kid and I like to live INdoors. With a bathroom in the same building where I sleep at night. And consistent wireless. Is that too much to ask? I mean, I know there's all-you-can-drink Peet's, but still. A girl's gotta have standards, you know?

And now it is May, and here I find myself once again preparing to pack for camp. To say a lot has happened between then and now would be an understatement of the most epic proportion. It is a much easier task this time, with most of my things still in storage and only a few decisions to make about how many pairs of jeans to take with me and how many to leave behind here in Berkeley at Rebecca's house--as opposed to last year when I was putting my entire life away, locked in an Alameda warehouse, for the next fifteen months. I have learned a lot about myself, about what I need and what is extra, about what to take and what to leave behind.

Looking forward to another three months at camp this summer I looked back through my old journal to find a list I remember making one hot afternoon last August, sitting on the Dining Hall porch with Allie as she did hemp macrame and I chronicled my memories, as always, in not pixels and megabytes but pen and ink. Things I Wish I'd Had At Camp This Summer, the list was titled (excerpted here for length and for content):

•clothespins, since the staff clothesline by Arts and Crafts had none and just when I'd finally do my laundry and drape it over the cord strung between sagging metal supports that looked like tired aluminum trees drooping in the sun, the wind would blow and all my socks and my two pairs of jeans and my thirty versions of the exact same tank top from H&M that I wore every single day would fall down into the dust and get dirty again

•dryer sheets for the times I did laundry in the coolness of the night or when the clothesline was full and I actually needed to put my wash in the machine instead of out in the sunshine to dry, since the faux-floral industrial scent of the institutional-strength laundry detergent would always linger and make my clothes smell like they belonged to someone else

and...
•iron-on name tapes, since I cannot even tell you how many garments that I brought into the mountains in early June went home with other people at the end of August....seen my Stanford sweatshirt, anyone? Anyone? It's still missing :(

So this evening, with Kristine's encouragement, I got online and found a wide range of colors, styles, prices, and levels of cuteness in the realm of laundry identification. It didn't take long before I settled on the selection above, from the Pretty Colours collection (the website is Canadian, what can I say?) instead of the red and blue and yellow of the Cool Colours collection, heaven forbid. Now you would think the problem would be solved, since six dozen heat transfer nametags are headed my way to be pressed into my garments big and small, top and bottom and neither, and I should return with just as many if not more items of clothing than last year. But now a new problem remains: how will I know which of the color selections to match with each garment?!

I'm down with OCD, yeah you know me...but at least I'll have all my clothes when I come back in September.