A-Camp September 2012 Recamp #1: We Absolutely Started The Fire

VI. The Campers Arrive!

Campers started showing up around noon to register and move in to their cabins. We had some activities, like High Tea and Alternative Lifestyle Barbershop and T-Shirt Cutting/Stenciling to entertain the people before programming started at dinner.

Robin: Day One was about 1000 times less stressful for me than it was in April. In fact, it wasn’t stressful at all, it was really really fun!

robin is so happy and having so much fun (photo by crystal)

Morgan: I’ve never felt so good to be so well-endowed in the upper body strength department. I was always kinda embarrassed for being a tiny chica with guns, but from camp day one I became a popular people-squeezing-destination. My muscles have a use other than scaring people whose hands I shake!

Katrina: We internalize a lot of things in this life and forget about them for a long time. A lot of those things are overwhelmingly difficult and sometimes scary, but once in a great while they’re not. There was something great dormant in me that I had long, long forgotten about. And that was my love of camp.

Robin: This time around we put Riese and Laneia at registration along with some other key staff members so they could greet campers they came in.

hello welcome to a-camp

this would be how we roll

Laneia: I was so excited to be signing everyone in! We interacted with almost all of the campers before we’d even had dinner.

Riese: Last year, Laneia and I spent the first day at the airport and in a van. But working registration with Morgan and Carolyn meant we got to greet all the faces with our own faces! It was like my birthday except with human sacrifices instead of presents.

Laneia: I want to do sign-in duties from now on. Write that down.

Riese: Ditto.

Robin: I love that they did this because these are the rockstars of Autostraddle.com and I’m not sure we can tell them enough what their work means to all of us! Not being on registration allowed me to station myself outside Wolf to watch the campers coming down from the parking lot, lugging their suitcases over the gravel, looks of excitement and sheer terror on their faces. I couldn’t stop smiling.

campers arriving on wednesday

Sara Medd, 21 Hump Street Counselor/Calendar Stylist: I stood proudly behind the gift bag table passing out swag and name tags. I loved getting to see everyone coming in and learning names from the get-go. I loved seeing familiar faces mixed in with brand new ones. I felt like the proud hostess of the party that was about to be A-Camp 2.0, greeting her guests and welcoming each one in to our utopia.

Megan: I was ushering campers to their cabins and trying my best not to grab them and scream WE’RE SO GLAD YOU’RE HERE WE LOVE YOU. Instead I just carried their luggage.

Morgan: One of my Battlestars, who’d only existed as an avatar and a slew of kind words, ran up to me and was real! REAL. I often wonder if you are all fig newtons of my imagination, but you’re not, you’re fun and smile a lot.

Counselors Geneva and Morgan bond over shared geekdom (photo by morgan mccormick)

Riese: At some point the “release forms” station was being manned by Sarah Croce, Haviland and Mollie and I was like, “aw it’s all our eye candy at one table!” and they gave me a weird look. Luckily I had Tinkerbell with me this time and she gets me.

Sara Medd: My excitement was so much greater during this registration than last, to be honest. I wasn’t distracted by work or obligation, and I knew what these campers were about to experience during the following few days: a life-changing weekend that would send them out into the world standing a little prouder and more confident than before.

sara medd stands tall (photo by riese)

Rachel: Alice Motes got there early in the day with a trunk full of snacks and booze. Round of applause for Alice, everybody.

Carrie: She later gave me a Coke Zero when I was in a pinch. Isn’t Alice is just the very best?

Riese: Also whiskey!

Laneia: ALICE MOTES!

Carly: Most of the Thundercats (HOOO!) arrived in the afternoon, so Crystal and I got to hang out with them before dinner.

Crystal: Our campers got to work decorating their cabin — they had brought along posters of cats and balloons to make storm clouds and it was genius. Meredith even brought everyone Thundercats buttons.

note the cat photograph in the background (photo by rachel walker)

Carmen: T-Shirt Cutting & Stenciling ended up being a great ongoing activity because so many people showed up! I met faces! I also saw faces passing me all of the time. Jill came by and made the first-ever Badass Bear shirt, and it looked badass. Also, the smokers’ circle was nearby.

Crystal: Carly and I hit it up and spray-painted the Thundercats logo onto our t-shirts in solidarity.

Whitney: I volunteered for Friendship Bracelet duty, which involved hanging out in Deer Lodge with a giant bag of gimp lanyard and embroidery floss and macramé cord and beads and feathers. We made bracelets, keychains and key fobs and I felt like I was my plucky, keychain-making middle school self again. Meredydd and Malaika were on bracelet duty with me, so we sat in a circle of friendship with all of the campers and braided and talked about friendship and generally felt it — the friendship, I mean.

Rachel: We had over a dozen types of tea for an Inaugural High Tea with varying levels of caffeination and herbs/flowers/etc. Last camp we had I’ll Show You Mine, which was a book full of vaginas, to look at while drinking tea. This time we had that book and several more! It feels good to be able to offer someone tea and books and vaginas when they’ve just gotten off a shuttle coming all the way up a scary mountain.

Sarah Hansen, camper/Autostraddle Contributing Editor: After we got settled into our cabin, Zeller got a haircut from Katrina’s Alternative Lifestyle Barbershop! You’d be surprised how many people want to just stand around and watch a person get a hair cut, but the duo drew quite the crowd and we met so many awesome people this way.

zeller gets a haircut (photo by marni)

Katrina: How beautiful and slightly terrifying to meet you all at once. I hope you liked your bags. I hope you took a cookie. You deserve it.

Laura: With the exception of a few little bumps in the road on the way home, getting 100 people to and from the airport this time went swimmingly!

 

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VII. Cabin Initiation

meredith holds one piece of the key to unlock the code of the runaways

Riese: After dinner, Laneia and I kicked the Runaways out of the cabin to prepare for the secret ritual ceremony and then we ushered them in and all the peanuts sat in a circle and then Meredith, sporting probably the cutest facial expression in the history of the human face, goes: “I’ve never been more excited for something in my whole life!” I think someone was like, “Really?” and she was like, “Yes!” Ever since camp, whenever I get sad, I think about that moment and feel happy again, seriously.

Carmen: We had our campers sit in a little circle that turned into a big circle and asked them questions about their lives. They demanded that they hear me rap by the end of camp and then told us how long they’d been reading Autostraddle. And dood, some of these people really fucking knew their shit! It’s amazing to meet a camper who’s been around in the community longer than me, you know?

Rachel: Initiation was a life-changing event that none of us will ever forget. We all have matching tattoos now. That’s not true, but we did realize immediately how awesome our cabin was and how lucky we were to be Jetpack together. Also, the cabin still sort of smelled like water damage. SORRY, JETPACK.

Katrina: Meeting my campers was great, even though I’m stupid shy and don’t always know what to talk about or how to introduce myself or say hi. I feel like there’s this thing that’s imagined where YOU’RE awkward, and everyone else is totally fine and socially ept and like the silence is your fault. But it’s not, or maybe it is, but we’re all working through it together. I think that’s what was cool about having the entire Snatch cabin be my age. I met my campers and looked at all their cute faces and saw this huge range of what it could mean to be queer at this age and and this time. It was like this quiet reassurance, the fact that we could all be up there together.

Crystal: Carly and I both really love music and so of course Thundercats initiation was music themed. We asked each camper to name a song that they really relate to and then sat around in the cabin listening to everyone’s selections. At the end we gave them all a Thundercats mix tape with the songs on it.

Carly: Mix tape listening party!

Thundercats (photo by rachel walker)

Alex: The Avengers initiation was less “initiation” and more “cawfee tawk” without the coffee. Because if it were up to me to actually initiate someone into something, there would be wedgies involved and nobody wants that. Vikki (my co-counselor) and I just asked my campers a bunch of possibly intrusive questions in order to better get to know their beautiful souls. I loved it.

Sara Medd: I loved the unity that almost instantly formed within the cabin. Obviously, one of the first orders of business was to figure out a cabin chant for the rainbow war games. We were green team and losing was not an option. After an intense couple of “never have I ever” ice breaking rounds, the cabin set out for rainbow war station games. HUMP HUMP!!!!

Morgan: Will my campers like me? I totally confess to fretting re: this. I mean, there’s a lot of redhead prejudice these days keeping my polka dotted people down. Don’t judge my ginger identity! Really though, Stef and I’s puppy pile of sweetness, the Battlestars, were like ambassadors from the planet of All The Best Things. I thought my happiness had hit its ceiling, but then it sank in: all A-Camperlings, all Autostraddle supplicants, are really fucking nifty people! Plus you smell fab.

Riese: I can’t actually tell you what the Runaways initiation consisted of because it is top secret. It involved a pledge and dim lighting and emotional exercises and Mazzy Star and facepaint. That’s all I can say.

Laneia: I painted their cheeks with love paint, and we were one.

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NEXT: THE WAR BEGINS.

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Riese

Riese is the 43-year-old Co-Founder of Autostraddle.com as well as an award-winning writer, video-maker, LGBTQ+ Marketing consultant and aspiring cyber-performance artist who grew up in Michigan, lost her mind in New York and now lives in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in nine books, magazines including Marie Claire and Curve, and all over the web including Nylon, Queerty, Nerve, Bitch, Emily Books and Jezebel. She had a very popular personal blog once upon a time, and then she recapped The L Word, and then she had the idea to make this place, and now here we all are! In 2016, she was nominated for a GLAAD Award for Outstanding Digital Journalism. She's Jewish and has a cute dog named Carol. Follow her on twitter and instagram.

Riese has written 3279 articles for us.

184 Comments

  2. So fun to see the photobooth pics! Wooo Neverland! Are there larger versions of those pics somewhere?

  3. I just so happen to be wearing my A Camp t-shirt today because I needed to feel…I don’t know…maybe just feel something? And now I’m reading this and actually shouted RAINBOW WARS aloud and felt all excited when I thought about tug of war and stomping on people’s balloons and now I’m smiling. So, obviously my A Camp shirt (and A Camp) are magical.

  4. I hate myself for reading this. I’ll spend the next 7 to 14 days fantasizing about a camp on the other side of the world.

  5. i forgot to mention this but i am sure i told much of the staff: when i was an angry little adolescent at summer camp in middle-of-nowhere pennsylvania, my camp had rainbow wars only they were called the OLYMPICS and all the colours were different countries and you had to cheer 24 hours a day including mealtimes until everyone was hoarse and miserable and you had to do awful sports all the time and when i didn’t want to do those things, the counselors screamed at me the way people being paid to take care of children should never scream at anyone. i went to that camp every summer, so after begging in the office to not have to participate, i learned that i could hide in the tack room of the camp’s stable with a kitten and a discman and read my little kurt vonnegut collection for three or four days, skulking out once in a while for mealtimes and sleeptimes. i was not very popular, so nobody ever noticed i was missing.

    i was NOT INTO THE IDEA OF RAINBOW WAR AT ALL and when i mentioned this to robin, she told me “oh, it’s going to be SUPER SCARY.”

    instead rainbow war was super fun and helped everybody band together and fight the patriarchy and smash balloons!
    AND i got to be co-counselors with morgan which is the luckiest thing anybody has ever won.

    team polite forevs.
    i miss you guys.

    • It was fun and I am not a joiner. Also, reading your horror story, I’m glad I never went to camp because I lived in Kansas and I’m sure it would have been just as awful.

      • everything else was so fun but once a summer it would get so aggressive and weird! also really, LOL at anyone who thought i was going to be prepared to be on any team but france (the black team).

  6. I love that the thundercats are preparing to dominate by doing stretches :) Also epic tug of war win, and you guys team activities in the dark with whiskey is the bomb dot com.

  7. oh god, you took a cuddle puddle picture! I think a just had a mild anxiety attack. thank god it’s a well-behaved one… (a lot, and I mean A LOT of feelings happened after the staff reading but..smokers’ circle love, yes…)

  9. The honeymoon present is the best things you guys could’ve bought with the fundraiser money. Approve 4000%. Whitney seems like the sweetest person.

    • I also approve this message. Whitney, you didn’t even tell us about this! Also, also, Becca, I miss you!

  10. oh my god I miss camp and all your shiny faces.

    Also, I’ve come to embrace the fact that I am essentially a mobile bar.

    Alsox2, can I get an Awomen about having ice this time around! Praise LJ!

    AVENGERS ASSEMBLE!

  12. You guys are the best ever and god dammit it might take me YEARS but I am going to come to A-Camp sometime and you’ll all be disappointed by the fact my hair isn’t rainbow any more but I WANT TO FEEL ALL THE QUEER LOVE so much. You’re all beautiful.

  13. So many feelings! Mel I love your face, Katie I love your photos, Mel I love your face, Laneia I love you and Riese and your initiation ceremony is the best and I tell myself the code all of time and!!!!! And reading about the before we got there, so happy that it was good and happy and not too stresful for you guys.

    THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR CAMP.

    • Yeah, reading this… I’m definitely coming in May, somehow, no matter if I can afford it or not.

  15. This makes me positive that, come hell or high water, i will be at the next A-camp. It will be the perfect way to celebrate finishing my Peace Corps service/returning to the States/getting to be a full-time queer again. May cannot come soon enough.

  16. Dear Crystal,

    I had to google who Daniela Sea was due to my naiveté, but now that I’ve googled, thanks for mentioning her in the same sentence as myself. :)

    –Jill

  18. me and my cabin straddled chairs in front of riese and alex for our straddling addiction. it may not have been original, but from our viewpoint it was surreal! little rascals 4evs!

  19. Okay, I totally just cried in the university library while reading this. Thanks Team, for being awesome.

    • I totally just went into my roomates room, stole a chocolate bar and a cigarette because I have so many feelings. it’s 1.30am, she was sleeping while I was creeping.it’s a rhyme.awesome. #feelings

  20. so many feelings! also MAY MAY MAY MAY…y u so far away.
    continually checking flight rates and already told my dad I will not be at what feels like his 10th wedding (-celebration, not the actual thing) on the 25th of MAY MAY MAY MAY MAY

  22. WHO RUNNETH THE WORLD?? SNATCH!!
    I still routinely fight the urge to yell this aloud in public.

  23. The first thing I said when I walked into Wolf for registration was “I’m home!” It amazes me how fast camp becomes the norm. Readjusting to the real world takes so much time, but flying across the country and climbing up a mountain to live with queermos from the internet just feels right. The people feel right.

    • Whaat. Are you gonna be a traitor and not request Jetpack/purple for next camp?

      (I know a little bit about being a traitor. SORRY BOMB GIRLS.)

      • Hah! Though I love to mix and mingle… I will forever be bleeding purple (as Rachel would put it) and a Jetpack at heart.

  25. This makes me feel like I’m back on the mountain. And I miss it so fucking badly. I NEED NEXT MAY TO GET HERE ASAP.

  26. I think Robin is a genius because the rainbow wars clearly brought us all together. Just read the comments on every single post since camp! I can’t wait to see what the next wars will be like :) It will be hard to switch up the teams though! Purple team will forever be my people :)

    *hunger salute!*

  27. I was having such an awful day… it’s getting cold here and all I want to do is hibernate, but this recap made everything so much better! I miss camp like crazy.

    Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve wanted to be thrown up in the air by a parachute. I got to do this during the color wars, and it was basically the best thing ever. Even though my feet went way over my head, I wasn’t scared at all, because a cluster of lovely people were there to catch me. (This is probably a metaphor for camp as a whole.) Seriously, you make dreams come true.

    • Alex! I’m emotional from reading this and also thinking about how the parachute made your butt wet.

  28. AHHhhhhhhh all the feelings. Also, Mary and Grace, you need to get in on our weekly(ish) Little Rascals gchat

  29. Tonight I passed the derby assessment I thought the time off for A-Camp might cause me to fail, and now I am fully mins passed and I belong in that community of awesome (50% queer) women that is starting to feel like a family, and then I come home and there is a recap of my other community of awesome (~100% queer) women that felt like a family too.

    Today is a really good day, you guys, is what I’m saying.

    And booking September A-Camp in the depths of despair as something to look forward to / cling on to was an excellent decision, because sometimes it is six months after the world fell apart and you can’t believe how well everything has worked out. And I miss camp all the time.

  30. I can’t wait till next A-Camp. I am still playing catch up with the school and work that I missed but it was so incredibly worth it. You are all so beautiful, I can’t stand it. I had soooo much fun.

  31. ENDURANCE SPOONING
    I love how Marika is asleep in that photo. Is there a way to get a larger one?

    Alice got me my rose <3

    • I’m not asleep, I’m just extremely relaxed. If we had moved that giant spoon train to a giant bed I would have been totally out.

      remember when we repositioned and Shannon fell asleep on my boobs, though?

      TEAM GIANT SPOON REPRESENT

        • Yes, Alice is magic. I can’t believe you had to ask. Also, yay a picture of my spare embroidery hoop made it onto the site. I was like “Do I really want to be that girl who brings the extra embroidery hoop and sewing supplies to camp?” Obviously it was a good decision.

          Science Bitches! and Dolly Parton quotes make the sewing circle go round.

  32. Marni became my idol that first night at the parachute station. I’m so glad I’m not the only one who spent my childhood looking forward to the next game of Cat&Mouse (top&bottom). Because Canada. <3

  34. Idk how to feel about having two pictures of me on the internets in which I cuddle/spoon people…proud, I suppose. Two years ago, I would have never dreamed that I would be doing this kinda thing. AS, you are the magic I needed in my life.

    SAVING $2 A DAY FOR THE NEXT CAMP!

  35. Lately, I think of life as Pre-A-Camp and Post-A-Camp.
    I wish I could put into beautiful words what this queertopia in the mountains meant to me, but I can’t, so I’m glad you can.
    A-Camp was full of love of all kinds, where you could cuddle for the fun of it and TRULY be yourself.
    After camp, I understood the true meaning of “You Do You,” and I did.
    A week after I came home from camp, with my new-found queer support, I came out to my homophobic dad.
    I love you, A-Camp, and every single person I got to share this experience with.

  38. I really love that Grace and I tricked everyone into thinking the lighting at the campfire was somehow magically installed by the two of us.

    Alpine installed it. Sorry everyone.

    OMG I WANT TO GO BAAAAACK! THUNDERCATS, HOOOO!

    • THUNDERCATS! This recamp made me miss you all and camp so much more, which I didn’t think was possible.

      • This is exactly why I woke up and had those meetings, I was inspired by your genius pranking abilities and was trying to find a way to streamline the awesome…I mean clearly from night one we had that on lockdown, but you can never be overprepared. THUNDERCATS! (HOOOOOO)

  39. i didn’t even know that the rachel walker photobomb was the thing missing from my life, but it was. thank you, rachel walker. how can i ever thank you enough.

  41. Y’know… I’ve missed people and places in my life, but not the way I miss A-Camp. There was just something about this simple life where people got along, you were fed at such and such time, people discussed stuff, and so on and so forth. These feelings are coming back hard.

  42. “I was ushering campers to their cabins and trying my best not to grab them and scream WE’RE SO GLAD YOU’RE HERE WE LOVE YOU. Instead I just carried their luggage.”

    MEGAN I really wish you had done that.

  43. I’m emotionally spent and this is just Day 1!!

    Also, how could I let myself miss Digger saying “fuck me with a strapon?” Life fail.

    • She also said “pull my hair.”

      Purple/Jetpack won that story-building session. Just for the record. #teampurplepride

    • I would like to clarify that nobody “made” me say “fuck me with a strap on”…I volunteered! The “pull my hair” was my homage to Lizz. And it was all so very worth it if only for the look on Riese’s face. Thank you and goodnight.

  45. the first day i didn’t know ANYONE. now i have 14 fucking friends i could talk to any time i needed them. BOOM DONE GOODBYE.

  46. the honeymoon gift was the sweetest thing. recaps make me so happy, it’s almost like being back at camp. 227 days y’all

  48. I think I have the same hoodie as from the “marni and robin greet the crowd” photo on page 5. My wardrobe is ~*Autostraddle Approved*~ :3

  49. i have so many feelings i can’t even begin to process. i am so in love with my THUNDERCATS (HOOOOOOO) cabin i can’t even start, and i want to hug Carly and Crystal so hard i might burst. Also, my big dumb face appeared so many times in this recap i want to die. Robin! If you see this, please send me a larger version of the photo of me photo-bombing the Misfits, because it looks like it might be magical. I’m the giant blonde mess in the tiny picture of the rainbow war photobooth collage!

    YOU GUYS I WANT TO BE AT CAMP FOREVER OMG

  50. SARA MEDD you were the best with the gift bags.
    Did you get Lina’s and my “Du hast wunderschöne Augen”-note? Because you saying that to me was so amazing, I just had to blush and giggle stupidly.

  51. Oh god, our cabin photobooth picture is adorable.

    I have to admit, I lost balloon tag almost immediately because I was paralyzed with fear/laughter.

  52. I’d like to take note of how hilarious the “Sanctus Cacas Fert” motto is and vote that mAy Camp t-shirts have that printed on them!!!!

    • I want it on a coffee mug. And a shirt. And on the waist band of some boy shorts.

      For now I’ll just have to content myself with my bad ass bear shirt. Which is solid consolation.

      • oh my god the waistband of boy shorts!! This would be the most amazing. So jealous you have it on a shirt.

  53. The sentiment of going to A-Camp again is captured in this: “It feels like going home.” It’s so, so, so true, and I hope everyone gets to experience this feeling at least once in their life.

  54. it is 2 am. I am currently 38 dollars in the negative at the moment. HOWEVER! I am determined to be able to go A camp this fall. Bound and determined.

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