Love Letter to Camp Mystic

My mom slathered a third layer of sunscreen on my already pink arms and hugged me one last time in front of my new home for the next month, a cabin aptly named Chatterbox. Another girl my height dashed out of the front door of the cabin and across the gravel road in front of us toward the commissary, and before the screen door could slam behind her, the roar of unruly 10 year old girls giggling and shouting escaped briefly from inside.

Though the first Mystic camper in my family, I was one of thousands of Texas women who had come before me to Hunt, Texas each summer since 1926 — to learn how to fish, shoot a bow and arrow, and swim gracefully in the cool waters of the Guad. More importantly, to make lifelong friends, to grow spiritually, and to leave a better person for having been there.

The Guadalupe River

Like many of us who grew up going to camp, these summers shaped me into the person I am today.

Camp Mystic in the ’30’s

I developed a fondness for handwritten snail mail that has stayed with me. Weekly awards for “Best Posture” engrained in me a permanent motive to always sit up straight. Morning cabin inspections (rewarded with the much coveted secret recipe oatmeal chocolate chip cookies) taught me how to mop and tidy up effectively in a jiffy.

A letter addressed to Mom and Dad was a camper’s required entry ticket into the dining hall for Sunday fried chicken (appropriately called Chicken Letters) and taught me to make staying in touch with my parents a priority. Hand painted on a wooden sign, “Patience is a virtue” reminded antsy girls waiting in line at the commissary for popsicles after rest hour not to push or shove. The infirmary, called Heaven Can Wait, was an air conditioned oasis with nurses so nice they must’ve sweat sugar water. I once came in complaining of generally not feeling well and left with a glass of ice cold lemonade and massaged feet.

Letter envelope to Mom and Dad “I spent all my money on cameras & bullets”

Letters from Dad

It’s been 16 years since my last summer at Mystic, but the memories I made on those beautiful 725 acres are endless and come to me often. I share an indescribable bond with generations of women who have collected these same memories. I am certain that all of us are transported back to Mystic daily in our thoughts. Checking emails at the office or driving in the car, I might suddenly remember collecting baby frogs at Bubblegum Creek or find myself humming “Barges,” a song we used to sing around giant crackling campfires.

Young campers exploring

At any given time, I’m thinking of Blue Bell ice cream eating contests, War Canoe, natural mud facemasks from “the Tubs,” and how the power would always go out from hundreds of hairdryers and curling irons before the Stewart Dance, whence the neighboring boys camp would pile out of buses by the dozen in button downs chosen carefully by their mothers. I look back fondly on bobbing for apples and piling in together for bumpy hay rides at the carnival. Sounds and tastes and images of Mystic run through my blood. The cicadas outside my screened window at night. The whir of fans and snores of dog-tired girls during rest hour. The smell of Richard’s coffee cake on Saturday mornings. I’ll never forget the feeling of holding tiny sweaty hands of girls of all ages as we walked in a line up the secret, un-marked path to Kiowa Tribe Hill, chanting slightly out of sync as we went.

War Canoe

The two tribes, Kiowas and Tonkawas, battle it out during War Canoe

The sound of Reveille and Taps echoing across the camp at sunrise and bedtime now echo in my heart. All of it has stayed with me– the leftover sting of belly flop contests, the shrill sound of my own scream upon collecting my drying socks from the clothesline, only to discover a hiding tarantula. And I get the sense that these memories float in ether mingling with the memories of all of the other campers who came before me. All fond summer camp memories are connected somehow, which bonds me with others who hold them.

Kiowa Campers (myself included)

Today, I call upon my lessons from summer camp to make me a better person. Lessons of patience and sharing and reapplying sunscreen. Lessons of disconnecting and spending time outside. And one lesson in particular from an old and beloved camp director, Iney, comes to me often these days as I navigate owning my own business, and motherhood.

It’s easy enough to be pleasant,

when life flows along like a song

But the girl worth while
 is the one who will smile

when everything goes dead wrong

Iney at Harrison Hall on a fried chicken Sunday

The things learned at summer camp, as simple as they are, we often forget as adults. Even if you didn’t spend your Mays packing a trunk to the brim with t-shirts and socks in preparation for summer camp, I encourage all of us to remember the days when sharing and patience and reapplying sunscreen were the most important lessons we could follow.

If I can sum up Camp Mystic with one word, it would be tradition. From the sacred songs sung in unison on Tribal Hill, to wearing all white on Sunday, tradition was taken seriously by young and old. As a child, Mystic demonstrated to me the power of longtime tradition: the bond it could create between people, the culture it could create within a community. I witnessed the power of generations of tradition, and since have been shaped by it.

 In loving memory of Maggie, who embodied what it meant to be a Mystic girl, and who filled many summers with laughter and joy.

The Architect's Daughter

Left: One of my dad's thousands of watercolor paintings. Right: Maine in the winter.

My parents are up at our house in Maine at the moment, battening down the hatches for the impending blizzard. But three feet of snow won't stop my dad. His profound yearning to live a romantic, whimsical, poetic life pushes and pulls him so strongly that he will dredge through anything to experience the island's endless beauty.

You'll rarely find my dad without a sketchbook an arm's reach away.  See more of his work here.

Through an architect's eye: snapshots of Maine from my dad's point of view. [Instagram Source: @michaelmber]

Right now, he's probably hiking along the coast, collecting wild berries for his homemade cobbler. Or maybe he's leaning over the dock precariously, searching for mussels in the freezing Atlantic waters (where, deep beneath the surface lie several pairs of fallen eyeglasses from past failed attempts).

Right: Fresh pickings! My dad has shared the recipe for his famous homemade Maine cobbler on his own blog, At Home & Afield. [Instagram Source: @michaelmber]

He could be up on the covered porch, wrapped in a flannel blanket, listening to Whiskeytown while he watercolors Old Harbor. Then again, he could be crouched in the teeny tiny powder bathroom, painting little dragonflies and stick bugs on the green leaves of the old wallpaper.

Right: If it weren't winter, I'd place bets on my dad being out on our hundred year old sailboat, Belle, right now. [Instagram Source: @michaelmber]

Wherever he is, he's building a beautiful life. He can't help himself. He's an architect. That's what he does; build beautiful things.

And as this architect's daughter, my life is brimming with the results of his efforts.

From an early age, he instilled in me a sharp sense of good design — in my style choices, for instance. (Maxwell isn't so sure though)

This blog will offer just a small glimpse into how being The Architect's Daughter has shaped me into who I am today. From our travels as a family, to my cherished collection of watercolors — my dad's undying passion for living a well-designed, beautiful life has always been my biggest inspiration.

Go ahead and venture out into that blizzard in search of life's little beauties, Dad, but please — wear a coat. 

Learn more about my architect dad here.