My Letter

October 3 2009, 12:04pm

Camp Little Notch is in danger of being closed. Former campers and staff are being asked to write letters, in an effort to convince the Girl Scouts of Northeastern New York to save CLN. For more information, please visit http://friendsofcln.org.

I thought I'd post my letter here. It ran a bit long, and it took me 3 hours to write, but it says what I needed it to say:

"October 1, 2009

Dear GSNENY Board Member,

My name is Sarah ----, and I hope you will let me tell you my story. I am 28 years old and a teacher at an elementary school outside New Orleans, Louisiana. I am a graduate of St. Lawrence University with a B.A. in creative writing and philosophy. I have a part time job as a sports blogger. But before I was all these things, I was a camper at Camp Little Notch. More specifically, camp has been a part of my life since my West Sand Lake, NY troop started going there when I was a Brownie. I was a summer camper from 1992-1996, and a C.I.T. in 1997. From 1998-2000 I worked as a counselor.

When I heard that Camp Little Notch was closed last summer, I was disturbed and upset. As a teacher I have the summers off, and I had hoped to visit, or maybe to volunteer to work there for a week. It’s been a long time since I’ve been back, but inside my heart, I still hear the lapping of the lake water on the rocks. I hear it all the time, and it is a part of me. In fact, there are pieces of me littered all around Camp Little Notch. Some you can’t see. But some you can: a silk screen that hung on a rafter in the dining hall, the one that looks like a slice of pie with a flag stuck in it, the one that says “C.I.T. ‘97.” That’s mine, and there are other things that are mine too, because I believe we leave pieces of ourselves every place we go. Imagine how many pieces of how many women the land around Camp Little Notch has collected and carried over the decades.

I want to share with you an excerpt from my old diary. According to the date at the top, I wrote it on Tuesday, August 22, 2000 at 4:22 PM. This was my third year as a staff member, and the last night of camp before I would head back to my sophomore year at St. Lawrence University. And this is what I wrote:

“I’m sitting on the lifeguard chair at the waterfront, feeling the sun and the wind. Smelling the water, a sharp fresh smell. Listening to the rowboats as they shift, creak, and bang against one another in the wind. Squinting up the lake at the trees and the blue water. The definition of it all is what gets me: you can see every tree, every wave outlined so clearly.

But now I’ve got to climb down off this chair. I’ve got to stop staring, mesmerized, at the way the light ripples across the sand on the shallow bottom of the lake. I’ve got to stop thinking about how the years go by in cycles, and people and places come and go and come and go, and how I love it and hate it at the same time. I’ve got to stop remembering me at 11, me at 13, me at 16.

So instead I’ll put my sandals on, go back to Pine Point. I’ll think about how the song says, ‘This is goodnight and not goodbye.’ I’ll smile and be proud because, even though I am leaving, I’m taking things with me. And after all, it’s hard to miss something when you’ve got it with you, when it’s ingrained in you like this place is.

And besides, I’m coming back.”

But I never did. That was the last night I was ever there. And it seems so strange to me right now to write that, because it feels like I was there yesterday. The next two summers, I worked as a sailing instructor and counselor at Raquette Lake Girls Camp, and two years later I was the Small Crafts director at Camp Matoaka in Maine. And then I graduated from college and moved to New Orleans, where I’ve been ever since. Somehow I’ve never made it back.

However, having worked at other camps, I can perhaps tell you some things that other CLN alumni may not be able to tell you. I can tell you that girls are getting something special at Little Notch when they are put out in a true camp environment with no electricity and none of the comforts they are used to at home. Outdoor survival and cooking are not taught anymore at other camps. I saw so many young women complain about how grubby they were or how much they wanted TV, but then by the end of ten days they were having the best time of their lives. Self-reliance, bonding together with group members, and being placed outside of one’s comfort zone are important for girls. It’s how we grow as people in the fastest and most memorable of ways.

I can also tell you about how the Girl Scout experience is different from what girls get at a co-ed camp. Girls are under so much pressure with regard to their appearance. Camp Little Notch was one of the few environments I ever witnessed that pushed an attitude of unconditional acceptance. Getting a summer break from self-consciousness, from boys, from the pervasiveness of the male gaze... you don’t know how valuable this is for girls who haven’t experienced it. I was not popular at school when I was growing up-- mostly, I am guessing, because I had glasses, I had scoliosis and had to wear a back brace, I read too much, and I wasn’t pretty. But I was popular at camp. And that’s because Little Notch gave me a place to be happy with the things I was good at -- climbing mountains, getting dirty, making things outside, sailing, and being creative.

Finally, I can tell you as a sailing and small crafts director that having a private lake is something really special. It was much harder to promote water safety when you had to deal with private and motor craft interfering with the campers. Having so much to do-- even historic sites to visit-- without even having to leave the CLN property is a luxury many camps do not have. And I am willing to bet there are girls in Albany who have never experienced true quiet at night, or how beautiful the stars can be in a perfectly dark sky. Who have never heard the soft echoes as singing voices fade away into the night after a staff serenade ends. I desperately hope they will still be able to have these experiences in the future.

So here’s the part of the letter where I’m going to ask you for something, and you knew this was coming. I’m going to ask you to please save Camp Little Notch. I am willing to give. I don’t have money, but I have time. I have the summers off and am highly qualified to work with young girls-- I will work at camp for free. Seriously. I would do whatever you need me to do. And I believe there are other Camp Little Notch friends and alumni who feel the same way I do and would be willing to help. Please don’t close the camp because you think people don’t care about it anymore. We do.

When I think about the story of my life, I know that there are two places that made me the woman I am today. The first is St. Lawrence University, which is important but not what this letter is about. The other is Camp Little Notch. I wouldn’t have gotten through middle school and high school without camp. I would never have become a teacher. Maybe I would have caved, would have sat down in the middle of my kitchen floor and given up, in the months after Hurricane Katrina when I had to camp in my own house with no power or water. We can’t know how I would have turned out without Camp Little Notch, because I did have it.

I heard last week that the board was considering selling Little Notch, and I have been slowly composing this letter in my head ever since, but I never cried until today. I have a staff tape from 1998. After the campers left, we used to sit down and record the whole group singing all the camp songs. The song was “House at Pooh Corner,” which had never even been a particular favorite of mine at camp. But then I got to the line:

“But I’ve wandered much further today than I should

And I can’t seem to find my way back to the wood...”

And I just sat on my floor surrounded by old photographs of the lake and the tears streamed down my face. Because I would give anything to find my way back. Please, on behalf of all the other alumni like me and for all the girls of the future, I urge you to reopen Camp Little Notch.

Thank you for your taking time out of what I am sure is your busy schedule to read this letter.

Sincerely,

Sarah -----

Troop Camper 1989-1998

Summer Camper 1992-1996

C.I.T. 1997

Counselor 1998-2000