Monica's a special kid--quiet at home but a true star at Frost Valley. From ages 9 through around 12 I was the same way: my personality flourished at camp in way that was somewhat a bafflement to family and friends. I knew camp was home and I knew that if I stayed on I'd have a shot at becoming leaderly and generous. In her fifth summer at FV, Monica is 14 now--a Tacoma camper in '07--but she still deals with that home/camp - shy/star duality. I hiked after dinner with one of the camp directors recently and visited all the Tacoma/Lenape overnights. At a site called Moonshadow I caught up with Monica, the day after her 14th birthday, and here is a 4-minute audio recording of that nice chat. Blink your eye and look again--and this kid will be a CIT. Blink again: a VC. Blink, blink: she'll be like us, having had a great multi-year run of it, and will be off on what I hope and expect will be a very good and very effective life, looking back at the experience that changed everything. On the continuum of things, Monica's exactly us--just born later.So let us connect somehow with these kids. They have much to tell us--to remind us--of what we once were and hoped for, of a time when a future in which acceptance and joy would was still ahead and would stretch before us seemingly forever, summer after summer.
