“Why did we get locked in Marty’s cabin again? Do you realize how messed up that would be today?” I ask with a sheepish grin and shaking of my head.
“Because you wouldn’t come down from the rafters. You were hiding out because you were boycotting Taurie Zeitzer’s bat mitzvah!” my best friend Stacey replies through laughter.
“Oh, right, that Star of David ice carving really threw me over the edge.” This is a typical conversation we have any time we speak, and we could go on for hours about the antics and shit we pulled at Camp Kippewa when we were 11 years old. We eventually graduated to antics in the police blotter our senior year, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” the paper read after we egged Ben Silverman’s house, Stacey’s…show more content… The long van ride that transported us there had a Stephen King vibe surrounding us with nothing but woods. You couldn’t help but wonder if we were really being brought to a summer camp, or if we were inmates headed to jail. I made note of how far it was to the entrance should I ever need to escape, which I had threatened to do in arguments with my camp counselors many times. There was a sense of relief when we passed the archery and softball fields and arrived at the main office.
Kippewa was a glorious slice of heaven nestled within tall pine trees on a sprawling lakefront on Lake Cobbosseecontee. We lived in bunks spread out across the lakefront. There were about 8-10 girls of the same age assigned to each bunk and that became your tribe you did everything with.
To really describe Kippewa is to speak to how richly steeped in tradition and rituals it was. We had every activity imaginable to fill our summer, and there was a spirit of Kippewa in everything we experienced. The simple fundamentals we took from each activity became ingrained in my character, but as rambunctious bratty campers, it was all about firsts, pranks, and double dog
