There are almost sacred places where girls go for four weeks, calling, leaving the boys, and taking them closer.
Camp Mystic alumni talk about the positive impact of the experience
Camp Mystic alumnus Ally Coates explained her experience and the generational impact that camp has had over the years.
She was eight years old when Allie Coates ran a buffalo glass barefoot at Camp Mystic. Her small steps are surrounded by cypress trees near the Guadalupe River.
She caught catfish, mailed her first letter, and learned to ride a horse.
Thirteen years later, she was still there. This time, as a counselor, I taught an 8-year-old girl how to swim, fish, French braids and play guitar.
She can still see herself as a shy girl under a hot pink comforter. Her name is embroidered in white on her bed at Bubble Inn. This year, the same cabin that 13 girls and their counselors were wiped out by the July 4 flood in Texas Hill Country. In total, 27 Camp Mystic children and staff have died in the state in at least 120.
Today, her Los Angeles apartment smells like chocolate chips and oatmeal. She finds the comfort of “Tweety” cookies, named after camp director Tweety Eastland.
She is now a 25-year-old social media manager and wears a silver bracelet filled with camp charm, including M, the most improved M in canoeing. She draws out the camp Bible and reads from her bubbled teen handwritten, crumpled paper: Matthew 5:16, “Let’s become a light that everyone can see.”
She began to relax when Coates’ mom took her to camp from Dallas every year.
The highway through Scrubby Desert turned into a flat, gentle hill with mesquite trees to Highway 89, and its rugged limestone passed through the green metal gate decorated with “CM.” It was a timeless place away from selfies, cell phones, boys and social media, and where Sunday’s fried chicken lunch gave way to a one-way dance party.
Mystic girl laments what is lost, just like the ex-camper van calling herself. The girls are counselors who began their camping trip and tried to save them. The innocence of time and the place they say they found the best version of themselves, where they made who they were.
“The strange and annoying thing was the safe space. We can be stupid and become ourselves,” Coates says. “Just to become a girl.”
In the week from the floods they hear the heartbreaking stories of loss, a generation of mystical girls from across the country is turning towards each other. They host prayer vigils and fundraisers, sharing photos and favorite stories. They are looking for familiars who will return to camp. We ask for the cheese enchilada recipes, yellow sheet cakes with chocolate frosting, and the songs and prayers that support them.
See how the floods in Texas unfolded: Why Camp Mystic was in a dangerous place
A generation of campers
Julia Hawthorne’s first year at Camp Mystic was in 1987. She followed her sister and her aunt, who went to camp in the 1970s.
Hawthorne later became a camp counselor and taught the girls what she learned.
Her cousin went to Camp Mystic in the 1990s.
When she got pregnant in 2006 and found out she had a girl, she said to her sister: “Oh, she can go to Mystic.”
Her second daughter, Presley, was born four years later and was also a mysterious girl.
Her two nie are sophomore and are registered to attend next year if the camp resumes for what will become that 100th Anniversary.
“These songs we sang every day at camp are the same songs that my aunt learned, and my daughters learned,” says Hawthorne, 49, an Austin dentist. “I have that comfort right now.”
The girls look for the grandmother’s name written on the ceiling of the cabin, which is a tradition that took place until 1939 when the camp moved to all girls.
The camp opened in 1926 and operated by three generations of the same family, and in 2011 differences over money between the brothers were sorted out in court, and even when the summer of travel volleyball teams and volunteer travel threatened it, the family maintained it.
Every summer, around 2,000 girls, between 8 and 18, attend the camp in three sessions. It has changed little over the years, except for the yoke of the baton that strolls into lacrosse and the charm school class that transforms into beauty on the inside and outside. Girls are taught that painting your nails red will help you avoid biting you. Former First Lady Lady Laura Bush was a counselor.
There are almost all sacred places where girls go for four weeks. Where they put their phones. Where they run away from the boys. A place to bring them closer.
Days are measured at sunset with the same rituals and traditions that your mother had. Brooklyn Hawthorne learned to ride horses in the same place his mother did, slept in the same cabin and ate chocolate chip cookies from the same recipe. It is the only place in the world where she and her mom can share the exact same experiences that are not bound by space and time.
“You feel like you’re in your own little world,” says Brooklyn, 19, a sophomore at the University of Texas Austin. “You don’t have to worry about boys. You don’t have your own phones, but you don’t want them. You have a camp friend you know since you were eight, and that’s all you want.”
Her mom admits that being a girl is much more difficult “under social media pressure,” but even in 1987 she enjoyed her time.
“For us, it wasn’t as much as we didn’t unplug it,” she says. “You don’t have to think about pressure, you just have to be a girl.”
The camp is Christian, but also depicts agnostics, Jews and some atheists. Driving everything about camp is three doctrines that women still try to live beyond the green gates of Camp Mystic. Be a better person, bring out the best camps in you, and grow spiritually.
On Sunday, the girls wear white and go to a service on the banks of Guadalupe. Guadalupe washed away the river sitting with his cabin mate singing capella. On Sunday night, older girls read Vesper and share their gratitude.
“When it comes to the beauty of Camp Mystic, you just feel God’s presence when you’re there,” says Julia.
From fear to lifelong friends
Katherine Haver’s family moved to Texas when she was two years old.
The first year she was able to go, she was too scared.
The following year, she nervously agreed. The first little girl with two adult teeth full sized before that, liked to read and asked a lot of questions.
“The girl I just met last year was already close,” she says. “But it just made me happy being around them.”
That night, the girls remained at camp each year and were divided into two groups that compete in activities and sports. Pulling out the blue or red construction paper from the big cowboy, I decided to do something to define a girl to this day.
She drew Blue – Kiowa – and the older girl rushed to pick her up and took her to sit with her group. “You feel very special. Here are these older girls, including you, you can become a kind of adult,” says Haver, 24, a junior at the medical school in Galveston, Texas.
Looking back at her eight years of camp, there was a dance party for Hannah Montana and Taylor Swift, the Bluebell Ice Cream she had every day at lunchtime (and still looking for a taste of the birthday cake at the grocery store). But it was more than that, it was spiritual growth.
“You can take it to mean what you want. You were really working to be a better person,” she said. “How did you go out into the world and become a better person?”
“These are truly beautiful things, those memories, they only exist between us,” says Haver. “It always unites us, regardless of what separates us.”
Where you belong
Coates often struggled with his high school friends, but Camp Mystic was a shelter. She could be herself, whether she would try a new hairstyle or meant she would wear a t-shirt that would match her friend with her cat dj.
“The opportunity to unplug, get off my phone and be with people who really care about you in nature, one of the best experiences I’ve ever had,” she says.
She moved from cabin to cabin to rough house from Bubble Inn to Rough House and then to counselor for the summer holidays from Pepperdine University. The girl she met when she was eight years old was still her friend.
This made the camper van more like a family, she says. “I was able to get to know them when you were little, so I was less judged than when I met girls as a teenager,” she says. “You could be loud. You could be stupid. You didn’t have to prove anything to anyone. You will show up like you.”
She worked to create the same sense for 23 little 8-year-old girls who came to Bubble Inn without anyone knowing. She taught them to braid their hair. There is a place to place stamps in the letter house.
“You forget, these girls are so few, they’re just babies. They don’t even know how to brush their teeth at times, because their mothers are always together and do everything for them.” “So you love them and teach them.”
The counselor loved the girls as if they were their little sisters. The girls are homesick, often when she and other counselors used Camp Mystic tested treatments, special homesick medications and colorful toms. And a hug.
She thought about the girls that camp lost this year, the girls who couldn’t use the cute bedding she chose. And the parents who regain their colorful trunks are not their girls.
I feel that is impossible.
She looks for good when the camp teaches her. She was relieved to know all the girls, as she did every night under the same hot pink comforter, slept on her last night, tapping a camp speaker and a message at 10:30pm.
“Goodnight Camp Mystic, we love you.”
Laura Trujillo is a national columnist focused on health and wellness. She is the author of “Back from the Shelf: A Daughter’s Truth and the Exploration of Updates” and can be contacted at ltrujillo@usatoday.com.
