The first thing we heard was the trumpets. Two of them, bright and brassy, floating out through the camp just as the first free swim period was winding down, and for a few seconds nobody could quite tell what was happening. As the girls followed the sound, now clearly coming from the dining hall, they were excited and surprised to see four musicians standing on the porch, dressed head to toe in the ornate charro suits you picture when you imagine mariachi, dark jackets with rows of silver buttons down the sleeves and wide bow ties in a deep, fitting red. Two of them played trumpets. A third sang and also played an enormous round-backed bass guitar called a guitarrón, and the fourth strummed a vihuela, a small five-stringed cousin of the guitar. A real mariachi band, Mariachi International, had come to Rockbrook! We’ve done this only once before, years ago, and today the surprise turned out to be every bit as fun as we’d hoped. That sound of trumpets across the hill was a call to gather, and gather we did.

The reason we were all streaming toward the dining hall in the first place was already waiting inside, and it was worth every step. This was tamale day, and around here, tamale day is a big deal. Once each summer, and only once, Rick and his friends in the kitchen set aside several days to make authentic corn tamales completely from scratch. It takes time, care, and plenty of willing hands. They roast and shred the chicken, soak the dried corn husks until they soften, cook down a deep red Guajillo chili sauce, and mix the masa, a paste of finely ground corn, lime, oil, and stock, until it is just right. Then, one by one and entirely by hand, each tamale is spread and filled (some with cheese and some with chicken) and folded into its husk pocket before being layered into enormous pots and steamed. When you need a thousand of them to feed the whole camp, you begin to understand why it takes three days. Part of the fun of eating them is the unwrapping, peeling back the warm husk to find the savory middle, a small first for the many girls who had never tasted a true tamale before.

Then the band came inside, and lunch turned into something uniquely fun and festive. The girls were up out of their seats within minutes, clapping along and inventing dance moves, counselors spinning them in circles, and before long the entire dining hall had fallen into the goofy, synchronized joy of the Macarena, a few hundred hands turning and hips swiveling more or less together, grins as wide as they could go. The band played their classics, like “La Cucaracha,” and then they surprised us with a mariachi rendition of Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire,” and a version of “Rocky Top” that had us singing along. You could see the delight on everyone’s faces as we danced and clapped to every song.

After lunch, one of our counselors found me to say that she’d been a camper here the last time a mariachi band came to Rockbrook. She still remembers that day, all these years later, one of the bright fixed points from her childhood. It’s not every day you enjoy a lunch of warm, fresh tamales with a mariachi band! I suspect some of the girls dancing this afternoon will remember today just the same, a trumpet floating up the hill and a whole camp eager to join the fun of a mariachi lunch.

Sunday mornings at Rockbrook move at a gentler pace, with time to sleep in a little, enjoy a relaxed breakfast, and then gather as a whole community in the woods for Chapel. This week the Middlers led it, and the theme they chose was “Sunshine.” One by one, girls who had volunteered stood up to say what sunshine means to them. Some talked about the actual sun, the warmth and light that makes everything grow. Others talked about a different kind of sunshine, the feeling certain people give you just by being around. One girl shared a line from Winnie-the-Pooh: “If you’re lucky, you’ll find a few who make the world feel like sunshine, even on an ordinary day.” Sarah read a story about a girl named Elsa who tried again and again to carry sunbeams indoors to her grandmother, whose room never caught the light, only to learn that she had been her grandmother’s sunshine all along. It was a sweet, thoughtful morning. The girls sang “Here Comes the Sun,” and we all walked out of the woods a little warmer.

By the afternoon, things were considerably less contemplative. When we rang the bell after rest hour, the girls came pouring down to the landsports field in their swimsuits, and we handed out about 150 cans of plain white shaving cream. This was our special all-camp event for the day, a Rockbrook tradition I’ve written about many times: the shaving cream fight. Within five minutes the field was a tangle of shrieking, slipping, foam-covered girls. Foam mohawks, foam beards, foam handprints planted squarely between shoulder blades, the occasional “six pack” drawn on bellies. The slip-n-slide added its own layer of mayhem. The laughter out there is what erupts from unmistakable joy.

Thinking about it later, I realized part of its exuberant power may be that it gives girls a brief vacation from perfectionism. Commonly today, children feel a very real pressure to get things right— the right grades, the right performance, the right look, the right response to whatever the group seems to expect. You can sometimes sense that pressure humming underneath how they move through the world.

A girl who feels she must get everything right is always performing, even in ordinary moments. A simple conversation can become something to avoid because it might be “awkward,” or because she might think, “I won’t know what to say.” Studies of perfectionism in young people often point to the same worry underneath it: the fear of making mistakes and the dread of being judged. Sadly, the usual escape, more time online, only makes things worse— another audience, another review. Living under the bright light of perfectionism is exhausting for a kid.

Here is what a shaving cream fight offers that otherwise seems rare in a child’s life: there is no way to do it well. There are no teams, no score, no technique, no judges, and no outcome to measure or worry over. The whole point is to end up as ridiculous as possible. The writer G.K. Chesterton once quipped that anything worth doing is worth doing badly, meaning it’s better to jump in imperfectly than to wait for conditions you can’t control. A shaving cream fight goes even further… it can only be done badly. There’s really nothing to get right, so there’s actually nothing to get wrong either. You might be covered in foam, but all that watchful, self-critical machinery suddenly has nothing to grab. Come to a shaving cream fight and you can see it slip right off.

So if self-monitoring, that constant internal commentary of “how am I doing and what do they think of me?”, feeds a subtle anxiety, then a shaving cream fight provides relief because it makes self-monitoring impossible. Your attention is pulled entirely outward, toward the friend you’re stalking with a fat handful of foam, toward the ambush forming behind you, toward the counselor who somehow ended up with a full white wig. And because every single person on that field looks equally crazy, the fear of being judged collapses on the spot. There’s no time to work up any worry, either. The fight starts the instant the first can spurts, before anyone can stand at the edge wondering whether she’s ready. Anxiety feeds on delay and evaluation, and a shaving cream fight starves it of both. What rushes in to fill that space is joy.

That Sunday morning in Chapel, the Middlers reminded us that some people make the world feel like sunshine, even on an ordinary day. By evening, rinsed off with the water hoses and heading back up the hill for dinner, these Rockbrook girls had done exactly that for each other. Every girl was good enough— gloriously, drippingly good.

Instead of the rising bell ringing, hoofbeats came pounding up the cabin lines this morning. Riders decked out in red, white and blue, their horses just as dressed up with ribbons and paint, clopped along yelling “The British are coming! The British are coming!” Still in their pajamas, girls tumbled out of their cabins and made their way to the hill, hair in every direction, blinking at horses in the early light. I love this tradition even after all these years I’ve watched it, if only for the two seconds of pure confusion on a new camper’s face when she realizes those are, in fact, horses outside her window.

On the hill, small red, white and blue BombPops were waiting for everyone, cold enough to finish waking up whatever the horses hadn’t already startled out of them. Then came the more solemn turn of the morning: the Hi-Ups raised the American flag, and the whole camp recited the Pledge of Allegiance and sang “America the Beautiful” together. It’s a strange, lovely sequence when you stop to think about it: Revolutionary War references, an unexpected sugary treat, and then all our voices finding the same note before breakfast. Only camp could make all three feel like they belong in the same five minutes.

At Rockbrook, the 4th of July is a sort of compounded celebration. Every day at camp is already a celebration with singing at meals, cheering at activities, the small triumphs everyone shares out loud. On the 4th, we kick it up further and paint all of that red, white and blue— bright colors poured straight into the celebrating that was already well underway. It’s one long, sanctioned invitation for everybody to be as joyfully ridiculous as they can manage, together, with the friends they’ve made so far this session.

By the time everyone reached the dining hall for breakfast, the decorations were in place: posters, streamers, and red-white-and-blue tablecloths turning every table into its own colorful parade. And it was then time to show off the costumes. One counselor arrived in a full Founding Father costume, powdered wig and long coat included, looking like they’d wandered in from 1776. Marston, our staff director, went a different direction entirely and became the Statue of Liberty for the day— green from head to toe, paper torch held high, playing the part with total conviction. Elsewhere, faces were painted into full American flags, headbands and beaded necklaces multiplied by the hour, and more than one camper had rigged herself a flag cape for the occasion. By mid-morning, it was hard to find anyone who hadn’t found some way to dress for the holiday.

The morning itself kept to its regular schedule of activities— archery, riding lessons, weaving, the usual rhythm of a Rockbrook day. What made it different was everywhere you looked: flashes of red, white and blue scattered across every activity area, a Founding Father wandering past the climbing tower, a green-painted Lady Liberty checking in on the schedule. Camp doesn’t need much of an excuse to feel festive, but on a day like this, the ordinary and the ridiculous ran right alongside each other, compounded for full effect.

Lunch on the Hill

Lunch gave us a picnic on the hill, plates balanced on laps, sun and shade on the grass with the mountains off in the distance. Rick and his kitchen crew had barbecue chicken and barbecue meatballs going, plus a barbecue tofu for anyone who wanted it, alongside corn on the cob, homemade coleslaw and potato salad, cornbread, and watermelon— enough food that nobody left the hill still hungry. To drink, cans of Cheerwine, kept cold in the creek since morning, made their way into everyone’s hands, a treat we save for days exactly like this one.

An Afternoon of Choices

After Rest Hour, the schedule opened into an afternoon of choice activities. At 3:00 pm, about fifty campers and counselors laced up for the ninth annual Betsy Ross Two-Miler, a running loop out through the camp woods. Afterwards, everyone moved between whatever activity option caught their interest: tie-dying socks red, white and blue, embroidering bandanas in needlecraft, painting a 4th of July banner for the dining hall, or wading into the creek for basket making and watercolors. Down at the lake, teams raced through watermelon relays, while archers aimed at balloons taped to their targets, and over at riflery, paper targets gave way to empty soda cans. At the land sports field, campers turned water guns on each other with more enthusiasm than accuracy, and a badminton tournament ran alongside the regular tennis matches at the courts.

Threaded through all of it was a running bingo game, cards filled in by tracking down the right person or scene: someone wearing 4th of July socks, someone with a full flag painted on her face, a camper from Washington, D.C., three people who weren’t from the United States at all.

Pie, Twilight, and Fireworks

As dinner wound down (which was a fantastic meal of homemade lasagna, salad and bread), six counselors gathered at a table on the hill for a pie-eating contest. With their hands behind their backs, faces first into the tins, and the whole camp gathered around to watch and cheer them on, they did everything they could to finish their pies. There is something enthralling, and admittedly a little gross, about watching someone disappear face-first into pie filling. But the uproarious cheering kept everyone going, and soon, to everyone’s relief, there was a clear winner to congratulate. Congrats, Hayley!

As the sky started to dim, campers and counselors filled up the hill again, this time for a dance party that carried straight from twilight into full dark, glow sticks cracked and swinging, music loud enough to pull everyone onto their feet. Once it was good and dark, around 9:30 pm, the fireworks began, and two hundred girls who’d spent the whole day being loud and silly, so freely celebrating, cheered and sang along to each colorful blast in the sky.

When the last firework had faded and the smoke cleared over the lake, all that extra color from the day, the face paint and glitter, was beginning to fade too, ready to be washed off before bed. But underneath, something more lasting remained, something true about every full day of camp: two hundred girls walking back to their cabins in the dark, glow sticks dim around their wrists, a little more attached to each other than they had been that morning. That part of our days doesn’t wash off.

Right after lunch, the cast list for Annie Jr. went up outside the dining hall, and for a few minutes there was no other news in camp. Everyone who auditioned found her name attached to a part. And there are a lot of parts to this show. Think of the orphans! Everyone seemed happy with their parts, smiling and chattering all the way to rest hour.

By afternoon, the news of the day had moved on to Cabin Day, our Wednesday afternoon break from camp’s usual rhythm. Most days, campers build their own schedule out of dozens of activities, choosing four and following whatever interests them most. On Cabin Day, that scatter comes back together as each cabin group makes a plan together for the whole afternoon.

Down on the Farm

Four Junior cabins started their Cabin Day with a sweet stop at Dolly’s before heading out to Further Up Farm, where the Manner family was waiting with a flock of chickens, a couple of ducks, and a turkey named Albuquerque who seemed to know he was the main attraction. Campers waded into the creek to mine for treasure, gathered wildflowers for arrangements bound for the dining hall tables, and spent a long, unhurried stretch getting to know the farm’s animals up close.

Soda Dives at the Lake

Back at camp, a handful of cabins gathered at the lake for soda dives, a Cabin Day classic that never gets old. Someone tosses a few cans to the bottom, and cabinmates take turns diving down after them. Whoever comes up with a soda in hand gets to relax and enjoy it, cold and fizzy, while the rest of the cabin explores the water further. Yes, at the end of the summer when we drain the lake (something we do each year), we always find a few elusive cans at the bottom.

Treasure Around Camp

Other cabin groups spent the afternoon on a pirate-themed scavenger hunt, dreamed up by their counselors. Clues were scattered across camp, and campers collected gold coins along the way before landing in the dining hall for a well-earned bowl of cabin-made Puppy Chow.

Sprinklers and Sunshine

Down at the land sports field, sprinklers ran and water balloons flew, a good defense against the heat of the day. A spray of water, whether from a sprinkler or a well-aimed balloon, feels great on a beautifully clear afternoon.

Hot Dogs and Sliding Rock

Dinner brought the whole camp back together for an American classic, hot dog night! We’re starting to get into the spirit of the 4th of July around here. The HUPs had a great time thinking of a few “American” songs to sing in the dining hall. S’mores bars closed out the meal, and not long after, the Middler cabins climbed onto buses bound for an evening at Sliding Rock, which is always a blast.

It’s easy to look at a day like this and think it’s a little crazy— chickens and gold coins, fizzy sodas and flower arrangements, and a turkey with an extra large name. I suppose in a way it is, but it’s also girls feeling right at home in the middle of it, finding a place for themselves no matter what’s happening next.

This week the thermometer at camp has been bumping a little past 90 by the afternoon, building the kind of bright, humid heat that brings to mind places deeper in the south. Overnight is another story. That’s when our altitude provides a welcome break and the mercury drops back just below 70. Even during so-called “heat waves,” our fresh mountain air makes for genuinely wonderful sleeping. But daytime is daytime, and by early afternoon there’s really one main thing that comes to mind: getting in the water. Fortunately at Rockbrook, that’s never hard to do. Clear and chilly mountain streams tumble down and through camp, filling our lake. And a short drive away is the notoriously cold Nantahala River where we take our campers whitewater rafting.

Today it was our oldest girls, the Seniors, who spent the day rafting on the Nantahala River. Whitewater rafting has been a Rockbrook tradition since the early 1980s, when we became the only girls camp in the area to hold our own Forest Service permit, which lets us schedule and guide our own trips with our own equipment. The river runs a fast, toe-numbing 50 degrees or so, cold enough to make each splash arch your back with a wide-eyed scream. Every boat spends the two-hour trip alternating between calm floating stretches and bursts of whitewater, girls paddling, singing, posing for photos with their paddles held up like victory flags. When someone tips backward into the raft after a big wave, or gets bounced into the river, the boat erupts into the kind of laughter that only happens among great camp friends. By the time they hit the Nantahala Falls— the trip’s big, churning finale— everyone is soaked through, and today, happily chilled in the warm sunshine.

Meanwhile, back at camp, the Middlers and Juniors gravitated toward our own swimming lake, which draws its water from Dunns Creek. The shady waterfalls of the creek never really warm up no matter how hot the air gets above it. During the two free swim periods today, before lunch and again before dinner, girls filled the water with kayaks and canoes, a few Corcls spinning in slow circles, and the kind of inflatable tube that seems to exist purely for the relaxing joy of floating. Others lined up for tricks off the diving board— cannonballs, spins, and the occasional attempt at a real dive. The waterslide ran more or less non-stop, girls scrambling back up the ladder and racing back around for another slide. The lake is the place to be on a day like this!

There’s something almost essential about cold water at camp, as if it was built into the place on purpose. On a hot day, jumping in the lake provides a full-body kind of relief, the sort you dream of when getting back from a rock climb on Castle Rock or from a riding lesson down at the barn. We might even say the mountains have installed a kind of natural air conditioner as the water from Stick Biscuit Falls and Rockbrook Falls streams through camp. Take a seat near the creek and enjoy a cool breeze flowing by. Put your feet in the creek and you’ve got just what you need on a summer day. Do it with a good friend, and there’s nothing else to ask for.

By the way, if you’re curious about the weather at Rockbrook, our weather station at camp— KNCBREVA27 on Weather Underground— keeps a running record of the temperature, humidity and everything else.

None of this is something we engineered. The mountains simply gave us cold water, and all we had to do was let the girls loose in it. Watching them come up from a dive gasping and grinning, or climb back into a raft still laughing about who fell in, proves that the mountains had this figured out long before we did.

When the cars slowly came up the gravel driveway, windows down, the first thing you saw when you crested the Rockbrook hill was a mob of counselors who seemed to have completely lost their minds. They were jumping. They were waving both arms over their heads. They were clapping and whooping and calling out names. They were hauling trunks, stacking sleeping bags, and smiling wide-eyed in every direction. To a camper leaning out of the window after a long ride, it must have looked like the whole hillside was alive with enthusiasm and energy. Opening day at Rockbrook is a day of cheering, almost from the first minute to the last.

There’s something surprising here. You might think the excitement on opening day belongs to the campers. After all, they’re the ones arriving at the place they’ve been dreaming about for months. But the counselors up on that hill had been doing their own kind of dreaming. They’d made wood-chip name tags by hand. They’d sat with the directors learning who was coming, the shy ones, the dramatic ones, and the girls who might need a little something extra. They’d gone over health notes with the nurses. They’d studied the photos in each camper’s profile, learning names and faces. So by the time the cars started rolling in, the scene on that hill had been building for days. Finally, their anticipation and enthusiasm had somewhere to go. Watching it unfold, you’d be hard-pressed to say who was more excited, the girls arriving or the counselors who’d been waiting for them.

And once it started, the cheering kept on coming. It followed the day from one corner of camp to the next. At the assembly on the hill, each age group sang and clapped along to its line song. Down at the lake, where campers took turns swimming out and treading water for the “swim demos,” every leap off the dock got its own roar from the crowd on the shore. Later in the gym, the activity skits were basically cheering with costumes, whether a climbing demo, a weaving transformation, or a Wild West dance battle with hobby horses. As each activity presented its skit, it was one blast of cheering after another. Yay archery! Yay hiking! And so on. Even our dinner of po-boy sandwiches and cool watermelon ended up woven with cheers, peppered by songs with hand motions like “Yogi Bear,” and driven by calls from table to table. The sound of people being glad about each other, a kind of mutual excitement, marked each moment of the day.

Encountering this much cheering is odd compared to ordinary life outside of camp, but it’s something that makes me smile. It probably made you smile too. If all that jumping and shouting seemed like a bit much, it really wasn’t. It was our way of saying “welcome,” our way of letting you know, “we’re glad you’re here.” This is going to be fun. Let’s get started!