For One Another

The dining hall windows went dark behind hanging sheets, and everyone knew what that meant. Down in the gym, the cast was running through the second act again. Up on the HUP Palace porch, a Hi-Up was working out what she wanted to say at the fire. The final days of a Rockbrook session bring three big gatherings. There’s the Banquet, then the Play, then the Spirit Fire, and what ties them together is that the girls create all three entirely for one another. There are no parents in the seats, no tickets sold, no one to impress who is not already part of this life. Camp spends a month quietly counting toward all three. These are community events, a camp celebrating itself, its friendships, its shared efforts, and the deep bonds formed over weeks together.

RBC in Wonderland

The banquet theme is a secret every time, guarded jealously by the CAs, our ninth graders, who dream it up early and then spend the session quietly unfolding it inside the mysterious “Cabin 9” at the end of the lower line. This time they took us into Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, and they made one lovely decision at the outset: there was no Alice. The idea was that every camper walking through the door would fall into Wonderland herself, the way Alice did in the book. They called it “RBC in Wonderland.”

The dining hall came apart into color. Tweedledee and Tweedledum in red hats topped with little yellow flags, white collars, blue bow ties, yellow shirts and red skirts. A row of playing cards, all of them the Ace of Hearts. Flowers in red tops with roses in their hair and more roses in their hands. A lizard, a dodo bird, a green bird, a caterpillar, a dormouse, a walrus and a carpenter, a Mad Hatter and a March Hare, a Cheshire Cat, two flamingos, and of course a white rabbit, with the King and Queen of Hearts presiding over all of it. The counselors came as Mome Raths, those imaginary creatures from “Jabberwocky” that seem to be mostly hair, eyes, and two brightly colored legs.

The program was a run of group dances, each one belonging to a set of characters: The Tea Party, then The Forest, then a number by the Mome Raths, then a croquet game, and finally everyone together in a dance called Lost in Wonderland. Costumes, food, decorations, music, choreography, and skits, all of it wrapped around this delightfully colorful theme.

The Play

The next day brought Annie, the Broadway musical that debuted in 1977 and has been winning people over ever since. Zoe played Annie. Margo took on Daddy Warbucks, and our counselor Blair made a sharp Miss Hannigan. Campers and counselors filled out all of the other parts, with some songs sung by the whole company and some handed to a single girl standing out front on the edge of the stage. When the cast list went up earlier in the session, the thing worth noticing was that everyone who auditioned got a part, which is how it always goes here. Casting works as an invitation rather than a contest for the best voices, and the girls who accept it spend good chunks of their free time in rehearsal, learning lines and harmonies from each other.

Between the acts came the dances. The Juniors, the Middlers, and the Seniors each took the stage with a performance of their own, which meant that a good portion of camp was either in the show or waiting in the wings to be, and the rest of us sat out front cheering for our friends. One number quieted the room. Three pairs of dancers took the floor to Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide,” each pair an older girl or a counselor moving alongside a younger camper. “Well, I’ve been ‘fraid of changin’,” the song goes, “’cause I’ve built my life around you.” And then the line that got everybody. “Even children get older, and I’m gettin’ older, too.”

The Spirit Fire

The Spirit Fire gathers us together again, this time at Vesper Rock dressed in our red and white uniforms. It’s a closing campfire of songs and speeches with a candlelight procession around the lake. The name points to the “Spirit of Rockbrook” and the sense of kindness, caring and community that defines camp life. Campers and staff members alike take turns giving short speeches reflecting on their experience over the course of the session. A striking number of them described how they arrived shy, or a little nervous, or unsure they would fit in, and somewhere in the weeks that followed they relaxed and found themselves connected to more people than they could count. Arm in arm and shoulder to shoulder on the benches, we were reminded about how much we’ve grown at camp and how much Rockbrook has become an important part of our lives.

There’s some sadness mixed in, particularly among the girls old enough to know that this has been their last summer as a camper. Rebecca, in her ninth year, told us that before writing her speech she signed her name in big red letters on the wall of the Hi-Up cabin, then walked down to the J1 cabin to find the signature she left there almost a decade ago. It’s still legible, in slightly sloppier handwriting, across from the names of two girls who are still her best friends. She talked about her journals, and about wanting to read them again in twenty years when her memory has gone fuzzy. What she wants back most is the small stuff. “More importantly,” she said, “we’ll read about the little things, the small moments, and the memories made in between the lines.” Late-night dining hall chats. A spontaneous evening at Castle Rock watching the sun go down in a sea of orange fog. Birthday cake eaten in the walk-in until their stomachs ached. “Sometimes I wish camp wasn’t as meaningful or memorable,” she admitted, “because maybe it wouldn’t hurt so bad saying goodbye.”

Long after the fire burned down and we sang “Day is Done” for the last time this session, the girls, back in their cabins, seemed noisier than you’d expect for a sad night. Screen doors banging, somebody still humming a song, a burst of almost quiet laughing from a dark cabin, a counselor asking without much conviction for everyone to settle down. With the sounds of the forest, the gurgle of the creek, and the chirping of nighttime frogs and crickets, we ended our day. We’ve spent good solid weeks building to these three gatherings, each one a celebration of the community these girls have created together.