Kinhaven 'Art Shack'
What would heaven be like, for a teenager? How about a place where there are very few adults, great weather, a lot of free time, regular access to delicious food, a culture of acceptance, fun traditions, and a shared, unique cooperative mission in which each person has an integral part that he/she is well prepared to play? This is where my 15 year old daughter got to spend the last six weeks, in the form of Kinhaven Music School in Weston, Vermont. One of her favorite places was the most decrepit looking building on campus, the “Art Shack.” On the back of the art shack is a half-round window looking out from a graffiti-covered loft. A drawing of this view was the cover of this year’s ‘Lit Mag’ (photocopied assortment of camp memories).
Reentry into real life has been tough for some kids. My poor daughter had to spend two days riding in a car with us and then head straight into the second day of the new school year. Comments overheard on Facebook include “I keep telling my mom I want to go home,” and “These people in this house keep telling me they are my family” as well as endless references to in-jokes and composers. Many of the kids have come for several summers (the camp has a two week session for 10-13 year olds as well as the six week session for high schoolers). When we arrived to pick Maren up, she introduced me to one of her cabinmates and I asked her where she lived. She looked at me quizzically and then replied, “In Chaconne (the name of the cabin) with Maren,” like, DUH. Upon further explanation, she said that the ‘rest of the year’ she lived in Newton, Mass.
What is it about adolescence that makes these experiences so life-altering, so all-encompassing? In this decade, I’m sure that the lack of internet access or cell phone service has something to do with it (the best way to reach her was to call the payphone in the basement of the dining hall during free time). Being cut off from your ‘regular’ life is somewhat disorienting, but only briefly, as you get your sea legs in your new environment faster if you are thrown in. I remember the summers I was 17 and 18 I attended a weeklong conference in North Carolina called National Affairs in which kids from all over the country came and debated, well, national affairs. I know, it sounds as nerdy as orchestra camp! But to us, it was a big deal, and it was so fun to be around a hundred (or a couple hundred) other kids with the same interest. It felt like another life, an alternate universe. I can only imagine the intensity of five more weeks of it.
Did you attend summer camp as a teenager? Or experience another mini-culture?
;
;
;
My heaven as a teenager was at debate camp, also in Vermont. The weeks of freedom was far more important to me than the mission. I’ll always remember my roommate from Iowa teaching me to turn off the water while brushing your teeth. As a child of the 80’s conservation was not on my radar and I had yet to live somewhere with water issues, but there was a drought in Iowa at the time. Every time I brush my teeth now and reach to turn off the water, I can see that sink we shared. I had an equally difficult time adapting to real life. But that taste of freedom made me unafraid to leave the nest at 18 for college.
I hope to be able to offer my kids each a chance to experience their independence this way.
There really is something about Vermont in the summer! The air is so clean!
It’s funny those every-day seeming moments that really make a life-long impression.
Yes, I was involved in a few encompassing mini-cultures (love how you put that). For me, it was the local theater and a repertory company through the youth theater that performed Shakespeare for the surrounding high schools and a musical for the elementary schools. We made our own sets, costumes and performed every other Monday. I loved it, but had to give it up when I joined Mock Trial, which was a big deal in my school (and probably better suited to my nerdiness). We won the state championships two years a row and then spent a week in Georgia and then one in Chicago for the national competition. We spent several days a week and long hours every Sunday afternoon learning the rules of law and practicing. I think there is something about the intensity of the practice time, the age that you are and the separation from everyone else that forges these indelible impressions.
Heidi- good point about how the mini-culture(s) can co-exist with real life in the form of something like a repertory company. I bet it was a respite you looked forward to regularly.
I did something like Mock Trial (the culminating experience mentioned in my post was National Affairs) called Youth In Government and it was really the defining experience of my high school years so I really get you. The funny thing is, I just sort of accidentally fell into it- a guy friend’s older brother had participated and he talked me into it. We were the only Freshman going our first year. We drug our friends along the next year and by the time we graduated it was a much popular club at our high school. I actually looked into how to get one going at our local high school.
When I was 16 I went away to the house that Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath shared in the Yorkshire Dales, now used by The Arvon Creative Writing foundation. It was a week of just reading, writing poetry, walking in the beautiful hilly countryside, and staying up late talking about books and life. By the end of that week, I really felt closer to the new friends that I met there than anyone else in the world. We’d spent a whole week without media, phones (this was before teenagers had mobile phones – albeit just!) etc. Still in my mind, it’s one of the most inspirational experiences I think I’ve ever had – and probably had a large part in helping me decide that Literature would become my career.
What made it so good? Yes, the isolation – but also the necessary openness that comes from creative writing and sharing our work. We had to open up, to be vulnerable, to listen and to speak… if only I could recreate these conditions more often!
In fact, writing this makes me think that I should try to do just that! (Puts thinking cap on…)
My dad teaches summer art symposiums and I get the appeal of a summer camp for grown ups. I was sort of wishing that I was at camp this summer when I saw how much Maren was enjoying it.
Andy, I think opening up and being expected to contribute is part of it, and part of any community. Something I admire about LDS culture is the expectation that you will consecrate your time/talents however they are needed.