Point of View
Welcome Back to Camp Tawonga!
S’mores, cabins, and a reminder that some things never change. / BY STEVE ALMOND
O
ne of the many strange things about being a parent is how much my kids love to hear stories of my childhood. I suspect they find great comfort in the notion that I was once a small and powerless creature, just like them. This would explain their eerie fascination with The Story of the Rock.
ILLUSTRATION BY STEPHEN COLLINS
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The Story of the Rock goes like this: When I was 7 years old, I went to sleepaway camp for the first time. Next to our cabin was a huge rock, and one afternoon I decided to climb it. I managed to get halfway up, and then got stuck. I didn’t have the strength to climb any farther, but there was no way to get back down. I spent many minutes yelling for help. I soon realized I was going to peel off the rock. Down below was jagged stone, onto which I would fall and be maimed or possibly killed. And so, after many panic-stricken minutes, I fell. Miraculously, I landed in such a way that I merely suffered a bruised tailbone—what my children refer to, hysterically, as my “butt bone.” That is the Story of the Rock, which I have told them 371 times. It is one of the many yarns my wife and kids have had to endure about my magical years at Camp Tawonga, where I spent three weeks every summer for eight straight summers. Then a funny thing happened. Last year, a woman from good old Camp Tawonga sent me an email asking whether I might want to teach during a weekend session. I could even bring my family. I soon found myself driving a rental car full of hyperglycemic children into California’s Stanislaus National Forest, outside Yosemite, winding down the narrow road I had last descended 35 years earlier. All the familiar sights were still there—the tiny lake, the archery range with its tattered may 2017 Southwest 55
4/6/17 2:28 PM