One of the greatest parts of Camp is the sound of the dinner bell, when you're alone and you hear it from far off in the distance over the murmurs of voices here and there, juniors laughing and calling to one another, and the wind rattling the leaves in the trees. Every time I hear it, I think, "Oh my goodness, I'm actually here."

Being twins with Kacy

The line outside the dinning hall is a very good time to show off. All the girls laugh louder and say "oh my gosh" a lot and pretend to get really excited over things, in the unspoken assumption that the guys must be watching us out of the corners of their eyes or the backs of their heads or something, since they're not saying anything to one another. Some of the guys, especially those in the Junior teens, take the opportunity to look as disaffected as possible, often resulting in expressions you can only assume they have never seen themselves do in the mirror. Weather you partake of this ridiculous game or not is up to you, but either way it is extremely comical to watch.

Little pig, little pig, let me come in!

As we stood in the soccer field between games on Tuesday, I was absently watching Sam when suddenly a tangible idea crept over his face, tested itself out in a mumbled sentence, erupted into a self-pleased crow of laughter, and sent him jogging in a wide circle calling my name, because it was a very Sam-Emily sort of joke, only to find me standing five feet away from his original position, where he proudly delivered his joke and laughed at it again. (Don't get me wrong, Sam is usually a very mature and intelligent person who likes to pose in girl's hats)

The moment I first found out I could come.

In an effort to cut back on runaway cards, broken spoons, broken limbs, etc. during our spoons game, we adopted the practice of dealing all the cards in little piles in front of the dealer and then passing the piles around the table until everyone had one. As we were passing down the hands, Jacob C. randomly picked up one of the piles and looked it, then quickly realized what he had done and passed it on. Without missing a beat, I absently did the exact same thing. It was only mildly funny, but Jacob thought it was worth laughing over for about five minutes and turning completely red in the face and forgetting to breathe, and I'm all for that so I did it with him. I've always felt that Jacob was a kindred sprit but we've never really spoken to each other before. Since this, Jacob and I are suddenly old friends. It's amazing.

When I fall down you pick me up, when I am dry you fill my cup…

"And then I had to stay in a lip confinement for six weeks with this kid named Oscar who'd been stung by a bee, right on the lip…" Caitlyn and I are so cool.

Volleyball on Thursday night.

When at Camp, my mom and I get along just fine. We see each other only when I'm in line for food and she's behind the counter, but we can actually smile at each other then, and that's the most beautiful thing in the world. She says, "Oh, hi!" and I say, "Hi," and she says, "who's this?" and I say, "Lindy," and she says, "the older one?" and I say, "no, the younger," and she says, "oh, yes, right." And it goes exactly like that three meals a day plus snacks. By Friday we were not only smiling but hugging, and she remembers Lindy's name.

The first time Ruben cried, "One More Time!" on Monday.

Crying is like girl football, I think. It's a matter of status, if you don't cry you're not as girl as the others. It's also a form of bonding, if you've cried together you've got a strange kinship with one another. I feel very privileged to have a best friend who is willing to slap me across the face, let me cry on her shoulder, pull me back onto my feet, and stick around until I can stand on my own again.

Because it's a musical!

People come and go in life a lot. I think we tend to just get used to it. But every now and then you meet someone that you can't let go of, someone who you want to spend time with regardless of what you do or say while you're together. My experience has been that these people are actually all around you, and then one day you'll just discover that they're there, and suddenly you can't believe you didn't grab them sooner and it breaks your heart to think of all the time you've spent making small talk. And once that happens, they become a part of your life rather than just someone who happens to cross it or run parallel to it, and even when they're gone they're still a part of you. As wonderful as all my friendships are, I've only discovered about three people before that are really like this for me. Lindy made four.

Singing on the drive up to Goat Peak.

On Friday I was awoken by a messenger with the news that we (the Watts) would be leaving in a couple hours to take a sick child home early. So when the time came, I rounded my siblings up on the soccer field and waved goodbye. The other kids were in the middle of a game, but Kacy left her position anyway and ran to hug us. Someone else followed suite. Then someone else. Soon Ruben just paused the game, and even though we didn't end up actually leaving until everyone else did the moment was well worth the false alarm. It felt like we belonged.

No, we are not actually related.

There's just something about the shark song. You start with the little baby shark, and that's very subtle, and then as the momentum grows people start getting into it. Then it happens: "shark at-TACK, do do, dodo do do do…"

I wanna be who you wanna make me…

Last year there was one person at Camp that I was not really able to be friends with, despite having known them for a long time. There were walls up between us, painful walls that I had built. But Camp is a wrecking bomb to walls, as this year proved yet again with a different person. The hike, spoons, volleyball, and finally the campfire were testing grounds last year for a friendship I honestly never thought possible. Re-visiting those exact same experiences this year with this person as one of my closest friends was awesome. It's like God himself is coming home to say, "I, I can do anything if you want me here, and I can fix anything if you let me near."

The tigger song in the parking lot at the church.

At a tragic epoch in Mr. Peterson's life in which he had nothing at all to say, I happened to be standing nearby. Out of desperation, he turned to me and cried, "You are a very bad kid!" in that manner of his which makes you love him as much as you're scared of him. Latter he decided I was a good kid after all and offered me his knuckles, and I gave him mine even though he had an enormous ring on his finger and it hurt. After that he would always call me by name as I passed, and I would act all proud of him and sit there trying to decide which classic novel he had just stepped out of.

Being the hair-braiding hero of all the Junior girls.

I always used to think I wasn't a morning person. But I think that's just because mornings at home are so miserable, what with chores and schedules and being cooped up inside. At Camp, however, I cannot get up early enough. Even if I try to sleep in, I'll wake up and lay there with this restless energy pulsing through me, begging me to get out there and live. On Tuesday Lindy and I went down to write in our journals by the pool. Needless to say, we got very little journaling done- but there's one page in my journal that is crinkled from the dew in the air.

I said yep, what a concept…

It sounds shallow, but what I really love most about Camp is the raw, unhindered fun. Sometimes people forget how to play, and I hate that. At Camp I live fully in the moment, giving my whole self over to the laughter and letting it drown out everything of significance. But I am also always acutely aware of something bigger that is happening outside of each activity and person, something that is changing people and making ordinary things magical. God gets bigger. The world becomes smaller. Somehow, even if we forget everything we did in a year or two, it is very, very important that we did in fact do it.

Dancing in the hidden medow

I like to pretend that things I get a kick out of are actually universal traditions dating back to before I was born. I say that a lot, "It's tradition!" always thinking of the little girl from Ever After. One such example would be the winter hat that I brought last year when I didn't know it was a winter hat, which Anna promptly stole and wore proudly just because it was a winter hat, which was once (at most) passed around among the boys after a very sweaty game of kickball. But it's tradition to steal it, I liked to inform random people. Its priceless to find someone wearing it, someone I don't know, looking very proud and foolish, and to have them inform me that they stole the Camp Hope hat from someone else I don't know, because it's tradition. "Oh really?" I'd say, "What kind of a dope would buy a hat like that?"