George Goomishian
Julia E. Crane School of Music
Potsdam Pointercounts
Choral Education / Music Theory
The Boys of Summer
About Yawgoog Scout Reservation
I tell this story as an outsider looking in: as a soul that, although affected indirectly, has not been able to actually experience what exactly it is that takes place over the nine weeks that these boys, young adults, and men enter this spiritual world. To the average eye, one sees it most simply: a camp, a Boy Scout camp, where males of all ages would go to spend their time throughout the weeks that fill June through August. I first learned that such a place existed as a fairly young girl. When I was thirteen, my boyfriend was going to be leaving for the entire summer to work as a counselor. I thought it was the end of my world. I thought that I would never survive without him. Before the time where everyone who was old enough to speak had a cell phone and the Internet could be found in your local coffee shop, I had to depend on paper and pens. This is a lot to expect from a 14-year-old boy, especially being away from home for the first time for an extended amount of time and spending the whole summer with his closest male friends. I was sure he would either never be heard from again or he would come back altered so severely that I wouldn’t recognize him. He would be pierced and tattooed, he would have let his hair grow long and straggly and would have left me for a girl with a name that was more closely related to nature, like Violet or Fern that he met at the Girl Scout camp that would be located conveniently across the lake. This was, of course, absurd and the farthest thing from what actually took place. As I counted the days over that long summer until he would come home, I never dreamt that he had, in fact, started a new and beautiful relationship, and it was not with another human being, but with the camp. It was that summer that he, along with hundreds of others, had found a soul mate: a place that held the key to what would prove to be the setting for some of the most profound experiences in their lives, a place that would bring out the best and worst in them, that would console them through loss, help them find themselves even if they weren’t looking and what they found wasn’t what they wanted, as well as rip them and some of the people they held closest to them apart. It would come to be the pain in the pit of their stomach at night as they lay in bed at the thought of never returning, the mistress, the fountain of youth and their saving grace all rolled into one. A place that held their deepest secrets and, at the same time, allowed them to be themselves more than anywhere else. I also had never thought that I would find myself using the quiet hours of the evening at the age of twenty-five to tell this story that has, in fact, become an entire chapter in my life. That teenage boyfriend that opened up the door to me so many years ago continued to be my boyfriend throughout all of high school. He also proceeded to go away to camp every summer of our relationship. Short Version: We broke up in the middle of our senior year, but stayed close and continued on to the same college, where we were able to find that we meant more to one another than could be defined by the words “significant other†or “best friend.†He continued to go to camp. At this very moment, in fact, as I am sitting here typing on my laptop, that is exactly where he is. This is supposed to be his last summer. Time to move on and hand the reign on to someone new. Every summer is supposed to be the last summer. I know as well as he does that it won’t be. One day I’m sure there will come a time when he, in fact, does not go back as a member of the staff, but that time has yet to come. And even when it does come, there will be others that he knows that will return and he will go to visit. He will give up many weekends and, dressed in uniform, will walk the paths and breathe the air and, even though he is not there getting a paycheck at the end of the week, he will know that he still belongs as much as he ever did when he worked there…because it is where his heart is. It is in the ground and the breeze, it is in the ponds and the lakes and in the laughter that you hear as you walk from sight to sight. And that is how these men will always remain boys. They will have helped and been helped, a chain that will not and should not be broken. I would not say that I have visited the camp many times. I have been there enough to see all that I describe, however, and I have heard the stories. I have heard them laugh about things that have happened over and over again, laugh like they are hearing them for the first time. And, as quiet as the camp is, having been in existence for ninety-two years, you know that if it were able to speak, it would be far from silent. It may not be an actual human being, but it has a heart and it, in fact, breathes: deep damp breaths. As I have said, I have never spent more than a few hours at a time there, but this is all evident by the campers and staff or, as I have come to refer to them, “The Boys of Summer.â€
