Former Career Fire and EMS Lieutenant-Specialist, Writer, and Master Photographer.

Tag: Summer Camp


  • The Quiet Girl Who Knew Too Much, Too Soon

    There’s something in the air today—maybe it’s the way the breeze carries the scent of warm pine and worn wood, or the low, lingering dust hanging in the air like a ghost of someone you used to know. I cracked open the bedroom window and just stood there for a moment, barefoot on the floorboards,…

  • Unwanted Then, Unshakable Now

    I went down to the river today because I needed to remember who I am. Not the version people expect. Not the one who always has the answer or the fuse already lit. Just me. Alone with the trees and the current and the kind of silence you can’t get when other people are around…

  • I Will Remember The Woods All My Life

    The air is cool and heavy with the scent of pine. Through my open window I hear the wind whispering in the branches—a gentle hush that carries me back to the first woods I ever loved. I remember being a little girl at summer camp, sitting cross-legged by the fading campfire on the final night.…

  • Some Summers Never Leave You

    I’m out on the porch when the call comes through. The local tractor dealership is on the line, letting me know that my new mower deck—a long-awaited upgrade—is being assembled and will be delivered in the next couple of days. I thank them by name, because by now they answer with Hey Emily, as if…

  • The Redneck Aliens And The Summer Of 1999

    I was nineteen years old, back in the Adirondacks, working as a counselor at Camp Chateaugay—the same damn place I was sent to as a kid. That summer felt like a loop closing in on itself. Same dirt roads, same lake, same kind of kids. On our nights off, we all went to the Owlout.…

  • They Let Me Go

    They Let Me Go

    I was twenty-three when they sent me home. Three summers of devotion, three years of sunburns and scraped knees, of singing around the fire and waking up before dawn to make sure my campers were safe, fed, and cared for. I had built my world around the summer camp where I spent every summer since…