Summer camp was a few acres of baked earth, the sun warming the pines
to perfume. No reason to wear shoes, we were in and out of the lake, always
wet or drying, never dry, we were there to swim and dare ourselves to go
outside the buoyed ropes, the sandy bottom, and touch the dark leaves
with our toes. Once every year, we would pile into vans and sweat and sing
songs the half-hour drive to the Atlantic to swim again, or the older kids - North
to Moosehead, the largest lake in Maine, to paddle the Kennebec back down to
Merrymeeting Bay. We moved from one big body of water to another. Pure devotion.
Bonfires built on every shore. The counselors were minor deities, bronzed, and each girl
embodied some relic of our pagan lives—tummies like tacked hides, night heron thighs,
tits—the eggs of wild turkeys. They dove off the end of the dock and climbed back on,
preening. I crawled through the grassy shallows, wanting
to go long and lithe—a green snake.
My body—big and wide—I was the water. 

 

—Jenna Rozelle

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