The fingernail on my left index finger is painted with blue nail polish. All the other nails are bare. One night around the campfire, maybe the first night(?), Rosie came around asking people if they can paint a nail and that’s the finger I held out for her to paint. The next morning I was looking into the mirror to apply moisturizer to my face and was visibly startled by the sight of that blue nail because I had forgotten all about it. That’s really all I need to say about camp.

Except, that’s far from the truth.

There are lots of things I could say about camp. I could give you a long list of things I did not do for four days and an even shorter list of the things I did do for four days. The thing I did the most over those four days was laugh and laugh and laugh. My body still aches from all the laughing. The most important thing was that Michael and I walked away from camp with new framily members. One of our camp staff members, Shiny, had one word for camp and it was community. Webster’s Dictionary defines the word ‘community’ as a “unified body of individuals. Such as:” and then goes on to list various types of communities. The list contains other words like ‘fellowship’ and ‘likeness’, yet none of them really fully encompass the feelings of being part of a community. Being part of a community is so much more than being “unified” or sharing common interests. Community comes from the way we care for one another, encourage and support one another.

This is the essence of Camp Wildling.

I had two words for camp: confidence and gratitude. I one hundred percent feel like a total fraud when it comes to photography. It doesn’t matter the amount of material I have read on the subject or the practice and practice of photo taking that I partake in daily. For me to be able to share my knowledge to others and to see them engaged and really truly learning from me, stops me in my tracks.

I mindfully create energy to pursue my own advocacy goals of abolition. Sometimes it looks like a calming practice. And sometimes it looks like play. - Zuri Adele

I did not once sit down with my Lightmaker’s Manifesto and journal to start brainstorming what I can do to be an activist. When I returned home on Sunday, that quote above was posted for our prompt this week and my memories of camp were still fresh in my head. Camp provided me the space to grow energy, to build up and charge my energy supply. At times, camp was calming, but honestly…it was a whole lot of play.

Somewhere in the middle of all that play, I discovered that I do have gifts worth sharing.