Magic and Fireflies Part 2

If you haven’t read part 1, you can find it here. Everything will make more sense.

From that first night on, I got magic and fireflies every night. On the second night, when the camp’s writer-in-residence,

Tia Levings

, spoke about her story (more on this later) in the outdoor chapel under the trees, she stopped mid-sentence and exclaimed: “Fireflies! This is magic!” My mouth dropped open. Everyone around me kept talking about magic. Everyone was pointing out fireflies. Everyone was helping me see that what I’d asked for was already there, had always been there.

Monica Edwards

, fellow camper and writer of exquisite poetry, told me I was getting a 4-day retroactive midwest childhood summer camp experience, and she was correct. I’d never experienced the magic of summer camp as a kid, but this felt like getting a redo of a nonexistent memory.

At summer camp, we acted like kids. No matter how hard we tried, we were always kind of sweaty, kind of dirty, kind of smelly. We were outside all the time and hungry all the…