Not in a million years would I have thought that we would have my mother’s wake at Camp Jeanne d’Arc. But there we were.
Let me back up.
At 11 years old in 1991, I started my first year at Camp Jeanne d’Arc in the Parrot Cabin. I was a third-generation camper. My mother Alice Scanlan (or Bug as she was called at Camp) was a camper in the 1950s, and my Great Aunt Else Langton was on staff in the 1920s. When I first sent my daughters to camp in 2021, they became fourth-generation campers!
So, what is the big deal anyway? Why does it matter to be part of a multi-generation camp family?
Camp Jeanne d’Arc is the only place on earth where my daughters, my sisters, me, my mother, and my great aunt have a shared experience.
We have touched the same buildings, walked the same paths, and appreciated the same views. We all heard bugles beneath the same morning shadows, shot arrows from our bows on the same plot of land, hiked the same back wooded trails flush with birch trees, and held our right arm in the air singing the same ode to camp … “There’s not a camp in all this world that’s dearer…”
My mother passed away just as the Covid pandemic shut the world down. Family members were living in different parts of the country and we could not gather to celebrate my mom. No wake. No funeral. Just a few awkward zoom calls and text chains. We tried over the next couple months to organize, but lockdown requirements were shifting on the daily and infection rates were scary.
I followed Camp Jeanne d’Arc on social media and I saw that camp was shut down for the summer of 2020. What a shame. Or was it? While traditional camp sessions were closed, JDA decided to host “Family Camp” where members of families could come to camp and stay together in cabins. Precautions were made to keep family groups separated and safe. During this time of uncertainty, this felt like a glimmer.
So I reached out to Camp.
That summer eight of my sisters and I journeyed to Camp Jeanne d’Arc with our families. Many of us saw one another for the first time since our mom had passed. We hugged, we cried, we laughed, and we played! We reenacted Christmas-in-July, we made make-shift shields, and the kids put on a performance in Woodsheart. We sailed, we built fires, and we jumped off the Narrows bridge (how naughty of us)!
On our last day, we met in Tanager Cabin in the Whippoorwill building, which before the Hearth was built, served as the mess hall for campers pre-1959. Painted on the cabin’s walls are the names of campers who were admitted into various clubs or who received awards. Each of us scanned the walls in the cabin until we found Campcraft Club of 1955, Alice Scanlan. Mom. One by one we leaned in for a closer look. We took photos and touched the painted letters.
And then we sang. I actually can’t even remember which Camp song we sang. I remember feeling a little silly. But at the same time, tears were forming. Tears of missing my mom and tears of being together. Is this “a wake,” I thought. Yes, I guess it was. A wake for my mom at Camp Jeanne d’Arc.
So why does it matter to be part of a multi-generation camp family?
It’s knowing that there is a place on this earth where my mother and aunts and great aunts who have gone before me have once stood doing many of the same things I did – swimming, canoeing, riflery, archery, tennis, sailing, camping out. And it’s knowing that my kids are in that same place, continuing to do some of those same things.
It’s knowing that Camp is part of my family history. My siblings and I didn’t all grow up in the same house. We didn’t all go to the same school. We don’t all live near each other now. But we do have a common shared experience.
It’s knowing that Camp helped shape our family values – reverence for the outdoors, fierce independence, raising up other women.
It’s knowing that my mom, my daughter, and I believe that the Les Pucelles is the superior team, while the other half of my family will swear the Jolis Couers are best!
It’s knowing that this shared experience endures time.
Long Live Camp Legacies!
I think about my Great Aunt Else sometimes. I don’t know much about her JDA experience except that she was there in 1922, the year Camp was founded. At this time, she was a young woman of 20 years old about to begin her adult life. Later Else Langton became a doctor, a psychiatrist in a time where very few women were doctors and even fewer in the field of psychiatry. I think about what she did at Camp. What she learned. What friendships strengthened her. What values were formed. How Camp shaped her.
Else, short for Elinor, is a family name. My youngest daughter Nellie (another derivative of Elinor) starts camp this summer. What will she learn? What friendships will strengthen her. What values will begin to form. How will Camp shape her?
A Legacy of Strong Girls
It matters to be part of a multi-generation camp family. It feels almost sacred to be connected to my lineage this way. I come from a line of pretty incredible women. Each one of them started out as a girl. And somewhere along the way, they became strong women. Camp Jeanne d’Arc was a part of that journey for all of us.