For Gram

I don’t fit in any place, never have and I don’t intend to start trying now. Camp isn’t a great exception to this in the big picture, but it is something dear to me in a way nothing else can be ever. Camp is where my family is no matter where we live. Camp was the safest place and closest thing to a base and stability I knew as a child. Invaluable. To this day it is the place I fear police harassment the least, and watch what I say and do the least. Besides being deep in the woods when no one knows I’m there, Camp is where I feel closest to free.

I am not a native Vermonter, and I don’t want to claim Mass. anymore than it wants me. Camp is the biggest and most consistent reminder to me that I come from people, not straight out of the mud. We cook and eat food together where relatives of mine who were dust before I was born did the same, and to me that is more beautiful than anything any one of us could create materially in a life time. No matter what it looks like when the time comes, Camp is where I’ll bring my grand kids to walk in my gramma’s footsteps and point out where the one horse and log built road used to wake me up with branches scratching ma’s car.

– Netdahe