Stars

Summer will be officially over in 7 days (!!!). It's sad but inevitable and the past summer (the part after Camp PEAK - that was clearly and wonderfully real) felt a bit like a dream anyway, it passed so quickly. It's so short compared to the school year of 10 MONTHS . . . but it was sufficiently relaxing.

Maybe the dreamlike quality of the summer was due to my extensive reading? I notice that reading makes time fly by and feel flimsy - and I did read a lot this summer. Maybe I'll do some book reviews later.

Last weekend my family and I went camping to Killbear, a good camping place that's only about 2-3 hours worth of driving away if you live in Mississauga. One of the best things about it is how little mosquitoes there are compared to some other places you might go to, like Sandbanks, and there aren't any marshes (which are generally good mosquito habitats).

There were good hiking trails, blissfully cool water and bright sunshine . . . just to make us miss summer all that more. Like giving someone a delicious slice of cake full of custard and icing, and taking it away when they've only half-finished it. Yanked from our grasp.

One thing, though, stood out for me for this camping trip. It was the sight of the stars.

It was like diamond dust had been sprinkled across the sky - the stars were shining like jewels, of varying size, some even flashing colour. The sky itself was deep, velvety indigo - almost black, but not quite. You could tell where the black shapes of the tree leaves above you ended, and the sky began.

My mother tested my eyesight - she told me how one of the stars in the Big Dipper constellation had a twin star, and that in ancient times, eyesight was tested this way too. I found it - the centre star of the handle. The twin was the size of a pinprick.

You never see this many stars in the suburbs - let alone the city! The horizon is always full of this ugly orange glow from the street lamps, and too often the sky is clouded, probably for unnatural reasons.

There was a light smudge stretching from one part of the sky to the other - like a cloud, but it was behind the stars. The Milky Way. Full of stars, some bright and standing out - the others fading into the smudge. It looks like a smudge, I suppose, because of the glow of the stars in it that are too far away to be seen as individual light sources from here. Amazing - this is the first time I've seen the Milky Way like this.

Magnificent. Magical.

High School: Following the Stereotype

I've read about high school for what feels like all my life. Many books have shown a few recurring themes: love, popularity, extracurricular activities, and a lot of homework. Now that I am actually going into high school, I realize how the suspense might come to nothing after all - those books do show a sort of stereotype of high school (except the homework. I know better than to think THAT might be misguided). I mean, really - who has a cafeteria with food you can actually buy anymore?

I've composed a list of themes I vaguely expect from high school, and whether or not I think they'll be fulfilled.

1. To make friends. All my childhood friends have drifted away now, and there's nothing I can do to challenge distance and time. I'll be at this school for 4 years - the longest I've ever been at any one school. I hope to find a true friend or two, a circle if I'm really lucky, that will stick around for the years.

2. Romance. The requited kind seems to happen at least once to everyone . . . right? Somehow I can't picture it happening to me. Whenever I pictured myself in high school, when I was little, I guess I sort of thought of myself as this mature, stylish, independent Twist. The thing is, I still feel like me. It's one thing to read about romance from a first-person perspective, but entirely different (probably) in the real world. Romance has never, ever happened to me before, and all the secondhand experience I have from reading so many books might actually be counter-productive.
You know why? All the kinds of romance, what happened and what the characters did (not to mention what worked for them might not work for me) - all the different cases are like shouting, conflicting voices in my head as to what romance might really be like, if it ever does happen to me.
Basically: I have no idea, and every idea, of what to expect of possibly romance.

3. Homework. Of this I have no doubt. I picked up my procrastinator slack a lot this year and I'll have to renew my efforts double-time, if the stories told by books, high school seminars and my mother are any indication.

4. Some measure of popularity and cliques. I think that this is just irrational high school prejudice. I've specifically heard from a student that there are no cliques or popularity pyramids in the school I'm going to, which should be a relief, but I'll believe it when I see it!

5. Some measure of peer pressure when it comes to a) alcohol, b) nicotine. *shudders* I'm pretty sure I have good defences, but you can never be too careful.

6. Extracurricular activities. The school I'm going to is supposed to have a debate club, which I plan to join in a heartbeat . . . if it's there. I went on the school website and searched but saw no mention of a debate club. Who knows? Extracurriculars should also be friend-making opportunities. So we'll see about that.

So you see, I'm enjoying summertime, but there's something to be said for social interaction with people my own age. Maybe I'm still feeling warm and fuzzy from the amazing people at Camp PEAK. But a month is a long time, and I've already had a taste of summer. When school rolls around I'm not going to protest. Starting at a new school is always thrilling, but this? The one thing I know to expect is that high school is in a different league than what I've experienced so far.

Camp PEAK

Oh My Goodness.

Remember The Smile Debate? Proving whether the happy-cloud-headed attitude was the real thing? Rolling with the punches, and all that? Orange souffle, it really is real! At least, I'm that much more confident in it. And I don't doubt my wish to come back next year to Camp PEAK.

I shouldn't have been surprised. It was organized by the same inc. that organized the Peel Summer Academy (PSA) - and THAT was a fantastic way to spend 2 weeks.

But this? Camp PEAK was even better. I keep reading over my journal entries from those two weeks, smiling to myself at the little details (the pillow fight, the references to Forrest Gump - AHA I WATCHED IT TOO MWAHAHHAHA - by Peak 1 "Run, Forrest, run!"), and I keep remembering more.

My bunk was the one by the window in our cabin - Peak 4 - and I had a flashlight, so usually I got the earwigs and the mosquitoes. Eventually Chantal, a counselor, found a fly-swatter for me, and I was basically The Bug Terminator after curfew, because none of us could sleep until the mosquitoes would stop buzzing in our ears. I'm not really afraid of bugs any more - send spiders out, but anything else that stays in the cabin? Squash it. End of story.

The fantastic obstacle course - and ME rocking it

As I said to Hania, one of my bunkmates, in a last-night-after-midnight discussion, the camp wasn't good just because of a few big things. It was a thousand little details. It was painting our faces with camouflage patterns and then ambushing another group of campers. It was mutually teaming up to sink Simon during a splash fight, when he would shake off anyone who'd jump on his back (believe me, I tried). It was the trick-or-treating and the subsequent dance. It was the conga line (that I started :) ) we made when a rock n' roll band came to us. It was sprinting in the dark, out of the theatre and to the fireworks, just to see just how fast I could run. It was everything. Maybe it was a normal thing for some people, but to me it was like magic.

Me, egging Bianca, a counsellor

For example, I remember a game of "Musical Scattergories" when Suzie, a counsellor, gave us three groups the word "blue." I came up with quite a few (and for any of the other words - reason, music, rain - I had Taylor Swift songs. Suzie called me a Taylor Swift anthology), but one group had more. This guy Eric - I think he must have been a musical whiz, though not so much as Suzie, because he not only came up with "Over the Rainbow" (from The Wizard of Oz) but also this song called "Joseph's Coat" (which, I learned afterwards, is from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dream Coat).

See, for every song we came up with, we had to sing the segment that had the selected word in it, to prove that we actually knew that song. And the part Eric sang was this:

"It was red and yellow and green and brown and scarlet and black and ocher and peach and ruby and olive and violet and fawn and lilac and gold and chocolate and mauve and cream and crimson and silver and rose and azure and lemon and russet and gray and purple and white and pink and orange and BLUE!"

It was really funny, because he had to sing through ALL those other colours, and the selected word "blue" just happened to be the finale. :D

The whole thing was just amazing, and I found myself not worrying about whether my clothes were soiled or how I looked but just looking forward to whatever was coming next, and just being happy. Is that camp spirit? If it is, I have it. A lot of it.

So let me just finish off with a quote by Dr. Seuss that will stop me from feeling nostalgic and let me feel hopeful for next year:

"Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened."

That, right there, is something to live by.