EMILY PRATT SLATIN

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She/Her/Hers Lesbian

Retired Career Fire and EMS Lieutenant-Specialist, Writer, and Master Photographer, living in Vermont.

I Was Young And Wild And Free

September 16, 2026—Middletown Springs, Vermont (Home)

I know that for a lot of adults, their childhood centered around something, whether it be Disney, or high school, or their summer camp. For me, my childhood centered around summer camp and my hometown of Stamford, New York. Lately I have been thinking about both, and somewhere in all of this I have started questioning where home actually is. Home is here in Vermont, yet part of me is unable to completely move on from Stamford, and part of me wants to see my old summer camp one last time even though I had already said I had closure.

My first year at camp was the summer of 1991. The previous summer, my parents had sent me to a Christian church camp that ended up being a cult. After a week of having no word from me, my parents had the sense to come pick me up.

Somehow they were willing to try the whole summer camp thing again the following year, only this time they sent me to a camp in the Adirondacks.

I knew full well why my parents sent me there. I was supposed to develop "skills" and social connections. I was twelve years old, but I wasn't stupid. I understood that there was a purpose behind sending me away for the summer. I also understood that I had a limited amount of time there.

There was a tradition where the entire camp would spend a night sleeping on the athletic field. The camp ended a lot of activities over the years due to liability reasons. I was one of the last groups of campers who had this experience. I remember staying up late looking at the stars and the moon and taking all of it in. Until then, I had dealt with light pollution even in upstate New York. I had never really seen the night sky like that. I remember lying there looking up and deciding that I only had a limited amount of time at camp, so I was going to have fun no matter what it took.

From that moment on, I started writing.

I had an asshole counselor that year who made my life miserable for the entertainment of the other kids in my cabin. In the morning he would wake me up by pouring a bucket of water on me. I reported it. Nothing was ever done.

It worsened. I came back to my cabin to see that FUCK YOU had been written with shaving cream all over my pillow. I reported this. Nothing was done about this, either.

I wanted to write honestly about what was happening, but keeping a diary in a cabin full of kids and counselors was asking for someone to find it. So instead of keeping a diary, I simply put the date on a piece of paper, wrote whatever I wanted to write, put it in an envelope under my own name, and mailed it home. Mom knew to put it in my desk drawer.

This allowed me to write whatever the fuck I wanted.

I was already a free spirit before I got to camp. At my grandparents' farm, I had a problem with not wanting to wear the boys' clothes Dad bought for me. If something was girly, I would wear it. If it was gender neutral, that was usually fine. If it looked too boy-ish, often I simply wore nothing at all in protest. I had done this all my life, and apparently I thought this was normal behavior.

So my parents simply dropped me off at summer camp. And eventually I ran out of clothes that looked feminine enough for me to wear. The next thing anyone knew, I was running around camp in a pair of sneakers.

Everyone at camp thought this was funny. Except the camp director apparently had no sense of humor about such things.

I returned the following summer of 1992. Same camp director. Much of the same staff. One day at lunch, this poor camp director was doing Lost and Found announcements. People would come up to the microphone and say they had lost their tennis equipment, or misplaced their camera. Then kids would inevitably come up and claim to have lost their marbles, or their mind, or whatever else they thought was funny.

So I stood right up and marched toward the microphone.

The camp director was shocked to see me waiting patiently because I was known for being so in touch with my surroundings that I never lost anything. Ever. So it was confusing to everyone why I had approached the microphone in the first place.

"Emily… What did you lose?"

I was handed the microphone. That was never a good idea.

I got a really good grip on it and took a step away from the camp director. I had the full undivided attention of the entire camp. There was an awkward silence. Then, with a straight face, I said it…

"I lost my virginity."

Some people laughed immediately. Some people needed a little context from someone who understood the joke.

The camp director was pissed the fuck off.

"I'm not going to be the camp director after this summer."

That was his revelation that came in the form of an announcement that nobody heard, as everyone in the dining room was laughing hysterically.

He eventually gave up and proceeded to drag me outside, where he screamed at me about how inappropriate it was, how it wasn't funny, and what would happen if the owner ever caught wind of this.

As he was saying this, the fucking owner of the camp came outside.

"Emily, I know you think differently and that joke is funny to adults, and it really was clever, but it's inappropriate for children. So next time, if you're only around adults, it's okay, but only then."

Then he walked away shaking his head before laughing again.

I spent years at that camp. It became one of the central places of my childhood, and there were probably a hundred names attached to it. These were people I once considered friends.

There was the summer of 1996. I was kitchen staff that summer. When camp ended, I told them I was going to spend a few extra nights there. They told me that was fine, but there was going to be nobody there.

I said that was fine and that it might actually be fun. I had dinner alone at the diner in Malone, then drove back to camp before sunset. I watched the sun set over the lake.

The moon reflected from the lake in broken pieces, rearranged each time the wind touched the surface. And as I stared, I sat long enough that the water became still as if there were two moons side-by-side in orbit around a quiet night all alone in the middle of nowhere.

The truth was that I had nowhere left to go and was waiting until I had to go home before transitioning back to boarding school.

I had put all of my belongings into my blue 1991 Honda station wagon and parked her at the edge of the athletic field. I went into one of the cabins, got a mattress, and brought it out onto the field with my sleeping bag and pillow.

Allegra stayed the first night on a mattress nearby, but not close to mine.

The album in the CD player was Toad the Wet Sprocket's Fear. I remember that specifically. Years later, Snow Patrol released Chasing Cars, and for whatever reason that song absolutely, one hundred percent became the song that reminds me of the final day Allegra and I spent together on that athletic field.

Then Allegra went home to Boston. I stayed behind. I spent several nights alone at camp. It felt like time stood still. Camp had gone from a few hundred people to just me. I was alone in the middle of hundreds of acres. Nobody knew I was there except the camp owner, and he had long since left days ago. Everything I owned was sitting inside my Honda at the edge of the field.

There was nobody looking for me. For several nights, there was just me. Eventually I got into the Honda and drove home alone. I spent forty-eight hours in my childhood bedroom before Mom drove me back to boarding school near Buffalo.

I remained in contact with Allegra until I was supposed to graduate from high school and never did. She showed up at the school with my parents, my aunt and uncle on Dad's side, and Mom's sister, Mary Ellen Pratt.

I walked down the aisle more as a formality—the school knew full well I had skipped the vast majority of my senior year and had hitchhiked back and forth to Buffalo for EMT class instead. They had conveniently waited until moments before our walk on stage to inform me of this fact.

I was asked to read one of my poems at graduation, which I did, then I sat in my bright blue cap and gown with my "diploma" that ended up being a blank piece of paper. It was heavy card stock, which ended up making a fantastic airplane that made it clear into the audience from where I was sitting.

At the time, I thought that Allegra was the love of my life. She looked away first at the airport. I pretended not to notice. Like lost footprints in the snow, her absence had become so ordinary that I had stopped noticing its shape—until something fit perfectly inside it. I did not see or hear from Allegra again until Angie and I attended a camp reunion many years later.

I talked to her for the two days of the reunion, met her children, told her everything that had happened in my life, and then she left my life again.

There were probably a hundred names attached to camp. These were people I once considered friends, and I did everything I could to try to maintain those friendships. Nothing worked. Looking back, I probably should have seen the signs a long time ago. When camp rejected me in the end, I felt completely lost, as if I had lost my entire family for a second time.

For a long time, I think I assumed the same thing had happened with Stamford. I had left. Life moved on. Everyone else moved on. Whatever friendships I had there belonged to another time.

It wasn't until Mom died that I went home and discovered I was wrong. There were still people in Stamford who remembered my history. They remembered our friendships decades later. They knew my stories, my secrets, and my inside jokes.

When my friend and I were in 5th grade at Stamford Central School, we had a fort. But you can't have a fort without a stop sign. We needed a stop sign for the fort. So one late Sunday afternoon, my friend and I took turns loosening the bolts that held the stop sign at the corner of Roosevelt Avenue and Main Street. We needed a stop sign for the fort, and we accomplished our mission.

The next morning, on my walk to school, the town had someone standing at the corner of Roosevelt Avenue and Main Street trying to figure out how a stop sign had simply gotten up and left without a trace.

Mom held a position on the village board for many years, and the missing stop sign came up at the following night's meeting. The meeting had been called to address the recent signs that had gone missing. There was a stop sign that went missing. The village posted a Neighborhood Watch sign to discourage the signs in Stamford from being taken.

She came home after the meeting only to find both of them hanging on the wall of my bedroom.

"Don't tell your father, and don't let him find out, either."

That was all she said.

Thirty-something years later, there were still people in town who remembered the story.

I said I had closure. I believed I had closure. I still think I have closure. Yet part of me still wants to see my old summer camp one last time.

I don't know what the fuck that means.

My life now probably makes about as much sense to other people as some of my behavior did when I was twelve. I am married to Amelia, and our friendship is still great, yet I am living as a single person.

For the two of us, it works.

The farm was too much for two people. Now that I am alone here, it seems absolutely enormous. On top of that, I now have Mom's five-bedroom mansion. Somehow I have ended up with an absurd amount of physical space while questioning where home actually is.

Then Maddie called me this evening.

During the conversation, I told Maddie that the summer of 2026 was the best summer of my entire life. There was absolutely no doubt in my mind.

I had been thinking all afternoon about August 1996, with everything I owned packed into a blue Honda station wagon at the edge of the field, Allegra going home to Boston, and then spending several nights completely alone in the middle of hundreds of acres.

I have been wondering where that person went.

I was young and wild and free. I did ridiculous things. I did things simply because they seemed like they would be fun. They seldom were. But I did them anyway.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped doing a lot of them.

This evening, I started wondering why.