The asphalt beneath the wheels of my parents’ car faded into gravel as we pulled away from the mountain road. Only a few miles out of Hawley, Pa., I’d been cramped in the car for close to six hours, surrounded by my family. We were on the final stretch.
I spotted a wooden sign above the path ahead, the words Camp Watonka painted in white letters. As our car passed beneath it at a slow pace, I was practically bouncing out of my seat belt.
This was a place where I could openly discuss plot holes in “Lord of the Rings,” where the counselors were fluent in Klingon, where daily activities included chemistry and physics.
This was science camp.
Over the course of four summers, I spent 16 weeks at Watonka, an all-boys, overnight experience nestled in the Pocono Mountains. From my first day in 2009 to my last day in 2012, I dabbled in electronic circuitry, darkroom photography, architectural design and much more.
Don’t get me wrong, it had all the classic parts of summer camp: a ropes course, fishing on the lake, arts and crafts. But the real draw for most campers were the unique opportunities Watonka offered. It was normal to build model rockets with an astrophysicist, or track the International Space Station as it passed across the night sky.
In our rocketry workshop, campers could design and build flying machines of any shape or size. During “launch days” held each session, dozens of us watched our creations hurtle toward space and oftentimes lodge themselves in rooftops on the way down.
It wasn’t all fun and games; our waterfront area was a dreaded place to me. While many kids at Watonka loved swimming in the murky depths and scaling the face of the inflatable mountain we called “The Iceberg,” I found all that terribly alarming. If the earth sciences sessions I had taken there taught me anything, it was that disturbing an ecosystem, even a small lake like ours, was a crime against nature.
At least, that’s the excuse I told my mother when she asked why I barely went swimming. I would write home twice a week, recounting to my family the time I burned myself on a soldering iron or what I had for lunch that day. You know, the usual. My letters would range in length depending on the weather; one sweltering day during a heat wave, I simply wrote the word “HOT” in black Sharpie, followed by a sad face.
Twice each summer, we would have a social with our sister camp, Camp Oneka. Only a short bus ride away, Oneka socials were a great place for young men like me to talk to young women about the intricacies of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” or our last dissection in biology. The problem I often faced was that Oneka was, in fact, a sports camp and very few of its campers were interested in such topics.
Standard procedure at these socials consisted of plates upon plates of burgers, hot dogs and barbecue, with a dance to follow. The girls danced, the boys ate. Occasionally, one brave soul from Watonka would go dance with them, leaving the rest of us to watch in stunned amazement. These young men would return to camp as heroes.
Each session would end with a massive bonfire where counselors would hand out ribbons for those who completed their activities. As my parents arrived to pick me up the next morning, I would show off each award I earned and tell a story to go with it. With a heavy heart, I would load my bedding, woodshop projects and circuit boards into the trunk and buckle up. My father would pilot the car back under the wooden sign with the white letters, and thus begin another six-hour journey back home.
The lengthy ride always made me think about my future as a scientist. Despite all my time at camp, I have no wish to study chemistry, medicine or even engineering. Nowadays, I’m far more skilled at writing short stories than lab reports. I shudder to think about the mere notion of a physics exam. But you can bet that I still tune in to watch NASA launches, attend coding events, and compete in robotics challenges.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see I’m still that passionate boy at Camp Watonka.
William Linker is a Jmore editorial staff intern.
Photo courtesy of William Linker
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