Be amazed by who got their start among the whispering pines of
Maine’s Summer Camps.

February/March 2019

By Colin W. Sargent

Did the whole world grow up going to camp here? Who’d ever have guessed that the lake, stars, and crickets at Camp Androscoggin would inspire young Stephen Sondheim to write Into the Woods? For a touch of Camelot, think of JFK Jr., who discovered himself when he went to Outward Bound in 1977. We’re sure your camp was cool, but did it have a real prince at it? Thai Prince Mom Tri Devakul went to Camp Chewonki in Wiscasset in 1954—on his way to becoming a world-class architect.

Bacall Ya later

We’re just getting warmed up. Listen to the rapture of former camper Lauren Bacall as she remembers her childhood at Highland Nature Camp in Naples, on Sebago Lake. Now called Mataponi, this camp still exists! “I loved to swim,” she says in her autobiography By Myself and Then Some. “There was a rule that in order to swim from the dock out to the raft, one had to pass a test. I can see the test morning now. A group of small girls waiting their turns. I didn’t know how I was going to do it, but after two years of swimming near the dock I was ready to move on. The girl before me was taking her test. She had a lovely stroke, and there was no question that she would pass. I watched her very carefully to see when she breathed—how she turned her head—kicked her feet. I was next. I went down the ladder and proceeded to do exactly what she had done. Miraculously, it worked—I had won and it was the raft from then on. One step away from childhood.”

In the great indoors, “there were weekly dramatic programs—sometimes plays, sometimes musical recitals, dances. I clearly remember doing a scarf dance my last year at Highland Nature. I felt as though I were really performing—I was so grown-up. Had the stage all to myself. I really felt good—the music was romantic, and I loved to dance.

“And I was in plays—in one I pulled my long hair back in a bun to look like Ann Harding. There were campfires—roasting marshmallows—overnight canoe trips—sleeping under the stars—skinny-dips before breakfast in the cold, clean lake. I suppose those years were as close to carefree as I had known or ever would again.”

Spock Shock

Star Trek’s Leonard Nimoy steeled his icy reserve by having to jump into the frigid waters of Long Pond in Parsonsfield at West End House Camp. Years later, Red Sox guru Theo Epstein would test the same waters.

You’d think that J.D. Salinger would be hard to get to know at summer camp. Nothing of the kind! Nobody can get away with being a recluse at Camp Wigwam, on Bear Pond in Waterford. We all know him as the author of The Catcher in the Rye and Franny and Zoey, but Hapworth 16 is an awesome rant by the narrator Seymour Glass, just seven years old, written from his summer camp in you-know-where.

In-Tents Experiences

On the silver screen Lindsay Lohan played both of the twins who stayed at Camp Walden in The Parent Trap. Maine—fountain of deception and switched identities! Thank heaven for little girls. No, that’s a different Maine camper, Alan Jay Lerner (Gigi). Do you think “If Ever I Would Leave You” started writing itself as a result of a broken Maine camp romance?

The reason Charlotte in Sex and the City went to summer camp in Maine is entirely due to executive producer Jenny Bicks, who grew up spending summers in Castine. “We landed in Castine when I was around two. My aunt’s mother had a house on the harbor, and we’ve been there ever since. I got to spend every summer there, which was magical. I was the city kid–grew up in Manhattan–who got a chance to spend three months in this magical town. I had all my formative experiences there.”

Ditto for Claire Danes, Si Newhouse, Lena Dunham, and Ben Stiller, who has fond memories of Freedom’s Hidden Valley Camp. He tells W Magazine, it’s there he had his first kiss. “It was under a tree. I remember thinking it was very romantic and cool and just like charged, which most first kisses I would imagine are. I was at camp, and I was kind of homesick. And I actually remember my father had come up to the camp because I was saying I wanted to go. And then I met the girl, and then I was like, ‘Dad, get out of here. Get out of here.’” There’s something about Maine.

Thoughtful W. E. B. DuBois spent summers up here too; at the Cambridge Gun and Rod Club on the shores of Lake Cobbosseecontee [see “The W.E.B. DuBois Files,” Summerguide 2001 at portlandmonthly.com].

Work, Help, Love

Maggie Rogers was so influenced by her summer camp experience here that she used her old camp, Wohelo, as the setting for the music video of her song “Dog Years.” Visit YouTube to see the video shot on site, or see her IRL at the State Theatre, March 23.

See you next year

It’s wonderful waking up in the place of someone else’s childhood dreams. On the other hand, exoticizing anything or anybody is the first step toward dismissing them. Want a reality check? More than a few Native Americans grew up way ahead of this trend. We’re not just sylvan lakes and pine trees baby. News flash to wistful former campers: Maine’s grown up, too. But still: tell us about your celebrity campers.