“West Virginia, mountain mama / Take me home, country roads.” The official words of my sleepaway camp song have echoed in my head for the past 10 summers of my life.  As a preteen at my Jewish summer...

I have spent the past ten summers involved, somehow, someway, with Camp Silver Beach on the eastern shore of Virginia. The past four summers I worked there, and the past two I lived there for 13 weeks....

I got my nose pierced the summer after I turned 15 — the last summer I would attend summer camp as a camper and not as a counselor. I arrived at camp with dyed hair, band T-shirts, a bad attitude and...