"The door to Cedar is always open."

A line written by Evergreen freshmen at the end of this final camp week.

Writing letters to people (by hand! Remember that?) is something of a lost art, mostly kept alive in this world by summer camps across the country.

And we do our own version here.

But these letters didn't go home to parents. They were written to the next group of campers, the girls who take their spots next summer.

Dear Freshmen of 2027

Each unit writes letters they call Wishes, addressed to the girls who will take their place next summer.

The 2026 freshmen write to the 2027 freshmen, the sophomores to next summer's sophomores, all the way up. Even the JCs and ULs write them.

At the closing campfire, led by Juniper, our oldest girls, each unit reads its Wishes aloud.

The freshmen's letters began "Dear freshmen of 2027."

What follows is mostly inside jokes dressed up as advice, with a lot of "cough, cough" naming of whichever camper did the silly thing this summer.

And then the sign-off.

Every unit ends with the door to the lodge they're moving into next year. The freshmen move from Cypress to Cedar, so theirs ends "the door to Cedar is always open."

Next summer at opening campfire, the new girls will hear the Wishes written for them. The girls who wrote them will be one lodge up, listening, remembering what they wrote last summer. New campers of all ages will hear what camp is like.

Nobody Wrote About the Big Stuff

These letters are amazing for a lot of different reasons, one of them being what the girls choose to put in them.

Almost nobody writes about the big events or the activities. The Wishes are all in-between moments, the jokes nobody planned, just you and your friends getting up to stuff.

So in some ways, each letter is a retrospective look at nearly two months of their life. Special and time capsule-ish.

But also, every single letter is a welcome. Girls telling girls they haven't met yet: here's what we figured out, here's what we laughed about, here's what summer is like, the door is open when you get here.

And it isn't just to welcome someone new, but to welcome the next generation of camper to take your place, a continued welcome to be part of something bigger, growing up somewhere so special.

I don't really know what it's like to be a kid or a teenager right now except for hanging out with them all summer. But I don't think this kind of welcome exists in many places. Maybe on a team, or in a school play. Rarely at this scale, across this many ages, for this long.

Most things kids join, they age out of.

Camp is one they grow up through, from hearing a Wish read at your first opening campfire to writing one yourself.

At camp, it fits in one line at the end of a letter.

The door to Cedar is always open.

The door to Spruce is always open.

The door to Cypress is always open.

The door to Evergreen is always open.

The door to camp is always open.

That last one is for all the families reading this too.

You got this,

Jack

P.S. The Kenwood boys have their own version of this, the Hut 6 speeches, and it deserves its own email. That one's next week.

114 Eagle Pond Rd, Wilmot, NH 03287
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