A-Camp September 2012 Recamp #1: We Absolutely Started The Fire

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VIII. Rainbow Wars Start Now

In which we introduced Rainbow Wars and opened our first night of competition with Photobooth, Tug of War, Balloon Tag, Map, Parachute and Auto Story

Riese: Robin kept talking about wanting to do “Color Wars” for camp this time and I kinda knew what she meant from friends who had color wars at their summer camps and Marni had no clue what she meant, because Canada, but Robin sounded really excited about it and the #5 rule of Autostraddle is “if a person you love is that passionate about something, you have say go for it.”

Robin: I was so nervous this idea of “Rainbow Wars” wouldn’t translate to adult lesbian camp, but it was always such a fun and exciting part of my camp experience growing up, I wanted so badly to try it.

Riese: Basically we were put into color teams — 2 or 3 cabins per team — and there were opportunities all week to win points and whomever wins at the end has good luck for life and won’t go to the reaping.

Robin: I’m so glad Marni and Riese allowed me to bring it to A-Camp because Rainbow Wars appeared to bring cabins together while creating a friendly competition between teams! I’m excited to make it even better for May’s camp and provide varied opportunities to win points!

FOREVER 21 (Carrie + Sarah Croce) and Catch-22 (Katrina + Gabby)

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BOMB GIRLS (ALI + LAURA), BATTLESTARS (STEF + MORGAN), VALENCIA (MEGAN + CAROLYN)

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THE RUNAWAYS (RIESE + LANEIA), JETPACK (GENEVA + RACHEL), NEVERLAND (WHITNEY + JAMIE)

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LITTLE RASCALS (MARY + GRACE), THE AVENGERS (VIKKI + ALEX), THE WILD STALLIONS (HAVILAND + JILL)

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the unicorns (ANNIKA + DANIELA), THE THUNDERCATS (CRYSTAL + CARLY), The Golden Girls (Cee + Meredydd) (not captured on film)

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21 HUMP STREET (FONSECA + SARA MEDD), THE MISFITS (CARMEN + MALAIKA)

Robin: So Carly and I had to create a series of short games for 250 people that’d last fifteen minutes each and involve campers meeting up with / competing against different groups at each station. Carly made a really amazing color-coded chart and we ordered things like a 75 foot-long tug of war rope, which Marni will forever make fun of me for.

Hansen: The rainbow wars station games were hilarious. The Misfits really lived up to their name in these games. I don’t think we won a single thing we could win.

Carmen: Despite there being three teams competing max per activity, we came in fifth place each time.

Hansen: This became our theme for camp.

rainbow wars photobooth

Riese: Alex and I led a game where each cabin had to make up the story of where the name Autostraddle came from, and seriously everybody’s story involved women addicted to straddling automobiles and/or every object in her path who one day found a website where she could relate to other compulsive straddlers. You guys are weird.

Carly: I was in charge of tug-of-war while Crystal traveled from station to station with our valiant Thundercats, who definitely should’ve gotten points for Best Photobomb.

Hansen: We made a plan to win the photobooth station by being really ridiculously good looking, but I’m pretty sure Rachel Walker won photobooth with her photobomb of us. I’ll never forgive the red team for this.

Crystal: I secretly felt so proud.

Rachel Walker photobombs The Misfits in the best photobomb of all time

Riese: I became concerned for the Rainbow Wars fate of the Golden Girls when they spent the three minutes of story-building time talking about whatever and for their presentation had Digger stand up and say “fuck me with a strap-on.”

Alex: Almost everyone managed to work in “rehab” and “unicorns” (and sometimes robots) into their stories.

Whitney: My cabin, the Neverlanders, ended up putting together a pretty bad-ass Mad Lib involving cats and feelings and Riese and Alex. It was awesome, especially when the fill-in-the-blanks were filled by the other team with words like “dildo” and “harness.” Best. Mad Lib. Ever.

Forever 21 campers prepare to straddle something (photo by rachel walker)

Sara Medd: PARACHUTE!!!!! I didn’t expect that to still be as fun as elementary school, but it absolutely was!!!

Carly: The highlight of tug-of-war was probably when I made Mary and Grace face off against Rachel and Geneva, which ended when Stef and a few others crashed the game.

Carrie: The balloon-stomping game was loud and terrifying and hilarious. I would love to meet the sick weirdo who invented that.

Laneia: The Runagays were up against The Avengers in balloon tag, and they were BEASTS! This was honestly the moment when I knew everyone in our cabin was going to mesh. It was super intense, even if Croce was half-dead with the plague.

Rachel: I still have to commend Ashley for her bravery on the front lines during the balloon game, and I am still inspired on a daily basis by my team’s performance during tug of war. We bleed purple, etc.

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IX. Opening Night Campfire

In which Julie Goldman plays a song, Robin and Marni talk about camp, and all the staff comes on stage so we can all look at each other’s faces at the same time.

pre-campfire gatherers (photo by robin roemer)

Riese: Y’all, we made Brandy Howard miss a Fiona Apple concert so she and Julie could be there the first night to emcee the campfire and make Julie sing the Gay Baby Army Song.

Brandy Howard, The Talent: The opening campfire is always electric because it’s the first official activity with EVERYONE together. This time around, Carly and Grace strung up some lights around the area and the transformation was intoxicating. It looked like we were all gathered in the woods for a romantic, gay, group wedding. And we kind of were!

Lightworkers (photo by Stef Schwartz)

Alex: Julie Goldman killed it, as usual.

Brandy: When Julie got up to sing Gay Baby Army- the moment was magical. She’s looked so cute in her rainbow Vans with her little cheeks.  Gay Baby Army is the anthem of camp and while she sings it, it feels like she knows all the mysterious secrets of gayness, and by the end of camp- we’ll all knew them too;-)

photo by robin roemer

Robin: I looked around during Julie’s songs at new and old friends singing and waving their hands together, sporting bandanas and A-Camp shirts, and it was once again hard to believe I wasn’t dreaming!

Morgan: Can we start a giant Google hangout and sing Gay Baby Army again? I want to sway again while we harmonize on one big queer wavelength.

(photo by robin roemer)

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Wild Stallions & Thundercats Jill, Alex, Amy & Rachel (photo by Rachel Walker)

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the runaways give riese the hunger games salute (photo by katie o’donnell)

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Snatch-22 (photo by Rachel Walker)

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marni and robin greet the crowd (photo by rachel walker)

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Forever 21 (photo by kacey jordan)

Carrie: Seeing everyone together at the campfire was magical. Now when I’m at home reading Autostraddle comments I try to imagine I’m at that campfire with everyone and we’re just hanging out and talking. This might seem more reasonable in my head though.

Laneia: Will the campers ever know how beautiful and literally amazing they all look at opening campfire?! Probably not. They’re just so epic, sitting in that stadium semi-circle.

Crystal: At the Opening Ceremony, the staff were asked to stand on stage in front of everyone – a thing that I find terrifying. Cee noticed how freaked out I was and helped to shield me from view; it was the first of many moments at Camp where a staff member or camper would make a small but significant gesture that made me feel accepted and understood.

Riese: Carly and Grace had found the light — and by that I mean “the outdoor lighting” — so I could see all the faces this time! Last time I was drunk and couldn’t see the faces, but it was electric. This time I was soberish and I could see the faces, and that’s a different kind of electric.

riese saying something brilliant (photo by rachel walker)

Carmen: After introductions I left the campfire because there seemed to be some sort of huge pilgrimage to Wolf Lodge occurring, and then I lost all the people I had walked uphill with because they went back to the fire pit but I didn’t even know it was all still happening, and met a bunch of new ones outside in the smokers’ circle. This was the year of the smokers’ circle. I spent the rest of this night in the smokers’ circle.

Vikki, Avengers Counselor/Contributor: I relied on the kindness of strangers to provide for me (Hello Alice! Hello Random Woman in Eagle Lodge with Two Bags of Ice!). When left to my own dev-ices (Get it? “Ices”? Yeah, I’m still tired.), I made drinks without ice. I learned a valuable lesson: I will never ever be desperate enough for a social lubricant to drink a warm cocktail.

the smokers puddle

Riese: We were all so fucking happy at the end of the night — not just because of the energy but because it was so fun! We weren’t stressed out and confused all day, like we could actually be part of the fun everybody was having. I think after the campfire I drank whiskey with campers and told all of our secrets to a Wild Runaway in a Cosby sweater.

Alex: Also the refrigerator exploded and I fixed it. I’m just saying, I feel like I should get lots of butch points for that.

 

Next Re-Camp: LET THE GAMES BEGIN

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Riese

Riese is the 41-year-old Co-Founder of Autostraddle.com as well as an award-winning writer, video-maker, LGBTQ+ Marketing consultant and aspiring cyber-performance artist who grew up in Michigan, lost her mind in New York and now lives in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in nine books, magazines including Marie Claire and Curve, and all over the web including Nylon, Queerty, Nerve, Bitch, Emily Books and Jezebel. She had a very popular personal blog once upon a time, and then she recapped The L Word, and then she had the idea to make this place, and now here we all are! In 2016, she was nominated for a GLAAD Award for Outstanding Digital Journalism. She's Jewish and has a cute dog named Carol. Follow her on twitter and instagram.

Riese has written 3238 articles for us.

184 Comments

  2. So fun to see the photobooth pics! Wooo Neverland! Are there larger versions of those pics somewhere?

  3. I just so happen to be wearing my A Camp t-shirt today because I needed to feel…I don’t know…maybe just feel something? And now I’m reading this and actually shouted RAINBOW WARS aloud and felt all excited when I thought about tug of war and stomping on people’s balloons and now I’m smiling. So, obviously my A Camp shirt (and A Camp) are magical.

  4. I hate myself for reading this. I’ll spend the next 7 to 14 days fantasizing about a camp on the other side of the world.

  5. i forgot to mention this but i am sure i told much of the staff: when i was an angry little adolescent at summer camp in middle-of-nowhere pennsylvania, my camp had rainbow wars only they were called the OLYMPICS and all the colours were different countries and you had to cheer 24 hours a day including mealtimes until everyone was hoarse and miserable and you had to do awful sports all the time and when i didn’t want to do those things, the counselors screamed at me the way people being paid to take care of children should never scream at anyone. i went to that camp every summer, so after begging in the office to not have to participate, i learned that i could hide in the tack room of the camp’s stable with a kitten and a discman and read my little kurt vonnegut collection for three or four days, skulking out once in a while for mealtimes and sleeptimes. i was not very popular, so nobody ever noticed i was missing.

    i was NOT INTO THE IDEA OF RAINBOW WAR AT ALL and when i mentioned this to robin, she told me “oh, it’s going to be SUPER SCARY.”

    instead rainbow war was super fun and helped everybody band together and fight the patriarchy and smash balloons!
    AND i got to be co-counselors with morgan which is the luckiest thing anybody has ever won.

    team polite forevs.
    i miss you guys.

    • It was fun and I am not a joiner. Also, reading your horror story, I’m glad I never went to camp because I lived in Kansas and I’m sure it would have been just as awful.

      • everything else was so fun but once a summer it would get so aggressive and weird! also really, LOL at anyone who thought i was going to be prepared to be on any team but france (the black team).

  6. I love that the thundercats are preparing to dominate by doing stretches :) Also epic tug of war win, and you guys team activities in the dark with whiskey is the bomb dot com.

  7. oh god, you took a cuddle puddle picture! I think a just had a mild anxiety attack. thank god it’s a well-behaved one… (a lot, and I mean A LOT of feelings happened after the staff reading but..smokers’ circle love, yes…)

  9. The honeymoon present is the best things you guys could’ve bought with the fundraiser money. Approve 4000%. Whitney seems like the sweetest person.

    • I also approve this message. Whitney, you didn’t even tell us about this! Also, also, Becca, I miss you!

  10. oh my god I miss camp and all your shiny faces.

    Also, I’ve come to embrace the fact that I am essentially a mobile bar.

    Alsox2, can I get an Awomen about having ice this time around! Praise LJ!

    AVENGERS ASSEMBLE!

  12. You guys are the best ever and god dammit it might take me YEARS but I am going to come to A-Camp sometime and you’ll all be disappointed by the fact my hair isn’t rainbow any more but I WANT TO FEEL ALL THE QUEER LOVE so much. You’re all beautiful.

  13. So many feelings! Mel I love your face, Katie I love your photos, Mel I love your face, Laneia I love you and Riese and your initiation ceremony is the best and I tell myself the code all of time and!!!!! And reading about the before we got there, so happy that it was good and happy and not too stresful for you guys.

    THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR CAMP.

    • Yeah, reading this… I’m definitely coming in May, somehow, no matter if I can afford it or not.

  15. This makes me positive that, come hell or high water, i will be at the next A-camp. It will be the perfect way to celebrate finishing my Peace Corps service/returning to the States/getting to be a full-time queer again. May cannot come soon enough.

  16. Dear Crystal,

    I had to google who Daniela Sea was due to my naiveté, but now that I’ve googled, thanks for mentioning her in the same sentence as myself. :)

    –Jill

  18. me and my cabin straddled chairs in front of riese and alex for our straddling addiction. it may not have been original, but from our viewpoint it was surreal! little rascals 4evs!

  19. Okay, I totally just cried in the university library while reading this. Thanks Team, for being awesome.

    • I totally just went into my roomates room, stole a chocolate bar and a cigarette because I have so many feelings. it’s 1.30am, she was sleeping while I was creeping.it’s a rhyme.awesome. #feelings

  20. so many feelings! also MAY MAY MAY MAY…y u so far away.
    continually checking flight rates and already told my dad I will not be at what feels like his 10th wedding (-celebration, not the actual thing) on the 25th of MAY MAY MAY MAY MAY

  22. WHO RUNNETH THE WORLD?? SNATCH!!
    I still routinely fight the urge to yell this aloud in public.

  23. The first thing I said when I walked into Wolf for registration was “I’m home!” It amazes me how fast camp becomes the norm. Readjusting to the real world takes so much time, but flying across the country and climbing up a mountain to live with queermos from the internet just feels right. The people feel right.

    • Whaat. Are you gonna be a traitor and not request Jetpack/purple for next camp?

      (I know a little bit about being a traitor. SORRY BOMB GIRLS.)

      • Hah! Though I love to mix and mingle… I will forever be bleeding purple (as Rachel would put it) and a Jetpack at heart.

  25. This makes me feel like I’m back on the mountain. And I miss it so fucking badly. I NEED NEXT MAY TO GET HERE ASAP.

  26. I think Robin is a genius because the rainbow wars clearly brought us all together. Just read the comments on every single post since camp! I can’t wait to see what the next wars will be like :) It will be hard to switch up the teams though! Purple team will forever be my people :)

    *hunger salute!*

  27. I was having such an awful day… it’s getting cold here and all I want to do is hibernate, but this recap made everything so much better! I miss camp like crazy.

    Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve wanted to be thrown up in the air by a parachute. I got to do this during the color wars, and it was basically the best thing ever. Even though my feet went way over my head, I wasn’t scared at all, because a cluster of lovely people were there to catch me. (This is probably a metaphor for camp as a whole.) Seriously, you make dreams come true.

    • Alex! I’m emotional from reading this and also thinking about how the parachute made your butt wet.

  28. AHHhhhhhhh all the feelings. Also, Mary and Grace, you need to get in on our weekly(ish) Little Rascals gchat

  29. Tonight I passed the derby assessment I thought the time off for A-Camp might cause me to fail, and now I am fully mins passed and I belong in that community of awesome (50% queer) women that is starting to feel like a family, and then I come home and there is a recap of my other community of awesome (~100% queer) women that felt like a family too.

    Today is a really good day, you guys, is what I’m saying.

    And booking September A-Camp in the depths of despair as something to look forward to / cling on to was an excellent decision, because sometimes it is six months after the world fell apart and you can’t believe how well everything has worked out. And I miss camp all the time.

  30. I can’t wait till next A-Camp. I am still playing catch up with the school and work that I missed but it was so incredibly worth it. You are all so beautiful, I can’t stand it. I had soooo much fun.

  31. ENDURANCE SPOONING
    I love how Marika is asleep in that photo. Is there a way to get a larger one?

    Alice got me my rose <3

    • I’m not asleep, I’m just extremely relaxed. If we had moved that giant spoon train to a giant bed I would have been totally out.

      remember when we repositioned and Shannon fell asleep on my boobs, though?

      TEAM GIANT SPOON REPRESENT

        • Yes, Alice is magic. I can’t believe you had to ask. Also, yay a picture of my spare embroidery hoop made it onto the site. I was like “Do I really want to be that girl who brings the extra embroidery hoop and sewing supplies to camp?” Obviously it was a good decision.

          Science Bitches! and Dolly Parton quotes make the sewing circle go round.

  32. Marni became my idol that first night at the parachute station. I’m so glad I’m not the only one who spent my childhood looking forward to the next game of Cat&Mouse (top&bottom). Because Canada. <3

  34. Idk how to feel about having two pictures of me on the internets in which I cuddle/spoon people…proud, I suppose. Two years ago, I would have never dreamed that I would be doing this kinda thing. AS, you are the magic I needed in my life.

    SAVING $2 A DAY FOR THE NEXT CAMP!

  35. Lately, I think of life as Pre-A-Camp and Post-A-Camp.
    I wish I could put into beautiful words what this queertopia in the mountains meant to me, but I can’t, so I’m glad you can.
    A-Camp was full of love of all kinds, where you could cuddle for the fun of it and TRULY be yourself.
    After camp, I understood the true meaning of “You Do You,” and I did.
    A week after I came home from camp, with my new-found queer support, I came out to my homophobic dad.
    I love you, A-Camp, and every single person I got to share this experience with.

  38. I really love that Grace and I tricked everyone into thinking the lighting at the campfire was somehow magically installed by the two of us.

    Alpine installed it. Sorry everyone.

    OMG I WANT TO GO BAAAAACK! THUNDERCATS, HOOOO!

    • THUNDERCATS! This recamp made me miss you all and camp so much more, which I didn’t think was possible.

      • This is exactly why I woke up and had those meetings, I was inspired by your genius pranking abilities and was trying to find a way to streamline the awesome…I mean clearly from night one we had that on lockdown, but you can never be overprepared. THUNDERCATS! (HOOOOOO)

  39. i didn’t even know that the rachel walker photobomb was the thing missing from my life, but it was. thank you, rachel walker. how can i ever thank you enough.

  41. Y’know… I’ve missed people and places in my life, but not the way I miss A-Camp. There was just something about this simple life where people got along, you were fed at such and such time, people discussed stuff, and so on and so forth. These feelings are coming back hard.

  42. “I was ushering campers to their cabins and trying my best not to grab them and scream WE’RE SO GLAD YOU’RE HERE WE LOVE YOU. Instead I just carried their luggage.”

    MEGAN I really wish you had done that.

  43. I’m emotionally spent and this is just Day 1!!

    Also, how could I let myself miss Digger saying “fuck me with a strapon?” Life fail.

    • She also said “pull my hair.”

      Purple/Jetpack won that story-building session. Just for the record. #teampurplepride

    • I would like to clarify that nobody “made” me say “fuck me with a strap on”…I volunteered! The “pull my hair” was my homage to Lizz. And it was all so very worth it if only for the look on Riese’s face. Thank you and goodnight.

  45. the first day i didn’t know ANYONE. now i have 14 fucking friends i could talk to any time i needed them. BOOM DONE GOODBYE.

  46. the honeymoon gift was the sweetest thing. recaps make me so happy, it’s almost like being back at camp. 227 days y’all

  48. I think I have the same hoodie as from the “marni and robin greet the crowd” photo on page 5. My wardrobe is ~*Autostraddle Approved*~ :3

  49. i have so many feelings i can’t even begin to process. i am so in love with my THUNDERCATS (HOOOOOOO) cabin i can’t even start, and i want to hug Carly and Crystal so hard i might burst. Also, my big dumb face appeared so many times in this recap i want to die. Robin! If you see this, please send me a larger version of the photo of me photo-bombing the Misfits, because it looks like it might be magical. I’m the giant blonde mess in the tiny picture of the rainbow war photobooth collage!

    YOU GUYS I WANT TO BE AT CAMP FOREVER OMG

  50. SARA MEDD you were the best with the gift bags.
    Did you get Lina’s and my “Du hast wunderschöne Augen”-note? Because you saying that to me was so amazing, I just had to blush and giggle stupidly.

  51. Oh god, our cabin photobooth picture is adorable.

    I have to admit, I lost balloon tag almost immediately because I was paralyzed with fear/laughter.

  52. I’d like to take note of how hilarious the “Sanctus Cacas Fert” motto is and vote that mAy Camp t-shirts have that printed on them!!!!

    • I want it on a coffee mug. And a shirt. And on the waist band of some boy shorts.

      For now I’ll just have to content myself with my bad ass bear shirt. Which is solid consolation.

      • oh my god the waistband of boy shorts!! This would be the most amazing. So jealous you have it on a shirt.

  53. The sentiment of going to A-Camp again is captured in this: “It feels like going home.” It’s so, so, so true, and I hope everyone gets to experience this feeling at least once in their life.

  54. it is 2 am. I am currently 38 dollars in the negative at the moment. HOWEVER! I am determined to be able to go A camp this fall. Bound and determined.

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