I keep thinking about the little bits of heaven I tasted in the summer of 1971. I was 15, working as one of four males at a girl’s summer camp in northern Michigan. I built a horse corral out of cedar logs we felled and stripped in a nearby swamp. I spent several weeks as a chaperone of sorts on canoe trips down the Au Sable River. And, one memorable night, I lost my virginity to M., a counselor who was 18.
How did the sparks first begin to fly between M and I? We’d meet sometimes after the rest of the camp was asleep. M. would desert her tent full of charges and find me near a campfire at a distant part of the camp. I often slept there, trying to count the stars and breathing free and deep. I had spent the whole of my life before that summer in tenements and cramped quarters in Chicago and Detroit. A world without doors and locks was a wonder; M., however, was a miracle, my miracle.
