Summers in Maryland: Part I (abridged)

a love letter to a community in liminal space: Vibe Camp

Astrophytum asterias in bloom rendered in watercolor

I

I’ll be honest, I had no idea what to expect when coming out here for summer camp. I’d been living in Austin for almost a decade now. So, I’d like to preface with that, and provide a little background about where I am coming from. Mentally, where I am right now because I’ve been a little bit on the fringes of society as of late, punk shows, that sort of thing.

So where do I begin? Let’s start with some context, I had only been up to the north-east a handful of times in the past; However, most of that time was spent either in middle of nowhere on the “Pemigewasset Loop,” or inside a box which just happened to be in Brooklyn, New York.

After the “Covid-19 Pandemic,” I had spent most of my time locked inside of a variety of boxes just ticking away at time. I had lost most of the my structure, most of my life crumbled away, and undergrad had finished with me in lockdown, and I was online once again.

Naturally, during this point in my li…