I started going to sleep away camp, a YMCA camp called Camp Tockwogh (that would be a silent “GH” there at the end for those uninitiated among you), when I was about nine, maybe ten, but I have a distinct memory of being in about third grade.  The mostly white, upper middle class, either Protestant or Jewish (can’t explain it, but there it is) campers were, naturally, divided into their Indian (it was the 70′s, they were Indians then) villages and then further into their Indian cabins.  I started out as a Pawnee Navajo, then was a Chickasaw, then, finally a Ute.  That’s when most of the kissing and sneaking around at night happened.

But that’s not the point.

The point is that Camp Tockwogh was perched on a cliff overlooking the Chesapeake Bay in Worton, Maryland.  The days were divided into four activity periods, during which campers could do arts and crafts, softball, tennis, horseback riding, archery, riflery (hello!??  try to get that one past the lawyers today), swimming lessons, canoeing, and a bunch of other stuff.  I probably played tennis every once in a while, but pretty much for 9 straight years, I spent my mornings sailing and my afternoons water-skiing.  Or sailing again.

If you’ve never been on or in the Chesapeake Bay, particularly the Northern part, it’s not exactly Caribbean blue.  It’s a hell of a lot cleaner now that it used to be, and it’s still quite brown.  We’d sit at the long lunchtables in the dining hall at Tockwogh in between the morning sailing and afternoon water-skiing with beards of dried “bay scum” on our faces.  Niiiiiice.  The bay is, like I said, much cleaner now, but it’s still murky and silty.   I’m generally a little wimpy about water I can’t see through, but maybe because I grew up in it and in August in Maryland it’s so damn hot you’d just about swim in a cesspool to beat the heat, so the water in the Bay doesn’t bother me one bit.*

While mostly I sailed Sunfish, when I was younger I learned in larger groups sailing a chunky, deep cockpit boat called a Flying Scot, and when I was older they let me loose on a Laser from time to time.  To be clear, I wasn’t a particularly spectacular sailor, mostly I just tooled around on the bay with my friends, having bailer fights, working on my tan, and flirting with boys, but I spent about six hours a day, sometimes more, swimming in that murky brown water of the Chesapeake Bay for weeks at a time during much of my youth.

When there was no wind, the sailing instructors would zoom by in their Boston Whalers and flip our Sunfish to make us practice righting the boats.   When a summer thunderstorm brewed up out of nowhere, we learned how to take down our masts and lay them alongside the boats so we wouldn’t be easy targets for lightning;  it never occurred to us to be scared.  When we turned 15 and had to pass lifesaving tests, they made us sail out to the shipping channel, jump off the boats, tie them to the Whalers to be towed in, and swim back to shore.  I loved everything about camp, except the six foot black snake we once found in Audrey’s bunk one afternoon, but I loved sailing on the bay the most.

My husband’s family has always had a part ownership of a sailboat on the bay.  The first time I remember going out with them on the boat was when I was still in high school.  His older sister was planning a wedding that, for reasons long forgotten – at least by me – (it’s cool – she did better) never happened.  I sat in the back seat and looked at bridal magazines with her and thought I’d died and gone to heaven.  I remember absolutely nothing about that day sailing, but I remember eating crabs at The Tap Room in Chesapeake City on the way home.  The next trip I remember was the two of us and his parents and we ate at the Bayard House, which was a much more elegant option than the Tap Room.  I think his parents were hoping to create a romantic mood.  Mission accomplished, obviously.  About five years earlier.   I remember little about that day sailing as well.  But there have been so many days on the bay, and some nights, too, since then, and they all leave the same kind of imprints.

Even when it’s scorching hot and the air is so steamy it chokes you, if you’re out on the Bay and there’s a breeze, you’re doing OK.  This time of year the water is warmer than I’d like it to be, but just cool enough to revive us and make us feel like eating lunch was do-able.  We motor out of the marina, and I forget every time how quiet it is as soon as we cut the engine and are under sail, especially if we’re lucky enough to be clear of any one on jet skis.   My favorite spot to stop for lunch is on the Corsica River, but that’s not an option if the boat isn’t lodged at a Marina near there.  Yesterday, though, when it was so hot at home we thought we might perish or commit acts of violence towards each other, the Bay saved us.  We hustled south, stopping only to stock the cooler.

Once out on the water, we found the breeze, we found a great spot to swim, we found the quiet, and we even found some bald eagles and cormorants and ospreys.  Ultimately, we found the restorative we needed.  And we found a big mess of crabs at the Tap Room on the drive home.

My husband, who is the true sailor of the family, is teaching my kids how to sail.  When the time comes, perhaps I’ll teach them how to dominate a water fight and apply their own sunscreen.  We often sail right by Tockwogh’s sandy cliffs and beach, and I can see the Sunfishes cutting abbreviated zigzag tacks out from shore and back again, and occasionally stopping for a bailer fight.

*Note:  Back in the olden days, when I went to camp, there was no pool. Now, of course, there’s a pool.  Probably also maids.  And other newfangled stuff, like electricity.