Camp Mystic girls had a safe haven by the river for 100 years. Then, the flood came.
The first time Allie Coates ran barefoot across the buffalo grass atCamp Mystic, she was eight. Her tiny strides nestled among the cypress trees near theGuadalupe River. She caught a catfish, mailed her first letter and learned to ride a horse. Thirteen summers later, she was still there, this time as a counselor, teaching 8-year-old girls how to swim and fish, French braid hair and play guitar. She can still see herself as the shy girl snuggled under the hot pink comforter. Her name embroidered in white across her bunk in Bubble Inn. It's the same cabin where this year, 13 girls and their counselors were swept away in a Fourth of July flood in Texas hill country. In all, 27 children and staff from Camp Mystic died among at least 120 in the state. Today, her Los Angeles apartment smells like chocolate chips and oatmeal. She's finding comfort baking "Tweety" cookies, named after camp director Tweety Eastland — whose husband died in the flood trying to get girls to higher ground. She is 25 now, a social media manager, and is wearing a silver bracelet filled with charms from her time at camp, including an M for the most improved at canoeing. She pulls out her camp Bible, reading from crumpled papers in her bubbled teenage handwriting: Matthew 5:16,"Be a light for all to see." As Coates' mom drove her to camp from Dallas each year, she began to relax. The highway that cut through scrubby desert turned to flat gentle hills with mesquite trees until Highway 89 and its craggy limestone led them through the green metal gate emblazoned with a "CM." It was a place that felt timeless, away from selfies and cell phones, boys and social media, a place where Sunday fried chicken lunches gave way to One Direction dance parties. Mystic Girls, as the former campers call themselves, are mourning what was lost: the girls beginning their camp journeys and their counselors who tried to save them. The innocence of a place and time where they say they found the best version of themselves, a place that made them who they are. "It was a safe space to be weird and awkward, where we could be silly and just be ourselves," Coates says. "Just to be girls." In the week since the flood as they hear heartbreaking stories of loss, generations of Mystic Girls across the country are turning to each other. They are hosting prayer vigils and fundraisers, sharing photos and favorite stories. They are seeking the familiar that takes them back to camp, the cheese enchilada recipe and the yellow sheet cake with chocolate frosting, the songs and prayers that sustain them. See how the Texas floods unfolded:Why Camp Mystic was in a hazardous location Julia Hawthorne's first year at Camp Mystic was 1987. She followed her older sister, who had followed their aunt who had gone to the camp in the 1970s. Hawthorne later became a counselor at the camp, teaching girls what she had learned. Her cousins went to Camp Mystic in the 1990s. When she was pregnant in 2006 and learned she was having a girl, the first thing she told her sister: "Oh my gosh, she can go to Mystic." Her second daughter, Presley, would be born four years later, also a Mystic girl. Her two nieces are in second grade and are registered to attend next year, if the camp re-opens for what will be its 100thanniversary. "These songs that we sang every day at camp, they are the same songs that my aunt learned, my daughters learned," says Hawthorne, 49, a dentist in Austin. "There is some comfort in that right now." Girls often look for their grandmother's names written on ceilings of the unairconditioned cabins, a tradition dating back to when the camp moved to all girls in 1939. There are so many names and so little space, the girls now often write on plaques that line cabin walls. The camp opened in 1926 and three generations of the same family have run it, with disagreement over money among siblings in 2011 that was sorted out through court, and the family kept it, even when summers of travel volleyball teams and volunteer trips threaten it. Each summer, about 2,000 girls from 8 to 18 attend the camp over three sessions. Little has changed over the years, other than baton twirling giving way to lacrosse, and a charm school class changing to beauty inside and out, where girls are taught that painting your nails red can help keep you from biting them. Former First LadyLaura Bushwas a counselor. There is something special, almost sacred about a place where girls go for four weeks. A place where they put down their phones. A place where they get away from the boys. A place that brings them closer together. The days are measured by sunsets, with rituals and traditions, the same ones your mother had. Brooklynn Hawthorne learned to ride horses in the same place her mom did, slept in the same cabins and ate chocolate chip cookies from the same recipe. It's the only place in the world where she and her mom could share the exact same experience, not bound by space and time. "You feel like you're in your own little world," Brooklynn, 19, now a sophomore at the University of Texas Austin says. "You don't have to worry about boys. You don't have your phones, but you don't even want them. You have your camp friends that you've known since you were 8 and it's all you want." Her mom concedes that it's much more difficult to be a girl now "with the pressures of social media," but even in 1987, she relished the time. "For us, it wasn't so much as unplugged," she says. "You don't have to think about the pressures. You just get to be a girl." While the camp is Christian, it also draws girls who are agnostic, Jewish and some who are atheist. What drives everything about the camp are three tenets that women say they try to still live beyond the green gates of Camp Mystic: Be a better person, let camp bring out the best in you, and grow spiritually. On Sundays, the girls wear white go to aworship serviceon the banks of the Guadalupe, the river that has washed so much away, where they sit with their cabinmates, and sing a Capella. Sunday evenings, the older girls read vespers and share their gratitude. "There's something about the beauty of camp mystic that you just feel God's presence when you are there," Julia says. Katherine Haver's family moved to Texas when she was 2. Their neighbor told them about Camp Mystic, andher momput her on the waiting list. The first year she could go, she was too afraid. The next year, she nervously agreed, a little girl whose front two adult teeth had come in full size, who liked to read and asked a lot of questions. "Girls who had just met the last year were already close," she says. "But being around them just felt happy." That night the girls were sorted into two groups which they'll remain each year at camp and will compete with in activities and sports. Pulling out a blue or red piece of construction paper from a big cowboy determined something that defines the girls to this day and when they meet, they'll ask: Kiowa or Tonkawa. She drew blue – Kiowa – and the older girls rushed to pick her up and carry her to sit with her group. "You feel so special, here are these older girls who include you, you get to be kind of a grown up," says Haver, 24, who is in her third year of medical school in Galveston, Texas. When she reflects back on eight years of camp, there were the dance parties to Hannah Montana and Taylor Swift, movie nights, the Blue Bell ice cream she had at lunch each day (and still looks for Birthday Cake flavor in the grocery store). But it was more than that, it was to grow spiritually. "You could take that to mean whatever you wanted. You really just worked at becoming a better person," she said. "It was how do you go out in the world and be a better human." "What's really beautiful, those memories, they only exist between us," Haver says. "Regardless of what separates us, will always unite us." While Coates often struggled with friends in high school, Camp Mystic was a refuge. She could be herself, whether that meant trying a new hairstyle or wearing matching T-shirts with her friends with a cat DJing on it. "The opportunity to unplug, get off my phone, be in nature and be with people who genuinely care about you was one of the best experiences I ever had," she says "No matter what was going on, I always had Mystic to look forward to." She moved from cabin to cabin from Bubble Inn to Rough House to Hang Over, to a counselor during summer breaks from Pepperdine University. The girls she met at 8 were still her friends. This, she says, made campers more like family. "You got to know them when you were little so there was less judgement than when you meet girls as teenagers," she says. "You could be loud. You could be silly. You didn't have to prove anything to anyone. You just show up as you." She worked to create that same feeling for the 23 little 8-year-old girls who came into her Bubble Inn not knowing anyone. She taught them to braid their hair, where to put a stamp on a letter home, everything. "You forget, these girls are so little, they are just babies. They don't even know how to brush their teeth sometimes because their moms were always with them, doing everything for them" she says. "So you love them and teach them." The counselors loved the girls as if they were their own little sisters. Girls who often became so homesick that she and other counselors used Camp Mystic's time-tested remedy: a special homesick pill, a colorful Tums. And a hug. She thought about the girls the camp lost this year, the girls who won't get to use their cute bedding they picked out and used year after year, like she did. And the parents who will retrieve their colorful trunks, but not their girls. It feels impossible. She looks for the good as camp taught her. She takes comfort in knowing all those girls, just like she did each night under her same hot pink comforter, drifted to sleep their last night to taps playing over the camp loudspeaker and a message at 10:30 p.m.: "Goodnight Camp Mystic, we love you." Laura Trujillo is a national columnist focusing on health and wellness. She is the author of "Stepping Back from the Ledge: A Daughter's Search for Truth and Renewal," and can be reached at ltrujillo@usatoday.com. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:Camp Mystic was their haven, now they find comfort in each other
Camp Mystic girls had a safe haven by the river for 100 years. Then, the flood came. The first time Allie Coates ran barefoot across the buf...
