My connection to Camp Mystic spans over 3 generations. Growing up, I knew that the summer after I turned 8, my parents would pack my trunk (which was my cousin’s before mine) and send me on my way to the heart of the Texas hill country, Camp Mystic. I would walk across the stage at Rec Hall, and draw a blue or red slip, determining whether I’d join my aunt as a Kiowa or my cousin as a Tonk. When I got off that bus, it felt like I had just arrived at Disneyland. There were so many smiling faces looking back at me that I couldn’t help but forget about any lingering anxieties. I had so much fun after my first summer that I begged my parents to send me to “1st Term,” which was a full month instead of the 2-week term I had previously attended. From then on, I spent my Junes at Mystic for 8 beautiful summers.

The impact that Camp Mystic had on my life is so deep that it’s hard to even describe. To be a Mystic girl is to be strong-willed, honest, compassionate, unafraid, and most importantly, to lead a life that glorifies Christ. We were taught to always eat vanilla ice cream with a scoop of peanut butter on the side, and to cheer as the winners go by, even if you lost during the last minute of the senior kickball game. Mystic is the only place I can think of where you can get your hunter’s safety license while also learning how to paint your nails, and that is what made Mystic such a magical place for me. One of my favorite things about Mystic was that from a young age, the idea was instilled in us that our beauty came primarily from the inside, not the outside. I learned how to be independent and rely on myself while simultaneously learning to trust others, and most importantly, trust God. As someone who grew up without sisters, Mystic gifted me that sisterhood I longed for. Even now, I refer to my best friend and her older sister as my own family; they are truly my God given sisters.

It’s been 5 months since the night of July 4th, the night we lost 27 Mystic girls. The beautiful thing about Mystic is that you could sit next to someone on an airplane who was a fellow Mystic camper, and you immediately feel a sense of sisterhood and belonging. I think I can speak for a lot of us that because of that connection, we all felt the loss of these girls on a deeper level. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about them. I think about the fear they probably felt, I think about their families and I think about how quickly a place full of God’s beauty and love was torn apart by death and destruction. I have a hard time processing it all in my head. I think I still feel kind of numb to the whole situation because I truly don’t know what I’m supposed to feel. Sad? Angry? Confused? Probably a mix of all three. Every time I see a headline about Mystic in the news, the only thing I can really feel is this hopeless despair. I’ve recently found myself wishing that I could go back in time and relive one more day at Mystic. A day full of playing mermaids during free swim, eating chef’s salad, and ending the night dancing with my friends on the stage of Rec Hall. And instead of going straight to bed after taps, we would sit on someone’s bed with a flashlight and exchange stories about our lives back home. I’d give anything to experience it one more time.

My cabin in our “Sunday whites” at the waterfront, Mystic 2020

But we live in a reality where those beautiful memories are now tainted by the vicious floodwaters that took the lives of those 27 girls. The joy I once felt when I thought of Mystic has been replaced with this sense of eeriness that I can’t seem to shake. My heart will forever be broken for those girls. On Sunday mornings, we used to sing the “Mustard Seed Song” and one of the lyrics said “if you have the faith of a mustard seed, you got all the faith, all the faith you need”. That phrase is something that has stuck with me throughout my childhood and into my adult life. I think that now more than ever we have to hold onto that faith. I asked my sister how do we move on from this, and she said we don’t. I think she’s right. We can't move on from this, but we have to live on in their memory. We have to love others fiercely, chase our wildest dreams, and live life without fear because that is what it means to be a Mystic girl.

I truly couldn’t imagine my life without the green gates of Mystic. I would not be half the woman I am today without the strong values I learned from this sisterhood. Something I’ve come to realize through my own grief is that there isn’t a right way to feel about what happened. I hope that as a community, we all continue to carry the spirit of Mystic with us for many years to come. As our director, Dick Eastland, used to say, “A bell is not a bell until you ring it, a song is not a song until you sing it, the love in your heart wasn’t put there to stay, love is not love until you give it away.”

To Mystic, Love Susan