AweGust: Rediscover a Summer of Wonder

Nostalgia, time travel, and finding our way back to a season of play

Update: What started as a creative spark and a clever pun (if I may say so myself) has become… The Official Camp AweGust: A (free), 4 week, self-guided, virtual summer camp for nostalgic grown ups and stuck creatives who want to feel like a kid again.

🪧 Click this way for all things Camp AweGust

Before we canceled our summer vacation we tried to postpone it, then abbreviate it, then reimagine it. We talked through what exactly it was about the month-long road trip, up the coast and through the pacific northwest, that we were most excited about, and if it was possible to capture those experiences in two weeks instead of four. Or in August instead of July. Or in visiting fewer destinations. Or in visiting destinations closer to home.

It is interesting what our wants come down to, when we really dig. For both of us, for different reasons, it actually came down to the same two things- the relief of freedom and the comfort of nostalgia. 

Two things that seem to sum up the spirit of the summer season. 

And my annual angst around it. 

August especially. August always makes me feel panicky. A winged anxiety, frantically flapping against the passage of time. The intersection where forward longing passes through past wanting as they both hurtle, inevitably, in opposite directions.

Somehow, I always arrive to this month a little wild-eyed, wondering how I got here. I catch myself saying things like I’m so tired, I can’t focus, I don’t want to do anything, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. 

I fill my days with mindless, nothing tasks that count as productive but don’t feel like it, my brain battling toward compromise between what I want to do (nothing) and what I have to do (make money). And, in the end, a compromise must have been reached because there is not one part of me that ends the day feeling happy or satisfied. 

Eventually, someone kindly points out that it’s summer and that’s probably why I’m out of sorts, and it will feel like a surprise, even though I do know (approximately) what day it is. And in light of that revelation, it will also begin to make sense that my body recognized- long before my brain- the call of a season always associated, since the beginning of my conscious awareness, with vacation. In fact, the pairing of those words- summer and vacation- rarely existed separately in my early life so that somewhere along the way they became synonymous. Vacation means summer. Summer means vacation.

My family didn’t actually take many travel vacations when we were kids, but our summers were always full of daily adventures, prospecting old territory for new treasures, reading our way through fictional lands when we tired of the limitations of our real one. 

We lived at the local library, checking out stacks of books at a time, collecting Summer Reading Club stickers and plastic prizes in exchange for their return and a new stack. We rode freely around town on our bikes, feeling far more independent than we were, wearing our swimsuits under our clothes in the hopes that, if we sold a full batch of homemade cookies door to door, we’d raise enough money to go to the community pool. And, on the days we didn’t, we’d run through the sprinklers or play with the other neighborhood kids who had also been kicked out of the house for the day and instructed to get some fresh air and enjoy the sunshine.

It probably sounds like I grew up in one of those quintessential, all-American towns that served as the backdrop for every 90s coming-of-age-movie that defined our childhood- The Sandlot, Now & Then- and, yeah, I kind of did. The story of our summer was a similar mix of humid boredom and the wide open landscape of collective imagination. 

Of course, those memories are painted with a pretty broad brush- that classic wholesomeness is both real and, at the same time, a fictional proposition- but it’s how they’ve been framed in my mind and it’s how they’ve projected out, as a flickering expectation, onto every June, July and August ever since.

This, I think, is what I’m always trying to get back to. 

Maybe not that town, but somewhere in the world where that still exists. That’s why our road trips are often marked by stops in small towns, why I am so enchanted with town squares and main streets, why I seek out roadside ice cream stands. They feel like portals to a different time. Where the veil that separates past from present is a little thinner and if I stay long enough, if I squint hard enough, if I order a burger and a milkshake and I sit on the sun-worn picnic tables and watch the grass-stained little leaguers eat their vanilla cones with sprinkled mustaches, running off their remaining energy with a half-hearted game of tag, I might just run into her- that younger version of me.

She is the keeper of the things I’ve forgotten. She wasn’t loud or hyper but her imagination was wild and unbound. She didn’t like to be sticky or dirty but she knew how to make things with her hands for no purpose other than joy. She didn’t climb trees or skin her knees but she knew how to be free without having to escape.

I think we’re all searching for that kind of wonder. Patting our pockets like it’s something we misplaced. Retracing our steps back toward when we last had it. Farther and farther backwards because, it turns out, it’s been awhile. 

I know it’s an old, grown-up person cliche to talk about the way things used to be. My niece, not-so-gently, pointed this out to me the other day. But the sentiment isn’t always about how it was better or how things are going down the tube; just that it was comfortable and familiar and nothing feels particularly comfortable or familiar lately. 

Maybe it’s always been this way. Maybe it always will be. But it feels more urgent, more important right now. Even our movies and tv shows are reflecting this collective craving to go back in time. Toward a simplicity of existence, that spaciousness of days, the limitlessness of discovery.

If not for canceling our trip, I don’t think I would have articulated my craving for things like play and abandon and participation and the more effortless belonging of simply being where everyone else is, doing what everyone else is doing, because that’s just what there is to do.

I didn’t realize I had placed these fundamental joys somewhere, literally, out there, far away from me, so that I had to leave home to find them and, in doing so, they became a destination instead of a daily practice.

When I dig even deeper, the root of the root of what I really want is this- a freedom that is available anywhere, but especially right here, and a life I don’t need to escape from. 

So, here is what I propose, for myself and anyone else craving a lost time, a lost self, anyone who is feeling stuck in the muck, whose humid boredom desperately needs to travel through the wide open landscape of collective imagination: Let’s reclaim the season. Let’s capture all that is childlike in and around us, regardless of age or place. Let’s find and fill our summer with wonder.

From now on, I say these dog days will be known as AweGust.

This is the part in the movie where I climb on top of the picnic table and throw my fist in the air and cry out “who’s with me!” and you all nod and look at each other and rally in response with assorted enthusiasms like “yeah!” and “let’s do this!” And then, the moment passes and I realize I’m standing on a picnic table while the timid smart kid, who is probably wearing glasses, looks around, not wanting to spoil the moment, but has to ask the obvious question because no one else will “so….what do we do?”

Well, smartypants, I’m glad you asked. And the short answer is- I’m not entirely sure. As you probably know by now, my ideas are born very big. Much bigger than my current ability. So, at first I thought- maybe it’s a summer camp for adults! 

This is partly motivated by the fact that I never went to sleep away camp so I only know what I’ve seen in movies, like Heavyweights and The Parent Trap and Camp Nowhere, where the only sickness had to do with candy consumption, not being away from home.

It is also inspired by my recent rewatching of the second season of Mrs Maisel, where they make their annual summer trip to Steiner Resort in the Catskills, and, as a result, I am now obsessed with finding a west coast version of this magical, colorful, highly choreographed resort experience.  

Unfortunately, I haven’t had any luck so far (tell me if you know a place) which turned into me mentally designing a pitch deck for a new business, because what a great opportunity. And then I reminded myself- make things for no reason other than joy.

So then, I thought- what about a self-guided summer camp for adults! 

It could be a choose-your-own-adventure thing we do together but separately. And I literally began to design a fun pdf with prompts and ideas, but then I reminded myself- simplicity, Tami, freedom from responsibility.

So finally I sat down and just wrote out all the things that make up my own perfect summer- a change of scenery, being outside, discovery, imagination, slowness, space, wonder, rest. I thought about activities I could do and places I could go to experience these things.

Maybe next year, it can become something more, but, at the very least, this is where I will begin.

If you liked that, you’re going to love this…

It’s now ‘next year’ and I am so excited to say… it became something more! The 1st annual Camp AweGust begins August 8th through August 31st 2023 (but you can join in anytime). It’s a self-guided, four week, virtual summer camp packed with fun, play, and inspiration. Follow your curiosity to this link 👇🏻 and, together, we’ll find more magic and wonder in our own backyards ✨

P.S. There will be Amelie-style treasure hunts, Wes Anderson-level escapades (plus prizes and badges and more). Oh, and, it’s completely free!