Texas's Camp Mystic was ‘a place of joy'. Floods turned it into a site of great loss
The camp, which offers two four-week terms and one two-week term over the summer, has been the go-to summer camp for daughters of Texans for nearly a century. It's so popular that fathers have been known to call the registrar to get their daughters on the list from the delivery room.
The camp, which spans more than 700 acres, has been widely described as an all-girls Christian camp, lending an image of baptisms in the river, but the religious component may be overstated: the camp is known as one of dozens along the Guadalupe River where Texan families send their young to escape the brutal heat of the lowlands.
Related: Everything we know about Texas flooding – with visuals
Now at least one-half of Camp Mystic, which was due to celebrate its centenary next year, lies in ruins, torn apart by raging floodwaters. The sound of song and girls playing has been replaced by the sound of chainsaws and heavy equipment as 19 state agencies and thousands of volunteers work to search and clear mounds of flood debris along the river, including the muddied personal items of the campers.
Five days after the flood, the task along the valley has become a search-and-recovery operation: no one has been rescued from the river alive since Friday. In addition to the lost girls, Camp Mystic's director, Richard 'Dick' Eastland, a fourth-generation owner of the camp, died while attempting to bring five girls to safety.
'It tugs at the heart of anyone in the world that sees the pictures of those little faces,' said Claudia Sullivan, author of a book on the Camp Mystic experience, Heartfelt: A Memoir of Camp Mystic Inspirations. 'To know that they were there, having the time of their life, that they were innocent, and then to be taken away in such a tragic event – it takes you to your knees.'
Most alumni contacted by the Guardian indicated they were too upset to discuss the camp, or its reputation, as Texas Monthly put it in a 2011 article, for serving 'as a near-flawless training ground for archetypal Texas women'.
It has served generations of Texas women, often from well-to-do or politically connected Texas families, including the former first lady Laura Bush, who was a counsellor, and the daughters and granddaughters of Lyndon Johnson, former secretary of state James Baker, and Texas governors Price Daniel, Dan Moody and John Connally.
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The camp may have been incorrectly characterized as a 'Christian' camp. 'That evokes the idea of church camp but that's not the case,' said Sullivan. 'It's a private camp for girls that holds Christian values. When I was there we spent a lot of time talking about being kind to one another and having compassion, and there were people from other denominations and faiths.'
Camp Mystic is better understood, Sullivan added, as being in a place free from pressure.
'You're in nature, in a beautiful setting, and really removed from the world', said Sullivan. 'It's a place of joy and innocence – or was. My sense is that it will definitely be rebuilt, but it's awfully early.'
The outpouring of grief and rush to support the community have been striking. A church memorial service was held on Monday in San Antonio for the 'Mystic girls' who had been lost. Many dressed in the camp's green and white, together in song and prayer.
It was not possible to get to the camp on Tuesday, a tailback of 2.5 hours extended across the seven miles from Hunt, the nearest hamlet, to Camp Mystic. At the season's peak in July and August, the camp hosted 750 girls aged between seven and 17 years old – that's more than half of Hunt's population of about 1,300.
At Ingram, a riverbank town that also lost dozens from RV camps and homes to the flood, emergency workers and volunteers were pitching in, in many cases in the hope of recovering people still lost, and many bodies probably hidden under large piles of river debris, shattered homes and mangled possessions.
John Sheffield, owner of Ingram's Ole Ingram Grocery, said the flood had not recognized social differences and nor would the recovery effort: 'This is Americans taking care of Americans. There's been such a tremendous outpouring of support and compassion.'
Down by the river, search crews were continuing to comb through debris and mud. Claud Johnson, the mayor of Ingram, was operating a digger up by Hunt. An EMS van pulled up, suggesting another body had been found. Helicopters continued to move overhead despite an incident on Monday when one was struck by a privately operated drone and was forced to make an emergency landing.
There's been such a tremendous outpouring of support and compassion
John Sheffield
Three baristas from the Aftersome Coffee stand in San Antonio had come up to serve recovery workers. Allyson Bebleu said she had gone to church camp and it had given her some of her fondest memories.
'It's not just for the wealthiest families, people of all types go to camp,' she said. 'Everyone is putting themselves in the shoes of the Camp Mystic girls. It's tragic.'
Camp Mystic was also the subject of a controversial video recently posed by Sade Perkins, a former member of Houston's Food Insecurity Board. Perkins was 'permanently removed' by John Whitmire, the Houston mayor, after she called Camp Mystic a 'whites only' conservative Christian camp without even 'a token Asian, they don't have a token Black person'.
Richard Vela, whose 13-year-old daughter Maya was evacuated from a nearby camp, Camp Honey Creek, on Friday and was still too upset to discuss it, said Perkins' comments 'were not right. You don't talk about people like that. There's a lot of death going on and they still haven't found everybody.'
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Bruce Jerome, who was manning an outreach for flood survivors in Ingram, said he had known Jane Ragsdale, the director and longtime co-owner of Heart O' the Hills Camp, in Hunt, Texas, who had died in the flooding.
'She was just genuinely wonderful,' Jerome said.
Further down the track to the river was Josey Garcia, a Democratic representative for San Antonio in the Texas state house. She and her team were also picking through the debris, pointing out vast piles that still need to be be sifted through.
Garcia, a military veteran, said it was important to come 'and collaborate with our neighbors here to recover those that are missing and help Kerr county clean up. We've had folks coming from Laredo and outstate Kansas to lend assistance. It's showing the spirit of Texas – when it comes to lives being devastated it's our duty to step.'
Garcia, too, rejected negative characterizations of Camp Mystic.
'I've been hearing a lot of the rhetoric that's been going around. This is not the time for those types of distinctions. I don't care who was at the camp. All I know is that there are parents and families that are missing their loved ones. Whether it's rich Caucasian children or any other children, we'd still be there.'
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USA Today
4 hours ago
- USA Today
Camp Mystic girls had a safe haven by the river for 100 years. Then, the flood came.
There is something special, almost sacred about a place where girls go for four weeks, putting down phones and away from boys, which brings them closer together. The first time Allie Coates ran barefoot across the buffalo grass at Camp Mystic, she was eight. Her tiny strides nestled among the cypress trees near the Guadalupe 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 A generation of campers 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 100th anniversary. '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 Lady Laura Bush was 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 a worship service on 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. From fear to lifelong friends Katherine Haver's family moved to Texas when she was 2. Their neighbor told them about Camp Mystic, and her mom put 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.' A place to belong 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@
Boston Globe
6 hours ago
- Boston Globe
Basho was an elitist, Thoreau a codependent
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Yahoo
13 hours ago
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'Kate aces it' and UK PM 'won't stop a single boat'
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