As a Malaysian, the experience of summer (although the heat is reminiscent of the climate back home), and summer camp, is entirely new to me and my family.

While camping in itself, is not, although it’s been more than 20 years since I pitched a tent and cooked over a wood fire pit, enjoying the great outdoors has always been a favourite pastime of mine. For Lokes? Not so much, but he’s coming around.

Rae went for her first camp experience (as real as it can get for a then-3.5 year old) not too long ago and I’d just realised that most, if not all, of her childhood memories will now comprise of our life here in the US (she doesn’t even remember her friends back home).

With many years ahead of us here (our visa is for seven, if we don’t decide to apply to stay longer), I can imagine that most of her summers, and those of Skyler’s, will be spent the way most American kids spend theirs: in the grand tradition of the American summer camp.

Slate recently published a short article and slide presentation, based on the soon-to-be released A Manufactured Wilderness by Abigail A. Van Slyck, about the history of the American summer camp. It is interesting (and hilarious) to learn that camping was looked upon as a refuge from “the moral and physical degradations of urban life, evils to which women and children were understood to be particularly prone”.

And maybe it still is today, but from the moral and physical degradations of, specifically, theme parks and shopping malls?

Rae will be five next year when summer comes again. I don’t think she will be  or we, her parents - ready to go for summer camp on her own yet but it would be great if we, as a family, could embark upon this experience on our own first. Just to give it a try.

So babe (yes, talking to you), you have one year to get ready to rough it out!

Related Slate article: Should I send my six-year old to summer camp?

Technorati tags: Integration into American culture