You are in the middle of the forest. And one night three women appear. One holds drum sticks. One holds a guitar. One holds a bass. They form a band called Hunter Valentine. Three women on stage rocking out. It lifts your heart. It pulses in your soul. They are fantastic. You watch your campers dance around you. A group of campers are allowed on stage to dance. One of the youngest campers runs up to you and tells you that being at camp makes her less afraid of being on stage because she feels safe here. I tell her that she should do it all the time. She tells me the people at school will laugh at her. They probably will. Because people at school are horrible. They are afraid of people who follow their bliss and so we are conditioned to be afraid of ourselves. Dear Camper. People will always tease you. People will
always be afraid and jealous and ready to knock you down. But someday you will find the strength within yourself to say I CARE NOT WHAT YOU THINK!!! And you will laugh when the girl who bullied you in high school and pushed you into the lake for no reason other than she thought you were tragic “friends” you on Facebook. And people might say "oh, you are just a guidance counselor", but you will know that you make a difference and you love what you do and one day you too will be on stage rocking it out. And you will dance beneath the moon and find kindred spirits and be inspired by powerful women who fill their music with passion and energy and sing love songs about revenge. The end. 

Imagine you are in a place nearly 10,000 miles from where you grew up. And you are surrounded by teenage girls a whole thirteen years younger than you. When you were their age they were babies, some not yet even born. When you wake up in the morning you don’t hear the raucous call of kookaburras, magpies or cockatoos. You hear woodpeckers and the pretty chirps of birds unrecognisable. The girls eat cheerios and eggs and bacon for breakfast. The tea is “er-bal”. They eat fries instead of chips, and drown them in ketchup not tomato sauce. Nearly everything they eat contains high fructose corn syrup. They wear tank tops not singlets. Thongs are considered inappropriate day wear. When it’s “cold out” they wear sweaters, not jumpers. They giggle at your accent and wonder why you call trash “rubbish” and cell phones “mobiles.” But across time and space, you find yourself sitting on a picnic bench on a porch. And together you are writing stories. And you all love to write, and create things, and play music, and dance, and sit under a bright blue sky with trees sparkling in sunlight. And one night you have a slumber party. And you listen to the rustle of chip packets, and smile at their giggling, and look at the world anew again because you remember what it was like to be them, even if you have grown up world's apart. And it fills your heart
with light to know these girls and to share a piece of summer with them. 

Imagine you are in a forest. You are on an elevated platform. And somehow you are protected from the mosquitos. And it is quiet and still. The occasional chirping of birds. It is like a meditation tape. The setting, the sounds, it is all what you envision when you are sitting in concrete and imagining yourself somewhere calm and lovely. The forest, like something you have dreamed about, wished about, seen represented so often, suddenly now your reality. It is even more gorgeous than you could have ever imagined. The way the sunlight filters through the trees, shimmers deliciously, all that green! It must be impossible! Yet there it is. The way sun is setting into the trees. It is like gold. It is like the trees are on fire. It is all you can do to run through the forest to catch it with your bare hands. The shimmering sparkling orb of light of it. But somewhere in the logical recesses of your mind, you are aware that running into the middle of an unknown forest at sunset is not safe. Is a crazy thing to do. So you sit and you stare at the shimmer and let your heart ache at the joy beauty splendor of it.