As the summer drags on and the leaves eventually turn to brown, my camp trunk sits quietly under my bedroom window collecting dust. 

The bright orange enamel lining — just barely visible underneath a sea of stickers — sits atop rectangular sheets of plywood: the inside slightly splintered, lined with hot glue dots and still-sticky strips of double-sided tape. Its front displays a scribbled Sharpied list of every cabin I’ve ever been in. 

After my very first summer, I had made up my mind that I would return with a trunk of my own resembling the one I had seen at the foot of my leader’s bed: drowning in stickers. From then on, my head was always on a swivel, in search of fun colors and silly designs. Accumulated in gift shops and stuffed inside envelopes, each sticker is unique: a pickle, a moose, an egg. 

My summers consist of Council Rings and Ganzas, all-camp games and Saturday Night Shows; the make-shift spotlight of a flashlight’s beam shining on concerts performed from top bunks; the following not-so-quick, not-so-quiet shuffling back into bottom bunks as the comfortable ache of laughter fills our stomachs.  

In June and July, my trunk is full of shorts made for hiking and shirts made for running: an extra laundry bag, face paint and silly costumes. But for now, it sits empty, collecting dust as the scent of pine slowly fades, waiting for summer to arrive again.