Journal Camp 2020 has landed, and it is nothing short of ah-mazing! Herewith, a sample of the kind of genius free-writing can provoke:

Going Home

I bid farewell to the state of old New York, My home away from Home – In the state of NY I came of age, where first I started roaming….;

I’m a rambler and a gambler a long way from home – Old Irish folk song

My mom is a wanderer, and my dad was a climber.  He dragged me through ashy volcanic landscapes festooned with blocks of air-popped basalt purple to the eye and rough to the touch.  I, for my part, walked behind him resenting every minute of it.  Why couldn’t we go to Mendocino for a change, I asked?!  The view from the picnic bench perched high above the grey-brown cliffs, the mist of the sea, the tang of sun-dried tomato fresh from the larder in one of the few contemporary buildings that was in that old-timey town.  

Talk to me of Mendocino, writes Kate McGarrigle.  

Mendocino and its rough and tumble but not really cousin, Fort Bragg, with the mirror-ball garden trinkets reflecting rainbowy purple-blue into the mists and the welcome sun.  Mendocino where everything around me came alive one chill morning after dreaming of a boy-child I realized I had a crush on despite my annoyance with him.  Mendocino – just a 5-hour jaunt across rugged mountains and treacherous canyons that even the best of drivers could careen into.  

Mendocino is my heart’s home and I miss it.  Your mists are my mists and those of my sisters.  We weave our beads into Mendocino’s tiny-kernled beaches only find them once again, shimmering in the sea, when we return again.

by Sam Allen