My Weekend at Adult Summer Camp

A t Camp Social , where grown women return to girlhood, friendship has no preamble.

Within 15 minutes of meeting eight of the campers from Cabin 3, I learned this: In their 50s and 60s, they have no use for the menstrual discs in the camp swag bag; one of them found online dating so depressing after her divorce that she’s given up entirely; when they laugh, they pee a little; they feel like they’ve known one another for years, even though most of them met last night.

The campers signed up for this weekend-long adult summer camp for exactly this purpose—to make new friends.

On August 21, more than 400 women, some as young as 21, some older than 80, arrived at what usually is a children’s sleepaway camp in the Poconos to spend the weekend bunking in twin beds in log cabins, climbing the ropes course, developing middle-school-level inside jokes, making friendship bracelets, and performing choreographed dances at the flagpole to Cher’s “Believe” and Shania Twain’s “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” Everyone at Camp Social, regardless of age, is referred to as a “girl.” The camp promises to recreate a childhood experience so that grown-ups can bond with one another as easily as they might have as kids.

I signed myself up because I wanted to know what kinds of adults would go back to summer camp and how seriously they would take it.

Nancy Walecki / The Atlantic My new home for the weekend with more than 400 possible friends-to-be The girls of Cabin 3 were all in.

When they were younger, they told me, making friends did feel more straightforward.

But then they got jobs that kept them late at the office, or their kids grew up, or they stopped drinking, and the friendships they’d made with other parents or neighbors faded.

They began wondering: How do you meet new people? Where do you go? None of these women ever really thought they’d end up at an adult summer camp, but they saw ads for it and thought, Maybe I’ll give that a try .

Which is how they found themselves at breakfast in the mess hall, cross-talking at Gilmore Girls speed, comparing notes on their adult sons, laughing when one revealed her favorite prank—taking a picture of her cleavage on the disposable cameras passed out at weddings.

Over the hollering, Jackie Prendergast, a retiree who smiles so wide she shows both rows of teeth, told me that Cabin 3 has decided that its mascot for the weekend would be the flamingo.

When a flamingo loses essential nutrients, as it does when reproducing, the pigment begins to drain from its feathers.

With time and nourishment, though, the pink returns.

“We’ve lost our color, but we’re going to get it back,” Jackie said.