New Hampshire camp
Forever...New Hampshire camp is both Jamie’s summer camp and the temporary workplace her parents arrange for Katherine. Its tennis courts offer her a paid job, but its seven-week term also imposes a separation from Michael that Katherine regards as painfully costly.
Recruitment and the seven-week separation
Katherine’s father tells the family that Sam Fox, the camp director, has built three new all-weather tennis courts and needs an assistant tennis counselor. The boy originally hired for the position has hepatitis, creating the opening. Her father offers Katherine $350, but she immediately objects that she cannot go to Jamie’s camp.
Katherine’s parents frame the plan as a change of scenery. She counters that she is going to Denver and that she and Michael have only until September; her father replies that camp lasts just seven weeks. The exchange makes the camp more than a job setting: its fixed season becomes the measure of time Katherine expects to lose with Michael. Her objection does not prevent her departure.
Grounds, residents, and work
Katherine’s letter describes a camp of 75 campers, all aged 12 to 15 and talented in music, art, or both. Tennis is its only organized sport apart from waterfront activities. The head tennis counselor, Theo, tells Katherine that she will teach the less able players, placing her in an instructional role rather than among the camp’s most skilled players.
The accommodation is divided by gender: the girls live in a large old house, while the boys sleep in a converted barn. The 15 staff members are scattered around the grounds. Katherine’s room is in the girls’ house, where she shares with Angela, a weaver from Seattle. Angela’s views on body hair and deodorant strike Katherine as an unexpected introduction to the camp’s varied social world.
Arrival and life at camp
The journey north begins badly. The bus’s air conditioning fails after an hour, leaving the passengers sweltering; after one child vomits in the aisle, the bus stops while staff clean up. Katherine notes the irony that she is now considered staff herself, even as she arrives as an outsider to the camp’s routines.
Soon after arrival, Foxy calls a staff meeting and gives a lecture about drugs, which are prohibited. Katherine’s impression is that this is the camp’s only rule. In the same letter, however, she admits that she does not know what she is doing there and wishes she were with Michael. She counts down the 49 days until they can be together again, making the camp’s calendar—not its courts or activities—the measure of her experience there.
