I was eight years old when I started going to Camp Mystic for Girls in Hunt, Texas. According to my mother — herself a Mystic girl, who had no doubt been indoctrinating me since birth — I begged her to send me away, six hours across the state, far from our house overrun by a horde of screaming, needy little brothers. I boarded a bus with the other girls from Houston, pulling out of the parking lot of the city I now lovingly describe as “one gigantic strip mall”—a beautiful concrete swamp — and we were off, to the Hill Country.
The topography of Houston is so flat it might as well be concave, so when we crossed into Kerr County, a place that suddenly had features — mountains* (*hills); endless rows of sycamores and cypress groves; and most importantly, the steady, stately Guadalupe River — it felt like stepping into a dream. Houston has its lush corners, but nature was thrust on us here: bug bites, near-misses with snakes, and a now well-documented fishing class with Dick Eastland, who ran the camp alongside his wife, Tweety, since the ’70s.
I’ve always skewed more “indoor cat,” but something about Mystic pulled me out of myself. It was a place where primal instinct kicked in, where girls of all ages regularly experienced the human equivalent of “zoomies”—cartwheeling, leaping, playing, just because they could. The first night, my Bubble Inn counselor pointed out the fireflies flickering at dusk, only to be outdone by the stars overhead, visible for the first time in my life without smog or light pollution.
I signed up for horseback riding ASAP. The best rides wound through thickets of brush and sprigs of mesquite, up to Sky High, a hill crowned with the blinking MYSTIC sign that remains lit even when camp isn’t in session. From there, you could see all of what some (with various levels of irony, depending on the speaker) call “God’s country”: the craggy limestone cliffs, ancient cypress trees, and wide Texas sky that has called to people for centuries, inviting them to stay a weekend, a month, a lifetime.
It was to Sky High that my friend’s nieces fled this summer, swimming out of their cabins in the pitch black at 4 a.m., barefoot and terrified, led by 19-year-old girls up unmarked trails. They huddled together in a shack, singing songs, until help arrived. I am so grateful for their escape, so beyond impressed by the quick thinking actions of those who saved the lives of those around them, and am equally as crushed when I think of those who were not as lucky.
The flooding of the Guadalupe River on July 4, 2025, has been, to my astonishment, extensively covered in national and international news. I experienced a surreal kind of disassociation scrolling through New York Times diagrams of the places where I once played tetherball, practiced archery, watched skit night, ate crispitos and Blue Bell. The media was trying to figure out What Happened, desperate to explain the proximity of the Guadalupe River to the “flats,” the cabins where junior campers slept until we graduated to Senior Hill. I remember it feeling so far away, the only concern I had about the river being the smell from the earthy algae, the “Guad grunge,” that permeated the clothes in my trunk for weeks to come. The heat in July is mind-melting, so much that we had to stay indoors for the hours following lunch, and there was nothing that felt better than jumping in that cloudy, murky, mysterious water in the late afternoon — a better baptism I couldn’t imagine. The year my entire cabin — Look Inn, now immortalized in The Daily's coverage—signed up for synchronized swimming “as a joke,” we performed to Pat Green’s “Wave on Wave.” I recently learned that Pat Green, too, suffered personal loss during this flood. The ripple effect is vast and ongoing — we’re only beginning to reckon with the one force that has never truly been controllable: nature. Texas is, after all, God’s country — on loan to us from powers outside of our design — but even on lease, it’s a part of us.
Mystic, like Texas, lives in paradox. The freedom I felt there was only possible because of its structure, the rigors that the few adults present undertook to keep hundreds of children in line. As a tween who was starting to form her own worldview (and frankly, just wanted to rebel for fun) I started reevaluating some of the traditions at play at Camp. I started believing some of the more militaristic gestures (bed to Taps, awoken by Reveille; inspections; consequences, in general) to be restrictive. I thought that the emphasis on manners and presentation (awards given for Best Posture and Best Manners) antiquated and antifeminist, and propaganda for becoming the kind of excellent woman I wasn’t sure I could be. And then there was the religion. Whereas many of my fellow campers took to the not-subtle Christian instruction, I took it as an opportunity to poke holes and point out narrative fallacies — listening to emo music and scribbling diatribes against the “fire and brimstone” and sending them to my parents, begging to be picked up. I’m so glad they tossed those letters in the trash, because if I hadn’t stayed, I might have never seen the full picture.
(^ reading Less Than Zero, staking my angsty claim)
Here was a place that I could believe all of this and still be loved. Here was a place that I could be the most disorganized camper, an inspection-failure-liability, and would get extra help picking up. Our 20-person cabin felt like a John Hughes cast — every archetype represented, and friction was real, but at the end of the day, those boundaries blur. The sisterhood was the real familial type — you could braid someone’s hair one day and want to rip it out the next — but the traditions at Mystic reinforced a way to live among others — different people, different stories, different values — and treat them with curiosity and care. In a letter from Tweety dated July 1991 — five months before I was born — she wrote:
“Because of the intense interaction, you learn to know people very well. You learn to understand their needs. You learn that we all have a common goal—to have an opportunity for greater depth in communication.”
The overriding message that I took away from my time spent in the Hill Country is that you may not share ideologies — nor anything — with other people, but if they were in your space, on this planet, it was your duty to treat them with, at worst, tolerance, and, at best, the kind of automatic kindness that people who first encounter Texans can be caught off-guard by at first. We were encouraged to grow spiritually and carry on the ideal legacy of our state, by being our best selves, in the most chaotic, dusty, joyful way possible.
As I got older, I used Mystic as a punchline. It became fodder for the more sardonic, self-aware version of me, who was afraid to be seen as the kind of person who did, in fact, go absolutely fucknuts at a completely sober, all-girls, Christian dance night. But I was, and I am. In many ways, it was the first place I felt free to be myself — away from my family, my school life, and later, my cell phone, my red Solo-cupped parties, and *boys.* It was definitely the last place I felt free to be a child, with so much time and space and ability and encouragement to bust out a cartwheel (poorly), catch fireflies, swim for hours in a river.
Now, in the wake of this destruction, I mourn for every single one of the children who will never get the chance to experience the twists and turns that growing up can take you through. I grieve for the ones who came to the Hill Country who were seeking joy, light, and freedom during a day that was supposed to celebrate the birth of our imperfect, insane, resilient country, like my friend, Maddie’s aunt, Mollie, and my mother’s childhood friend, Beth and her husband, Hutch. I hurt for those who lived in the community that built and sustained this place that nurtured me during some of my most defining years, like Dick, who sacrificed his life trying to save the campers who were like daughters to him. I’m also thinking of those who were so fortunate to escape with their life, but will now spend the duration of it navigating the effects of this random act of chaos. I’m overwhelmed thinking of all of the Texans I know who have been personally affected by this massive and unbelievable tragedy.
However, since I know Texans — and if I know the Hill Country, shaped by the rivers and land that demand both reverence and grit — I know that they are capable of getting through anything. In time, they will rebuild, as strong and as stubborn as ever.
Hunt, Texas! You’ll always be holy to me.
Thank you Alexandra for using your incredible talent for story telling to share how this mystical place formed you. 💚