With the birthday of Juliette Gordon Low, the founder of Girl Scouts in America, on October 31st, I want to talk about how this over-100-year-old organization made me the man I am today. I started in Girl Scouting when I was in kindergarten. I received a flier in my homeroom for an after-school program organized by a local scout troop, and my mom, seeing it as an opportunity to have me make new friends, signed me up. Little did she know the can of worms she had just opened. From that moment on, I was a Girl Scout. I met some of my best friends scouting, and the memories I have will last me forever. I’ve been out as a transgender man for almost two years now, and being a Girl Scout is still so important to me.
I’ve made lifelong friends through scouting and met the kindest, most understanding people ever through the scouting and camp system, specifically the camps set up by The Supporters of Camp Archbald (SOCA). In 2018, I went to camp as I had done every summer since 2013. When I got there, the staff I had known for five years and expected to be there were replaced by an entirely new staff who refused to tell us what happened to the staff that was previously employed at camp. I had the worst camp week of my life that week. I went home, and my mom found a camp in my council (Girl Scouts in the Heart of Pennsylvania or GSHPA) that had previously hosted a council-run camp but was now hosting a camp run by volunteers from SOCA. And so, my Camp Archbald journey had begun.
I had been to Camp Archbald previously because it was in GSHPA, so my troop had camped there, and I went to a GSHPA-run resident camp there. However, it was a lot farther from my home than my previous camp. Seeing how sad I had been the year before, my mom took the two-and-a-half-hour car ride to drop me off for a program that I didn’t initially sign up for. I had originally signed up for a program called “River Rats” with my friend and troopmate, Liv. “River Rats” is a two-week program where you spend a week at camp learning all about boating, then head out to the Susquehanna River for five days. In 2019, there wasn’t enough interest in the program, so Jamie, the SOCA camp director, called my mom to tell her I had to choose between the two-week program or I could go a year early into the Counselor-In-Training program. My friend Liv and I decided to go into the CIT program a year early, and that was the best decision I had ever made.
Camp comes around, and I get there, and the staff from when I was a younger kid were all there. I got to pick out a camp name, and for the two weeks I was there, I didn’t hear my dead name once. It was the first time in a long time I felt like myself. During those two weeks, I made some of the best friends I could ever hope for. I learned so much from people I had looked up to my whole life. I learned how to feel more confident in who I was, and in those two weeks, I told the first adult ever that I was trans. Seeing trans people at camp helped me feel like I wasn’t going to lose this community I had built over years and years.
Sometimes, things don’t go according to plan, but they will still all work out. In 2020, camp was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was so hard to deal with the loss of this place, even for a year. The community that was built by the camp made it so that even though camp got canceled for 2020, I still talked to my fellow CITs almost every day. I learned to play Dungeons and Dragons with a friend I made at camp. We would call once a week and play online. 2020 came and went, and in 2021, camp came back. It looked a lot different than it used to, but I came back in 2021 as a CIT-2 with three of the people who were CIT-1’s with me. The rest had either moved up to staff in the two years or had taken part in a new program called CSI or Camp Staff Interns. CSIs are basically counselors but have less responsibility and don’t count for ratios. It’s a wonderful opportunity to learn how to interact with these kids without the pressure of being their 24/7 counselor. I was a CSI in 2022. It was amazing. I got to get a lot closer to one of my now best friends, Sparrow. My CIT-2 year allowed me to meet more amazing people in the new CIT-1s, as well as giving me even more training on how to make camp better. The adjustment to the COVID regulations was challenging, to say the least, but it was so worth it to get to meet and work with the type of people scouting brings.
In 2023, I did my first year on staff! In my first week, I ran an art program, and it went so well. The following week, I ran a program I co-wrote with one of my best friends, Kiddo. Kiddo had a prior commitment and ended up having to go. So there I was with a program I cared about, and the programming I got from my CIT counselors helped me through one of the most interesting weeks of my life. There was a lot that went well, and there were a few things that went very wrong. That week challenged me in ways I didn’t know were possible. It was the first time I felt like maybe I wasn’t cut out for being a staff member. The support I got even though I was so stressed is the reason I came back, and will continue to come back for as long as I’m able.
2024 was my second year on staff. I got to work with some new people as well as people I had looked up to for years, and it was wonderful. I loved the group of kids I got to work with, and the staff who volunteer their time at Archbald are some of the most wonderful people you will ever meet. I’m so glad I get to see them every summer! After I got home from camp, I got a text from my friend Kiddo asking me if I wanted to come to a GSHPA-run camp, Camp Small Valley, due to their staffing issues. I said yes because I love working with the kids and wanted to ensure they had a wonderful experience. I also knew the feeling of going to this same camp as a kid and having none of the staff I knew there. I got there, and they were very understaffed and stressed. I tried my best to be supportive, but it’s hard when you know that you’re not the person who’s supposed to be finishing the summer with these people. With that said, almost all of the staff were so kind to me and made me feel welcome, even though I could tell they were sad and a bit frustrated that someone they didn’t know was coming in. I was never treated with anything but kindness by my fellow counselors. The Small Valley equivalent of CSI’s are called Junior Counselors. They are 17-year-olds who are members of the staff. The two JC’s at Small Valley I got to meet were some of the most hard-working and dedicated people I’ve ever met and I hope that they continue being counselors because they have so much potential! Working at Small Valley gave me some wonderful new friends and really put into perspective how much camp means to me and the community I’ve gotten to be a part of at Archbald.
Camp, and scouting in general, has allowed me to find myself and find a sense of family I didn’t know I’d ever have. I’m so proud of all that Girl Scouts has done for me, from allowing me to travel abroad to getting my Gold Award and having the opportunity to make a difference in a kid’s summer has made me so proud. I hope that I get to help at least one kid know that being transgender doesn’t mean that you’ll lose these things that you care about. If anything, being trans has given me a deeper love for scouting. I’ve been treated with nothing but love from everyone at scouting, and I’m thankful for it every day. To try and name all the incredible people who have made me the man I am today through camp and scouting would mean that I, without a doubt, would be forgetting someone. So, to everyone who has created this amazing environment that has allowed me to grow into the man I am, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I love my scouting family, and I thank you all. I am the man I am today because of the girl who was allowed to grow in scouting.