Where the World Ends and Paradise Begins Brittany LaVergne

“Where the world ends and paradise begins” is what the founder called my little safe haven where I worked the past summer. Working was basically like Cheaper by the Dozen without the promise of financial stability and with the fact that the girls weren’t my actual kids. A schedule of waking up, getting all ten 10 to 11-year-old girls dressed with brushed hair and teeth, getting them all to breakfast, redressed for activities, and then repeated three times a day for two consecutive weeks. As a 17-year-old only child that has only had to take care of at most four small dogs in a lifetime, there is no better way to prompt the entrance to adulthood. There were the girls who would wake up screaming and go to bed the same way, the one with lice and impetigo, and the one who wouldn’t brush her hair, so every two days I was gifted with a knot the size of a golf ball to unravel without cutting anything. In the end, it was the best time of my life and the happiest I have ever been.

This is Camp Longhorn Indian Springs. You enter the campus with a drive through the peach tree farm on your right and a seemingly endless garden of vegetables and fruit to the left. Down the road are dozens of signs with cringe-worthy puns such as “7 days...