The classic summer camp experience is all about a few carefree days or weeks away from home,

a place to try new things and form fast but intense bonds with other campers.

Maybe for your average 9-year-old,

bet break from the ordinary is a nice treat. But a summer camp created for adults, for trans men specifically, a place where everybody accepts you for who you are, no judgments, no sidelong

glances, no questions asked. A place like that surely feels like a dream come true.

From KERA in Dallas, this is Think.

I'm Chris Boyd.

Sandy Ernest Allen is a journalist.

When he was assigned to cover a three-day annual event called Camp Lost Boys,

he decided to have the full experience,

attending not as an impartial

observer, but as an enrolled camper himself. Sandy is trans. He's 37, has been on testosterone

for not quite four years, but as far as he could tell, he'd never spent time in the company of

more than two other trans men at once. At Camp lost boys.

He not only met dozens of others to whom he could relate,

but he had the exhilarating experience of being treated and accepted automatically as a man,

which is not something he can take for granted in the so-called real world where he lives the other 362 days of the year.

He wrote about his time at camp in an essay for Esquire magazine titled Into the Woods with 150 trans men.

Sandy, welcome to think.

Thank you so much for having me.

So when you say this piece was an assignment, it suggests it wasn't something you pitched to your editors initially. They learned about

the camp and thought you might be the right guy to cover it? I did pitch it. It was an idea that I had

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