This is the Culture Study podcast, and I'm Anne Helen Peterson.

And I'm Carrie Howley, a staff writer at New York Magazine.

I recently wrote the piece, Could the Girls of Camp Mystic have been saved.

So today, we are talking about summer camp and we're talking

specifically about sleepaway camps that are a culture unto themselves that are credited with

identity formation, rights of passage, lifelong communities. And we're going to start by talking

about Camp Mystic, a private Christian summer camp for girls

about an hour southwest of Austin, Texas. Most of you, if you're listening, you know the name

Camp Mystic and you know about what happened last year, but we're going to get into that

gradually. So Carrie, how would you describe Camp Mystic before? Like, how was it understood? How did people talk about it?

Like, how did it live in the imagination, the popular imagination of people in Texas before last

July 4th? Yeah, I mean, I think when I first heard about Camp Mystic, like a lot of people,

what I heard was that it was a Christian, largely white, or entirely white camp for girls of means, and that it was a legacy camp.

All of these things are true, but it was really interesting to talk to people who went to surrounding camps and asked them about Mystic.

Right.

Because it actually isn't like the Lux Camp.

That's a camp called Camp Voldemar.

And, you know, it is not the most rustic camp, but it's one of the more rustic camps.

There wasn't AC in the cabins, for instance.

Yep. What I heard it again and again was this is a camp that is especially associated with a

sense of Christian innocence and wonder and simplicity. And there are a whole bunch of camps

that are in the hill country of Texas, which is this area

...