Attended Chanco for 7 straight years, starting when I was 10 and continuing until the summer before my senior year of high school, when I was 16. Was initiated into Order Of Chanco in 1989, first year at the new camp. We had to have the big Indian Night ceremony in the dining hall due to the rain, but it was still pretty amazing. After that, Jr. High conference for two years, and Sr. High conference once. I wanted to come back and be a counselor during the summer between the end of high school and the beginning of college, but since I graduated high school when I was still 17, I was too young to get hired. By the time I was 18, college had done a lot to change the direction of my life, and it was no longer something I even had time to think about. There's a big part of me that regrets that now, but what can you do?

I dropped out of college in 1995, after two years. It just wasn't working for me, perhaps because I was always the weirdo type and I was going to a school whose social experiences were constructed entirely around drinking and Greek life. Not my thing. Instead, I moved from Ashland to Richmond and threw myself wholeheartedly into the underground punk rock scene. I sang for a band for 7 years, from 1996 until 2002, and although we toured several times and independently released two albums, it was never a glamorous life at all. I slept on a lot of floors and spent a lot of time working terrible fast food jobs just because they were the sorts of jobs who would give you time off to go play shows out of town. I would love to have continued playing music after 2002, but when my band fell apart, I couldn't find anyone else willing to put one together with me. Eventually, I returned to my first love, which is writing. I'm still at it, and even though I haven't sold any books or anything, my writings about music occasionally appear in various magazines from all over the country. And I get to keep the records they send me to write about, so that's cool. I work at an independent bookstore in Richmond now, which gives me plenty of downtime in which to write, and I hope someday to sell the novels I'm always working on. Guess we'll see.

I still think of Chanco quite a lot. I had a lot of wonderful times there, and to be honest, a few really bad ones. As I'm sure many of you will agree, childhood and adolescence are a lot less fun than television shows romanticize them to be, and sometimes that struggle to become an adult subjects you to the most intense traumas of your life. During my time at Chanco, I was trying desperately to figure out who I was, and despite the fact that I was surrounded by a lot of kids who were no doubt having just as much trouble, I generally felt like I was the only one who wasn't completely self-assured and awesome. In that way, it wasn't that much different from high school, but what did make a difference for me was the way Chanco was a place where we could all talk openly about how we felt, who we were, and what relationship we had with society, and with the spiritual world. Even though I did have a few bad times at Chanco as a kid, they are very much outweighed in my mind by how much support I derived from my experiences there. It's a place that had a big role in making me who I am today, and I will always be thankful.

By the way, I fully plan to post some blog entries at some point about my more memorable Chanco experiences. I think a lot of them will be too personal for anyone else to have any memory of these incidents, but I hope you guys will nonetheless be able to relate.

And hey, if any of you remember me, please write! I'd love to hear from you. I had a mohawk in 1992 if that helps jog anyone's memory...