“Moon Lake” and the American Summer Camp Movement

Abstract

“Moon Lake” and the American Summer Camp Movement Sarah L. Peters From the beginning his martyred presence seriously affected them. They had a disquieting familiarity with it, hearing the spit of his despising that went into his bugle. At times they could hardly recognize what he thought he was playing. Loch Morrison, Boy Scout and Life Saver, was under the ordeal of a week’s camp at Moon Lake with girls. —“Moon Lake” 412 In the first lines of “Moon Lake,” Welty comically introduces us to the tension between the adolescent Boy Scout and the girls he is charged with protecting during their daily dips. Loch’s resentment extends to the female counselors as well as to his own mother, who has “roped” him into this tedious obligation. He avoids them as much as possible, setting his tent apart from the group and eating “all alone like a dog” (412, 413). The woods are ruined by the female presence, and he will only use the lake when it is free of girls and their “despised … predicaments” (specifically, their inability to swim) (412). While his attitude may be typical of young adolescent behavior, his disdain also mirrors the conflict between the Boy Scouts of America—of which Loch is “the most conceited” member if we are to believe Jinny Love Stark—and the girls’ organizations that sprang up in response to the Scouting movement (450). These youth organizations and the summer camps they developed and promoted were in full swing by the 1920s when “Moon Lake” is set and were well established in popular culture by the 1940s when Welty wrote the story. Welty’s choice to label Loch a Boy Scout draws on the visible and well-known Scouting movement as well as the investment of both feminine and masculine characteristics into the idealized American landscape. Outdoor youth programs forwarded the agendas of adults who wished to direct adolescent boys and girls toward particular and separate roles, but while many of these programs sought to clarify gender identities, the liminal landscape of the camp—which mirrors in Welty’s story the transitional life stage of adolescence—allowed for a more fluid sense of self and of relationships with others and with nature. Setting her story of sexual development in a summer camp allows her girl [End Page 55] characters to linger in the wonder of the in-between, where they project meaning on to the woods, the lake, and the night, before returning to meet the expectations of their parents and their community. The international Scouting movement began amid fears that the forces of modernity had brought about a crisis of masculinity; boys were over-civilized and weakened by technological advances that distanced them from the natural world and their primitive drives. The remedy proposed by many, including President Theodore Roosevelt, was time spent in strenuous physical activity and “outdoor life” (Miller 3). In the United States, this pursuit of lost masculinity was coupled with nostalgia for the frontier and romanticized notions of indigenous cultures. In her analysis of phallic imagery in Welty’s story, Patricia Yaeger notes that the masculine landscape of Moon Lake is “an odd reversal of the traditional association of pastoral nature and femininity,” but this masculine characterization of the camp is right in line with the ideology of the Scouting movement which presented the wilderness as a proving ground for young men, a contrast to the feminized luxuries of home (434). In this rugged setting, boys developed into robust, self-reliant young men who, many hoped, might exert an influence on their homes and communities, restoring manhood to an effete society. Their khaki military-style uniforms went far to increase their visibility and their numbers as the first World War brought with it a surge in patriotic ideals and community engagement. This rehearsal for manhood appears in Welty’s story as Loch’s exaggerated performance of masculinity—“stood skinny against the clouds as on a stage,” he prepares to dive from points too high and at “hours too hot for girls” (412). “Reveille [is] his” as he imposes order on the camp through his military bugle calls (413). He strikes vaunting poses between firing imaginary...