FOUR – SUMMER CAMPI spent most of my early years going to annual summer camp, joining other boys aged 8 to 15 from the inner city of Detroit. We shared a three-hour bus ride up Gratiot Avenue to our destination, a few miles north of Lexington, Michigan. The camp was situated on the shores of Lake Huron, one of Michigan’s spectacular Great Lakes. There, I learned to swim, canoe, fish, shoot arrows at targets, braid colored plastic strips into lanyards and whips, draw, paint, and play baseball, basketball, and touch football. It was also there that I endured some of my most vividly frightening childhood experiences.
The camp, bordered by forest on three sides, contained spruce, pine, fir, oak, maple and birch trees. They rose up from the ground in no particular track or pattern, almost as i
