I was six years old when my parents put me on a Greyhound bus and sent me off to a sleepaway camp in Massachusetts for eight weeks. 

If you’re someone who has never gone to camp – or you’re someone who did go and found living in the wilderness an unpleasant experience defined most vividly by poison ivy and mildewed towels that never fully become dry – being shipped away for an entire summer probably sounds like a rustic form of child abuse. 

For me, they were the very best summers of my life.