The Season I Call Home

“For me, it was almost like winter didn’t count. Summer was what mattered. My whole life was measured in summers.”

I remember reading this line in Jenny Han’s The Summer I Turned Pretty and pausing, reflecting on the text printed out in front of me. It hit me then: Summer was what mattered.

Growing up in the Peach State, my summers are often spent outside the back door of my childhood home. The sparkling, clear blue pool called my name. The cold and refreshing feeling I got once I jumped in was unbeatable. I’d swim for hours.

“You act like you’re a mermaid or something,” my mom and grandma always told me.

Honestly, I was in another life. Don’t tell anyone though.

Each summer, the pool gave way to a weeklong trip to Florida with my family and our close friends. We called Ponce Inlet our home for that one special week.

Mornings were spent lying on the sand, afternoons riding waves on boogie boards, evenings at the Marine Science Center ogling over sea turtles and nights nursing sunburns we promised to avoid “next time” over dinner.

Years passed, but the cycle continued. I remember my life not based on school years or birthdays, but by what happened the summer of.

The year after Covid, my family and I took a girls trip down to Amelia Island, Fla. We kept the tradition alive for about two summers. Renting out a giant Airbnb which we all shared and usually including a boardwalk guiding us down to the shore. Amelia Island quickly went on my list of “places to live after the Big Apple.” Quaint, but lively. I remember those summers spent in their town square like it was yesterday.

Summer of 2023. What a summer to remember! Two weeks of my summers were taken up for three years during my childhood. One for the beach and the other reserved for summer camp.

The last year I went to camp was in the seventh grade, 2017. My week was spent at Georgia 4-H at Camp Jekyll, down on Jekyll Island, Ga.

“Mom, Jekyll is where I want to be a counselor,” I’d say to her after getting back from camp at the end of the week.

I’d also tell her after working as a counselor, I’d switch to working as a marine biologist at the Georgia Sea Turtle Center. Almost like an ode to my summers spent on Ponce Inlet visiting their Marine Science Center.

My dream became reality that summer, the summer of 2023. I spent seven weeks down at, arguably, the best place in Georgia. Six of those weeks were spent changing the lives of kids, the same way my counselors at junior camp the summer I attended changed mine.

I fell in love with summer all over again. I got to call the beach my home. My office. Nothing was better than this.

I decided Camp Jekyll hadn’t seen the end of me yet, so I went back and spent another summer as “Purple Crew” at the place I started calling home. Biking three times a week around the island, pointing out cool buildings and places to kids, holding all different types of reptiles like snakes and baby alligators. These kids thought I was braver than I let out to be.

What they didn’t know is; I was terrified to hold these animals last summer. There was no way I was gonna teach herpetology.

I loved the class so much I ended up teaching it my second summer in 2024. It was awesome.

I’ve gotten to pull a seine net in the ocean water, catching all sorts of critters, showing off blue crabs to my campers, catching jumping shrimp in our net and my friend, Mr. Stingray visited us twice during the summer, saying hello from the net we caught him in.

I taught marsh ecology last summer. Best. Class. Ever! The things which lay behind the tall, spartina grass are endless! Speaking of spartina grass—when the grass breaks down, it turns into a mud called detritus and just between you and I, the mud is super packed with nutrients and makes you appear younger than you really are. ;)

I hope you’re super invested and wondering about my plans for this summer. I’m headed back to, you guessed it, Jekyll Island!

Still serving the amazing color purple, but with a new title this time! Captain McKenna!

At camp, each summer a different experienced counselor takes on the title of leadership at their designated camp. Captain for Jekyll, pretty fitting to the theme if I say so myself.

I’m already counting down the days until kids roll through the toll booth on the island. Thirty-eight, the day I’m writing this.

I’ve been waiting in anticipation for the memories lying ahead of me. Good times are to be had with my counselors, watching them thrive at camp. I get to show them everything I love about my home. Our home. Maybe they’ll start to measure their life in summers, starting with this one.

This isn’t the summer I turned pretty, but instead the summer I turned Captain.

I wouldn't have it any other way.

Strike Out,

McKenna Edwards

Editor: Emily Copp

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