Design Prompt 15: July
Design Your Own Wilderness Camp Patches
Wilderness camp nostalgia is on the rise, and as a certified camp kid, I am all in on diving off the dock into it and accessing these feel-good memories. If I close my eyes, I can still smell the musty orange life jackets we had to wear to pass our canoe test, the DEET bug spray that covered our whole bodies, and the bottles of calamine lotion we still needed to cover the dozens upon dozens of mosquito bites. I can imagine the burn in my legs as we’d hike up “cardiac hill” to our hogans, our canvas tents in the woods, and the sound of slapping our flashlights on our hands to try to get the batteries to work and turn on. Turns out, if you give a flashlight one good SMACK, it might just turn on while you’re running to the bathhouse, keeping your eyes on the path because there was definitely something in the woods. Oh boy, I could keep going on the memories.
Last year, my old and dear friend Alva Leigh reached out to me about art directing and designing her new album. She sent me the record, and I sat down in my garden and listened to it. And wept. And by the end of the album, I felt inspired and wanted to listen to the whole beautiful thing all over again. Alva and I have been friends since I was 19, and her brother Bill was actually my first friend at college! She was the “it-indie-girl musician” in Nashville for years, then became the “it-indie-girl” in London when she formed the duo “Louis and Leigh”. Years passed, and she and her amazing husband, Will, had two beautiful babies. Then came COVID, and they returned to the States, and then the tragic life event of losing their third daughter happened.
The album speaks to these themes in camp-inspired terms by, in Alva’s words, navigating the wilderness of life. How we all gain “life experience” merit badges, some we did and some we didn’t ask for… all while caretaking through motherhood, holding on to one’s creative self and identity, and the complex journey of middle life. So when she asked me if we could bring this world of “The Parent Trap meets Tree of Life” to life together, I said “yes! I am in.” (This would have been a perfect time to have created a camp handshake.)
The Wilderness Patches
Alva had the creative vision to design patches based on the album themes and then turn them into a sash, like the Scouts', for the cover image. So I got to work translating these themes into embroidered patches, and then she got to work sewing them onto a hunter-green sash she made.
