Learning Armenian music is one of many activities at AYF Camp.
BY SEVANA PANOSIAN
School kid: Hi what’s your name?
Me: Suh-vah-nuh Bag-duh-ser-yun
School Kid: What’s that? What kind of name?
Me: Armenian
School Kid: What’s that? Are you Iranian? Do you pray to Ayatollah?
Me: No.
In the 1970s, I was inundated by this question on the playgrounds of my school without knowing that the answer would to grow to be a larger response, more detailed, because of what I learned at AYF Camp.
Today, As I drive up the saguaro laden arid beauty of Pearblossom Highway onto the dusty driveway of Route N14, my nostalgic musings are muffled by the ecstatic screams of my daughters – AYF Camp Big Pines is here.
Exiting the car, unloading a variety of LL Bean sleeping bags and hearing the zipping rolls of suitcases by my ecstatic girls- I am hit by the beautiful dusty pine scent of our little Armenia. The smell of this dust immediately takes me to my my first year at camp – it was 1981, the kids wore Lightning Bolt shoes, dolphin shorts, rainbow ts and listed to REO Speedwagon and Rush. Our favorite counselor, Moushig Andonian, drove in with a yellow pick up truck. I remember my first counselor, her name was Lucy. I remember my first friends, Sunday and Dawn. They were crying and I tried to comfort them explaining that my parents were all the way in Armenia and my sister and I were happy, so they should be too. I remember the campfires, singing Haratch Nahadag in the morning and the “Bunag Unionâ€
