Sleepaway Camp for Grown Women
My dad has been gone for a while now, but I think of him every time I wake up outdoors.
The mornings
He was always up first. Coffee in hand, sitting outside in the stillness while the rest of the campsite slept. I’d join him, no coffee for me, just the two of us and the quiet. The birds would start. A cardinal landing on our chair. A deer stepping out from behind the trees. Nobody needed to say much.
Then Pillsbury biscuits with butter and honey, and the day could begin.
I didn’t know it then, but those mornings were teaching me something.
(Yep, that me back there )
Seeing a place vs. waking up in it
So much of travel is checking things off. Drive to the overlook, snap the picture, get back in the car. You saw it.
But waking up inside a place is different. You hear it before you see it. You notice the light change. A deer looks right back at you. That’s not sightseeing. That’s experiencing it.
A tent girl at heart
I’ll always love a tent. It’s where I grew up. But I get it: not everyone at our age wants to wake up on a cot, and honestly, my back has started voicing its opinions too. That’s why I love that more and more glamping spots are popping up. The same quiet mornings, the same starry nights, just with a real bed at the end of the day.
The camp I never got to go to
Those mornings with my dad gave me my love for nature. What they never gave me was the other half of camp: the girlfriends.
In my Cuban family, sleepaway camp was never an option. So I never got the pillow talk, the late-night giggles, or the falling-out-of-the-canoe moments with camp friends.
So now, I create them myself.
That’s really what my retreats are: sleepaway camp for grown women. And just like real camp, not everything goes according to plan. Last year, the “fairy trail” had zero fairies, and the biscuits took forever to cook. But we pivoted, and as one of our women put it, some of those not-so-perfect moments made for the best memories.
There was steak and sweet potatoes under the stars. Women who arrived as strangers and left as friends. And the pillow talk, the real kind, where you laugh until you cry and say things that, like Vegas, stay right there.
That’s the part I always wished I’d had as a girl.
Where we’re going next
In less than two weeks, I’m heading back to the woods. And I’ve just booked the next one, somewhere I’ve been dreaming about for years:
Glamping near Glacier National Park, August 2027.
Mountain mornings, glacier lakes, real beds, and a small group of women ready to wake up somewhere unforgettable. Details are coming soon, and the women on the interest list hear first.
