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How the Music Floating in from the Window Changed My Life

Cover artwork by Ekam Bedi, age 14, India

Satya A.S.

January 22, 2025

Department: Awesome Moments

Issue: Music and Art

I’m a city person, always have been, so why I love my sleepaway wilderness camp so much has perplexed me for three years.

I used to think it was because it was refreshing — in the woods, it was silent. There were none of the car horns, sirens, or screaming children you hear in New York City. This year, though, as camp was beginning to wind down, I plopped myself down on my bunk, and listened to all the sounds around me. The lively chatter in the common room. The hysterical laughter in the bathroom. The game of Codenames in the bunk below me. The six girls who were all sitting on my bunk listening to music. I remembered that all music was once just noise to me, but after an important moment at this very camp, I realized just how important it is.

Let me take you back to where it started. I was 10, and it was the first day of my month-long session. I didn’t know anyone except one girl, Sadie. She had been my best friend, but when she had moved away the summer before, we quickly grew apart. My mom and her parents drove us the three hours from her house outside Denver to a small town nestled in the Rockies of Colorado. They stayed for a bit, dragging the goodbye out, but as soon as they left, I felt a pit in my stomach. I’m alone, I thought, and to distract myself I began to unpack the suitcase that was almost as big as me. As I opened the suitcase, I was overwhelmed with sadness, for all I saw was my mother’s neat folding and packing. Swallowing the lump in my throat, I began to unpack, and as I continued, I began to forget about the sadness. Soon, though, I had finished unpacking: my clothes and toiletries in my locker, sheets on my bed, camping and hiking equipment in my gigantic backpack, and the tears threatened to come back. With nothing left to do, I lay in the common room to read one of the books I had downloaded, before flipping the e-reader closed so as to save my reading material for when camp actually started. So I lay down and stared at the ceiling, and just listened to all the other children meeting each other outside the cabin, including Sadie. I knew it wasn’t her fault, but it felt as if she was abandoning me. Stewing in my emotions, I began to drift off.

Then, sound. Music. Someone had put it on outside, and it drifted through the open window. The first song was one my family played at home often, a song called “One Call Away” by Charlie Puth. It reminded me of spring, and strawberries, and sitting outside with my family. I almost covered my ears with my pillow. If I had, perhaps my camp experience would have been very different, because the song after that did something powerful. I can’t remember the lyrics or the melody of the song, but I remember the feeling I had as clear as if I heard it this morning. As the first chords slipped into the first vocals, the sadness fell away and was replaced by a feeling of empowerment. The beat pulsed in my ears, the piano sounding slightly tinny from the speaker, the overjoyed voice sounding slightly nasal. It didn’t matter though. It was as if something had come over me — I felt as if I could conquer the world! I was overcome with the need to do something. What, I didn’t know, but something needed to be done. As soon as I heard the laughter outside, I knew what I could do. I stood up, pushing myself off of the bed. I paused, then pushed forward, dismissing the anxiety that had become ever-present. I walked outside, and all the other campers looked at me. I almost retreated to my bed, but my counselor’s smile encouraged me, and soon, I was one of them, anxiety banished for good.

Inspired by my surprisingly easy victory, I continued to make friends across camp. Whenever it was difficult, I remembered the song, and later, when I had forgotten it, I remembered the feeling. I had become a different person — a person who wasn’t chronically shy — and that has stayed with me until today.

The friends I made that day at camp have lasted years. They are the same friends who, when I climbed my first mountain (a Class 2 13-er in Colorado), waited half an hour for me to join them at the top so I could stand on the cairn and reach the technical summit first. They are the same friends who backpacked over 45 miles with me over the course of a month, and the same friends who, though I only see them for a month at a time over the summer, I perhaps like and know better than my friends at school. They are the same friends who write letters to me over the school year, and the friends with whom I have made hundreds of valuable memories. And if I’m being quite honest with myself, the friends I probably never would’ve had, if not for that song.

Before that moment, I thought music was just noise. After, I realized that I was wrong — that music can make you happy and sad and angry and most of all: empowered.

Songs have led me to be the person I am today. Songs have led me to read a speech in front of 300 (very judgemental) students. Songs give me confidence. Songs give me community. Songs give me connections, over cultures and borders and barriers, and for that I will be forever grateful.

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Satya A.S. is a seventh grader in Brooklyn, New York. She is an avid reader, a passionate debater, and a bubble tea lover.