The cabins are a topple of blankets and mattresses, the last of the tents is being taken down, and remnant odds and ends have been packed in boxes and lined up along the ramp railings. It is the middle of the afternoon and the loudest sound is the leaves rustling overhead. Like an empty ballroom, it is after the season at Camp Jabberwocky, and the echoes of shouts and laughter still hover among the tree branches and empty rooms.

The first time I saw Camp Jabberwocky to know what it was, it looked just like what you will see sometime after five o'clock this afternoon, probably about halfway through the parade - the dark red bus growling and coughing its way around a distant corner in Edgartown; in front of it, leading the way, the lanky kids with long hair and painted faces skipping, dancing, blowing whistles, banging drums and pushing other kids in wheelchairs. It was probably around 1968 or 1969 when the idea of what Jabberwocky first began to register with me.

TORONTO, ONTARIO - It all began in the summer of 1993 when Sean Costello, a short man with red hair and Down syndrome, wandered onto a playing field with a microphone and a cameraman and, for the purposes of a video class, began asking his fellow campers a single question - "How's your sports?" - right in the middle of a game of kickball.

Among the wooded knolls and winding paths of Camp Jabberwocky, tiger lilies bloom in profusion. They line the wooden cabins in memory of former camper Katie Johnson, who died two years ago at age 15. “The tiger lily’s orange blossom really symbolizes Katie,” said camper Kristin Pachico, a friend of Katie’s. “She had glowing red hair, bright blue eyes, and a fiery spirit.”