Muddy, Queer and Having the Time of My Life at Camp Wildfire
- Lee C
- 2 days ago
- 9 min read
I have now been to Camp Wildfire four times, which still feels slightly ridiculous when I remember how much I sneered the first time I arrived. I thought the patrol chants were childish, the outfits were embarrassing, and the people throwing themselves completely into the whole summer-camp thing had perhaps forgotten that they were grown adults.
Four years later, I have become exactly the sort of person I was judging, except I have somehow taken it further. I make bunting, build giant paper fox masks, plan ridiculous outfits, make hundreds of custom gifts to hand out to strangers, collect patrol points and activity patches, and every year I design a personalised patch based on the best stories from that particular Camp Wildfire.
I have booked both weekends for 2027, despite previously sneering at people who went to both because I thought that was a bit much.
So yes, I was wrong - Camp Wildfire is now my literal favourite weekend of the year.
More Than Being Welcome
On paper, Wildfire is an adult adventure camp with a huge list of daytime activities, music, dancing, comedy, parties, patrols and a lot of deliberate silliness. That is all true, but it does not explain why I keep going back.
The bigger thing is how I feel when I am there.
I am LGBTQ and neurodiverse, and there are plenty of places where I am accepted for both of those things, but Wildfire feels different because I do not simply feel accepted there. I feel seen and celebrated.
In normal life, I am not the extrovert people sometimes assume I am. I am bordering on shy, I hate feeling like I am making a scene, and I hate the thought that somebody might think I am being silly, childish or embarrassing. My RSD is usually running somewhere in the background, quietly checking how I am coming across and whether I should tone myself down a bit.
At Wildfire, that part of my brain seems to switch off.
My RSD takes a holiday at the same time as me.
I talk to strangers, approach people I have never met, hug people, dance, wear ridiculous things and throw myself into activities I would usually talk myself out of. I hand gifts to strangers, join in with the patrol nonsense, laugh louder, dress louder and become a version of myself that is much less interested in what anybody else thinks.
I normally hate making a scene, but at Wildfire I am the scene.
The Best People
A huge part of that comes from the people.
Wildkind (Wildfire people) are warm, kind and open, and every year we end up making friends with the people camping around us.
This year, while we were setting up, a woman of colour, at her first festival saw us putting up poles for our flags and asked what they were for. I told her they were for our flags and immediately saw a look of concern cross her face before she asked:
“What kind of flags, like those ones?”
“No,” I told her. “The gay ones.”
She hugged me.
That tiny interaction probably says more about Wildfire than a paragraph about inclusivity ever would. For a second she had worried about whether the people camping next to her were safe, then realised we were queer and visibly relaxed.
That is what Wildfire feels like to me. Queer people find each other, neurodiverse people find each other, and people who feel slightly awkward or out of place elsewhere seem to find a space where none of that needs explaining. This year alone I met non-speaking autistic people, trans men and women, autistic trans people, non-binary people and even the odd neurotypical straight guy. All of them seemed to find their place at Wildfire, which is part of what makes it feel so different.
At Wildfire, we do not spend our time working out whether it is safe to be ourselves - we already know it is.
Doing the Things I Usually Wouldn’t
The activities are still a huge part of why I love it, partly because I am far more willing to try things there than I would be anywhere else.
This year I finally went down the waterslide, something I had never felt brave enough to do before, hurtled down the hill and promptly fell out at the bottom. I built rafts, which was something I had previously never felt fit enough to attempt, and I walked the Foxy red carpet because apparently this is now who I am.
There is something about being there that makes me say yes before my brain has enough time to produce a detailed list of reasons why I should not.
Outside Wildfire, I am good at protecting myself from anything that might make me feel exposed or ridiculous. At camp, fun gets there first.
The Treat Bag
One of the things that has grown over the years is the amount of stuff I make to give away.
This year I took pride patches, keyrings, badges and pins, with something different in the treat bag each day, and by the end of the weekend people were actively hunting us down to find out what that day’s giveaway was. I loved that.
There is something lovely about handing somebody a tiny thing you made and watching their face light up, especially when there is no transaction attached to it. A tiny number of the things I made are now in my shop because I had some left over, but most existed purely to give away. If you missed out and still want to grab a trinket, you can order them in my store - the cost just about covers postage and supplies, and tiny profits made are used to make more gifts for the next Wildfire.
So much of the weekend is built around small acts of kindness and joy. Someone compliments your outfit, gives you a badge, asks about a patch on your shirt or starts talking to you while you are waiting for an activity, and suddenly a stranger becomes part of your weekend.
My Gay Inter-Species Relationship
I am a Fox and my boyfriend is a Hawk, which technically makes us an inter-species gay couple.
The patrol games have become one of our little traditions because every year one of our patrols has won, although annoyingly it is usually his and I would prefer not to dwell on that too much. As long as one of us wins, another winners pin goes onto the board at home.
We now have one board full of pins, some official merch and some handmade and gifted by other festival goers, and another filled with activity patches.
Every year I also make my own patch based on the best stories from camp, then wear them on my shirt so people ask what they mean and I get to tell the stories all over again.
This year’s patch will have muddy feet, the paper masks and the drone show on it, which somehow sums up the whole weekend rather well.
You Can Only Get Wet Once
After weeks of baking heat and dry weather, Camp Wildfire somehow managed to land on a weekend of spectacular rain.
There was mud everywhere, and not polite little festival mud either. This was proper deep, clinging mud where after a while you simply have to accept that staying clean is no longer an option.
Our attitude became that you can only get wet once, and once you are muddy, you are muddy.
Saturday night I had planned to wear white dress trousers, which would have been a sensible thing to abandon given the knee-deep mud outside, but instead we decided “fuck it” and went out in them anyway.
Those trousers might never be the same because of Wildfire, but then again neither will I.
By Sunday, the giant paper fox mask I had made had somehow survived three days of rain and mud, which felt like an achievement in itself. We ended up sitting in a hot tub wearing it while people recognised us as “the mask guys”.
Four years ago I would have looked at two grown men sitting in a hot tub wearing giant paper animal heads and thought they were embarrassing.
Now I was one of them and having the time of my life.
A Little Bit of Magic
Late on Sunday gave me one of my favourite moments of the weekend.
I have always wanted to see a drone show, but I had no idea one was happening at Wildfire. We were leaving the spa late that night when I heard a strange whirring sound above us, looked up and realised what was happening.
There was the drone show I had always wanted to see, appearing over the festival when I was not expecting it at all.
That moment reminded me that after four years, some of my favourite Wildfire memories have nothing to do with the things I booked months earlier. The activities are brilliant, but the bits between them matter just as much.
It Wasn’t Perfect
I adore Wildfire, but loving something does not mean pretending everything about it is perfect.
The introduction of Subway as a vendor bothered me because one of the things I love about Wildfire is how independent everything feels. The food stalls, makers and traders have always felt like part of the event rather than corporate sponsorship opportunities, so having a major global brand sitting amongst them felt completely out of place.
I hope they rethink that because I would hate to see Wildfire lose some of the handmade, independent weirdness that makes it special.
I also did not like the change to the opening rallies this year.
Staggering the patrols rather than bringing everybody together diluted the atmosphere because part of the fun has always been the collective chaos of everyone arriving and getting swept up in it together.
The showers and toilets were also noticeably below the usual standard, which stood out precisely because they are normally immaculate. Whether the storms pulled the cleaning crew onto other things or standards slipped, I have no idea, but they were not up to what I have come to expect.
None of that ruined the weekend, but after four years I care enough about the place to want it to protect the things it gets right.
Camp Wildfire - Please Don’t Grow Up Too Much
That is probably the strange position you end up in as a repeat visitor. I want Wildfire to succeed, but I also do not want it to become too polished.
Part of what makes it work is that thousands of adults arrive in a forest and collectively agree to stop worrying quite so much about behaving like adults. We wear tails, earn patches, chant about imaginary patrol rivalries, make bunting, wear giant paper animal heads, race homemade rafts, slide down muddy hills and become deeply invested in winning a competition that has absolutely no relevance outside the gates.
None of it needs to be sensible.
That is why it works.
Letting My Child Out
I think one of the biggest things Wildfire has given me is permission to let the childish part of myself out without immediately feeling embarrassed about it.
I hate being seen as childish in normal life because I am a grown man, and somewhere along the way I clearly absorbed the idea that being silly makes you look foolish. My RSD has spent years reinforcing that by making sure I think about how I am being perceived before doing anything remotely daft.
At Wildfire, I stop caring.
I do not feel childish in a way that makes me smaller or less adult. I feel playful in a way that makes me happier, and for a few days I get to stop monitoring myself quite so closely and enjoy things simply because they are fun.
I laugh, dance, hug people, talk to strangers, make things, give things away and try things I previously thought I was not brave enough or fit enough to do.
That freedom is probably why I come home feeling so full.
Why I Keep Going Back
Leaving Wildfire is always strange because I feel sad that it is over while also feeling happy, fulfilled, joyful and full up with everything the weekend gave me.
I am also usually fucking filthy.
I have never managed to get home before booking the next one, and apparently I have now reached the point where one weekend is no longer enough because both 2027 weekends are already booked.
Camp Wildfire started as something I went to while quietly judging the people who seemed far too invested in it, and four years later it has become the highlight of my year.
I used to look at people throwing themselves completely into Wildfire and think they were being childish and embarrassing.
Now I think they understood something before I did.
Being a grown-up is exhausting sometimes, and there is something deeply joyful about finding a place where you feel safe enough to stop performing adulthood quite so hard.
At Wildfire I am still completely myself, but I am a version of myself with less fear, less self-consciousness, more joy and considerably more mud.
That is why I keep going back. Stay Wildkind x Why don't you join us in 2027 - registration is open now, veterans can already book.
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