Camp Mystic: Pass It On. Acrylic on canvas.

Camp Mystic: Pass It On
Acrylic on canvas
On July 4, 2025, the Guadalupe River in Texas rose more than twenty feet before dawn, killing over 130 people—including 27 campers and counselors from Camp Mystic, an all-girls Christian camp for ages 7 to 18.
I first learned of the tragedy through a podcast that featured a woman about my age who had attended Camp Mystic as a child in the 1980s. She described the thrill of arriving each summer: as the bus climbed the hill and the Camp Mystic sign came into view, the girls would scream with joy. Generations of women shared in that tradition. But this same woman also recalled how, on the day of the flood, buses evacuating campers carried children singing the hymn Pass It On—a song I myself sang at church camp as a teenager: It only takes a spark to get the fire going. That’s how it is with God’s love—pass it on.
The irony of the river is devastating. Once a place of baptism, swimming, and celebration, it became the force that claimed so many young lives. And yet this was not an unavoidable act of nature. Camp Mystic was built nearly a century ago on a floodplain. Many of its cabins—including those housing the youngest children—sat directly in high-risk zones. Despite repeated federal warnings, the camp had no flood sirens, no internal alert system, and no clear evacuation plan. When the National Weather Service issued an urgent flash flood warning at 1:14 a.m., little action was taken until nearly 5:00 a.m., when the water was already surging. Families were failed—by the camp, by county officials, and by a system that allowed known risks to go unaddressed.
In this painting, I weave together images from Camp Mystic with memories of my own formative years at church camp in Indiana. The work is both a memorial and a reimagining: I depict the girls walking together along a golden path to safety, guided by the warning systems that should have been in place. An accompanying map painting marks the floodplain and 100-year flood zones, exposing the dangers that were overlooked.
At its heart, Camp Mystic: Pass It On mourns the lives lost, while insisting on accountability, remembrance, and the possibility of rewriting tragedy into protection.