The counselors cajole the campers to organize themselves by their ranks in a circle. Surrounded by sycamores with an acorn woodpecker yakking in the background, Jessie Dean, 24, the program director, tells the campers that there is one thing that holds them all together, no matter what their level or rank: "All of you are here because you want to lose weight," says their lean director. "You want to have a healthy lifestyle."

As the new levels are announced, and beads handed out, the campers clap and hug the honorees. Samme, the cheerleader from New Mexico, who holds the camp record for most steps walked in one day -- 54,016 -- has reached "big kahuna." Her eyes well up with tears.

Now all the kids, even the ones who didn't move up, are rewarded with an evening treat: no-sugar-added, 50-calorie, nonfat hot chocolate. The kids break into small groups, chatting over their mugs as it starts to get dark. Not everyone is inspired by the big ceremony. Lily, who has been here eight days now, grumbles to her friend Nancy, 13, of Bakersfield, Calif.: "I don't want to be here," she confesses. "My parents forced me to come. I'm not even that overweight. I barely qualify."

Nancy bursts in with: "I don't look that fat, do I?" She pulls up her sweat shirt, sticking out her belly.

"You look, like, 150," says Lily, supportively.

Nancy, who is closer to 200, says: "That would be so awesome."

Lily insists that she could have lost the weight without having to suffer the indignities of camping. "I was only 21 pounds overweight," she says. "I could have done it at home."

Not that she wants to. On a hike the next day, Lily makes a startling announcement: "I don't want to lose weight," she declares. It's her parents who want her to.

"My mom is embarrassed about the way I look," says Lily, who weighed 170 pounds when she came to camp and at five feet, five inches is supposed to weigh between 119 and 149 pounds according to the BMI. "She's afraid I'll keep gaining weight. She doesn't want an obese kid, because no one will be my friend and no one will talk to me, and I'll be really unhappy."

Lily says that the nutritional information taught at the camp isn't new to her because her parents, whom she describes as "health and nature freaks," hammer it into her all the time. "They just got sick of telling me and wanted someone else to tell me," she says. At home, she swears she's allowed to eat something that's not 100 percent organic only on her birthday.

Lily's confession is met with shock, as if she had declared "God is dead" at a revival meeting.

It's one thing to complain about the camp's bland food or all the exercise or how gross it is going to the bathroom in the woods. But who doesn't want to be thinner?

"You don't want to lose weight?" another girl asks incredulously.

"No," Lily says firmly.

"You're the weirdest person I've ever met in my life!" the other girl replies. "Even tiny girls want to lose weight." The campers chime in about how incredibly annoying those tiny girls are, the ones who whine about how fat they are but who are really a size 4 or 6 or 8. But a big girl who doesn't wish she were slimmer? The campers can't even comprehend it.

Maybe Lily really is the only 13-year-old girl in America without a bad body image. Or maybe she's just rebelling against her parents, who have shipped her off to camp when she'd rather be back home hanging out with her friends. But it also bears pointing out that she's not that heavy -- just 21 pounds overweight at the beginning of camp -- making her one of the slimmest teens at Wellspring. Maybe her parents are right and she would have continued gaining weight if she were at home. But maybe not.

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