Kathleen Harris
After working a few decades as chief naturalist at Peninsula State Park, Kathleen Harris spent four trips around the sun with the Ephraim Historical Foundation.She recently jumped off the hamster wheel to work on herself: more family time, more nature walks, more writing, more laughs. To fill in the gaps, there’s always her part-time hustle as a local cemetery superintendent, tending to her "sugar face" vizsla, and visiting two grown sons who were born and raised in Door County. In addition to FROM THE LOOKOUT, Kathleen has published various articles in WI Natural Resources magazine and local media.
Nonfiction
From the Lookout: Memories of Peninsula State Park's Summer Camp for Girls
2020, Wisconsin Historical Society Press
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Brimming with nostalgia, FROM THE LOOKOUT brings to life the sights, sounds, and smells of an idyllic summer camp for girls that once operated in Peninsula State Park (1916-1948). Young women from across the United States came to Door County to experience Camp Meenahga, established by two single women from St. Louis. Girls came to canoe, sail, hike, and ride gorgeous Saddlebred horses along the rustic trails of a brand new state park. The history is enchanting and reveals how society changed during the tumultuous twentieth century.
Door County changed, too. Camp Meenahga operated during two world wars and the Great Depression. From evolving women's sports to gender roles to ways some camp activities reflected the racism of the grown-up world, much is revealed and often through the girls' voices as recorded in camp yearbooks. Whether you read FROM THE LOOKOUT as a harbinger of today's changing America or as a sentimental remembrance of summer camp, you are sure to recognize yourself in the true historic characters that walk across these pages.
