But Not Gone. The Memories Will Live Forever. Maybe Longer.
A few days ago, I went up to the camp I spent my pre-teen and teen summers in. It was there I made some of the best friends I ever had. We are still friends. At our campfire, I was sitting with people who said, “We’ve known each other for over forty years. We are old.” We are. For those of you that saw Chris Rock’s show, “The MotherF**ker with the Hat,” you might recall when Rock’s character told another you make all your friends from when you’re about five until college. That’s it. I agree. However, I have made some great friends after college. They are right up there.
I took a few rides to my section of the camp; parts have been shuttered since 1988. Other sections a decade plus later. As we drove in, tears fell out of my eyes. When we traveled along the trails and saw where many buildings stood, all but one have been knocked down. All are pieces of wood and cement foundations.
My site was the one closed in ’88. It used to have a dining hall, office, old school latrine, and many leantos (sleeping quarters). We had a terrarium. As a staff member, I helped build it many times. We had a giant treehouse.
Below our hill was a no longer functional dining hall, ball field, shower house, and usable dining hall. We had our own shower. We even had hot water. I say this because my first 2.5 summers or so we didn’t. You took ice-cold showers. Or walked to the shower house for hot water. I froze.
We had lots of fun singing songs in the dining hall. And no fun eating in it. Camp food was not enjoyable. The camp had several dining halls. Mine had the best food. But it wasn’t good. I walked by most of these sites.
The main site had movie nights in a once fully operational dining hall beneath my hill. My group did our movie nights in our palace (camp office). We often brought in McDonald’s, pizza and sandwiches from El Monaco’s, an Italian restaurant famed for its red sauce. BTW, the main dining hall was kosher. We were so reverent when we brought in other food.
After spending some time in my section, I went back to the main section. The next day, I went back. I went with one of my pals from a long time ago. We first went into the lake. Our section was closed off. We went into another site’s section. At different times, there were several operational camps around that beautiful lake. When I went, there was one.
We walked through a swamp to get to the entrance of the lake. I found a spot with some rocks to leave our towels. We jumped in and swam like it was many years ago. We exited and walked back to the car. We spent some time by the now boarded-up main dining hall. We walked over to the old rifle range and found the foundation blocks that once held a two-floor, 8 – or 10-seater tip pan latrine. My site had the last of the tip pan latrines. It was a five-seater.
Our ball field where we played softball, volleyball, and ultimate Frisbee now looks like a tree farm. We went up to our site and looked where the terrarium was and where our small fields were where people sunned themselves. From the trail, we walked into our site. We saw the foundation where the shack was. Years before I got there, it housed tick tubes. That’s about all we saw. The site was laden with ferns, weeds, trees and mud. Am I happy it is gone? No. Am I happy nature took it back? Yes.
We hopped in the car and drove to the gate. I jumped out of the car, turned around, looked at the trail, locked the gate and said farewell as we drove away.
Mitchell's thoughts, photos, etc. 