In the movie “Avalon,” patriarch Sam Krichinsky tells his grandson, “If I knew things were going to be gone, I would have worked harder at remembering.” When we are young and living our storied lives, we often aren’t aware of the rough draft determining our eventual outcome.
Only when we look in the proverbial rearview mirror do we understand the past’s effect on the present. Only when we get a call from the past—figuratively or metaphorically—asking us to share our memories, clear or cloudy, do we understand who we are? Only then do we still have the opportunity to shape our future and the futures of those around us.
Such was the case when I was tracked down after more than 55 years to participate in closing the camp that once defined me in the early summer seasons of my college years. My family knows little about that time, but I sometimes ponder whether I need to share more memories with them.
These distant memories should be part of my legacy. After all, singing, “Make new friends but keep the old, one is silver, and the other gold,” with others around a campfire, created a meaningful circle that I was at the time drawn back into. Shouldn’t my family and friends also be a part of that circle? Shouldn’t they know that song was just the camp version of Sly and the Family Stone’s 1969 hit, “Everyday People?” Shouldn’t they know how much those days shaped me and meant to me?
The remembrances go back to my middle-aged parents, who were determined and purposeful. Well-intentioned people bought the land for the camp, and my parents decided and committed that my two brothers, sister, and I would use sweat labor to help get it off the ground.
The adults set up old Marine tents for us to stay in, and we spent a week planting pine trees behind an already built lodge, mowing grass, and swimming in a creek (if you could call this particular stream of water that) after a hard day of work and no showers. My mom said our work could be our “contribution” to the camp since money was always tight for my family during those days.
My actual tenure was first as a camper, second as a junior counselor, and third as a full-time counselor in the summers of 1969 and 1970. I made $30 a week that first year. I got a raise to $35 a week in the second year. Big money, huh?
Ah, but the memories of playing four-square outside the lodge, throwing one shoe in a pile with everyone else’s as an icebreaker, or taking a moonlight hike (hopefully with a boy you met whose hands weren’t sweaty) are priceless in today’s currency. Creating a family name and home in the woods, swinging on grapevines, making buddy burners to cook our meals in the woods, swimming in the lake after a rousing volleyball game, and smiling when you received letters at mail call still seem better than text messages on the phone. Activities in a three-dimensional world meant something.
The camp grew over time to include a ropes course, mountain biking, and a roll in a mud pit, among other activities. The actual activities mattered little as long as they provided the anchor for years to come and secured the smiles only memories could generate.
The camp is now sold and decommissioned from service. The pine trees we planted all those years ago grew too tall to survive their eventual need. But watching kids bond as they talk about their dreams, hopes, and faith in the future is a mentor’s memory that doesn’t fade with time. I will still remember those years, especially when I look at my faded counselor jacket.
We may face our own decommissioning from past activities found in different stages of life, but we can never be decommissioned from the meaning found in memories. Let’s pass that truth on to those who follow other camp trails.
