Daylight savings time in the spring is the first tangible clue that summer is just around the corner. The weather in San Diego last week was enough to tip the balance between “Ready for Summer” and “Need Summer Now”. I also had a chance to finish a book about a camp for kids with disabilities called Accident of Nature by Harriet McBryde Johnson. The narrator has cerebral palsy and it’s her observations on the systems, campers, and staff at a residential camp.
There are things you read that stick with you and as you mull them over your understanding becomes deeper so that the next time you think of something your perception has changed. This is how it was with the following passage. It stuck with me and changed some of my perceptions.
“Cabin by cabin, we go on the deck to see our candles lay on the water. From the dock, I look back at the shore at the candles resting in hands and on laps, hands and laps made anonymous, made uniform, by the darkness. I look down at the candles floating away, and at their light reflections shimmering on the black water.
As I watch the flickering light drift away like tiny souls leaving, I think there is such a think as Camp Spirit. But it isn't what Mr. Bob was talking about.
Mr. Bob may think he lit the first candle, but the flame is beyond anything he can control or even comprehend. Passing from hand to hand, the fire becomes new for each person.
Camp Spirit is like that too--complex, changing, elusive. I think kindly of fire, its warmth and light, the fire of the hearth. A place where people gather for strength and nourishment. And I think of fire's power to consume and destroy. A raging force that blasts away the good and the bad, the weak and strong, without discrimination, reducing them to their elements. And finally I open my heart to then small flame that flickers out in an instant, to endure only in a brief afterlife of memory. A spirit that exists only as long as it has something to act upon.”
The initial thing that struck me was how similar this was to the boat ceremony of yesteryear…replaced by the “keepsakes” sometime in the mid-2000’s. I didn’t appreciate the ceremony then because it usually involved crafting something out of meat trays and pipe cleaners when there was laundry to do, socks to find, and cabins to clean-up. Those ridiculous boats have been replaced with making similar things out of construction paper, Popsicle sticks, and sheets of foam-same concept except they don’t have to be seaworthy.
I read, re-read, and then read it again because it reminded me of the closing day of camp. When the cicadas are starting their nightly chorus, the families have gathered around a smoky campfire to celebrate another great camp session, and the hard work is mostly done. There is a feeling of completion and contentment as I look around the campfire at the staff who look battle-worn but triumphant, the counselors who I am alternately loving and hating, the campers who are a little more bug-bitten, a little-more sunned, and smell like camp but glow with an inner light that only comes after doing things once thought impossible.
I love the phrase “Passing from hand to hand, the fire becomes new for each person. Camp Spirit is like that too—complex, changing, elusive” It encapsulates that which makes camp special, memorable, and absolutely indescribable to those who have not been. I think the reason why camp is still as powerful now as it was 50-some odd years ago is that it is unique to each person. By working and serving others the things that are selfish, lazy, and bitter are burned away and the purities in life are left. I can see the changes in others as their thinking, their actions, and their reactions are refined and matured.
I think my camp friends are so close because they have indeed seen “my elements”-at the core, the base, the center of me. I wish I could say that they have only seen patience, love, and tact but they have also seen laziness, bitterness, and anger-that they still have unconditional regard for me is a credit to the good it brings out in those brave enough to open up their hearts. The memories I treasure but even more so the relationships forged during the memory-making.
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