Monday, March 24, 2014

The absence of

Explaining the pure joy of camp and the utter hollowness of leaving is nearly impossible; but I tried.


Camp
Joy. Love. Fear. Sadness. Anger. Happiness. Tears. Peace. Completely Content.

Almost every emotion was felt in such a degree I have never had the ability to feel anywhere else on earth. So close to heaven. If you were to lay your head among the grass and push your ear hard enough, I still believe that you can hear the earth's heartbeat. It's a place we dance with angels daily. We laughed together, we shared terrifying stories of villages at night, and cried together. Daily, we had the rare opportunity to simply breathe together. In and out. Out and in. We swam under the treacherous sun, as beads of water flowed from our lake stained skin. We comforted campers at night, and each other as the summer days grew thin. We counted until we couldn't count any more.  Stars, weeks, memories, hours, and campers. Endlessly we counted campers, until we knew the number sixteen in all of its forms and clumps. 8 and 8. 4 and 4 and 4 and 4. 2 and 2 and 2 and 2 and 2 and 2 and 2 and 2. We bound them together as roommates. We bound them together as friends. We bound them any way we could to help us count. Daily we grew, we grew in Him, and grew in ourselves. The beat of camp rang through everything we did. It's warmth could be seen on our faces, and it's songs rang through our hearts and were lifted in voice. Our feet trod miles and miles upon the dirt we were simply lucky enough to call home for a mere summer. A mere summer that offered only a keyhole view of everlasting life.

Smells. Nothing compares to the smell of the lake filled air, perfectly combined with sunscreen applications, and the occasional wafting of lunch cooking in mid morning. The unavoidable presence of the everlasting campfire smoke. The smell of green will forever be imprinted in the front of my brain. I would know that smell anywhere, ferns, grass, mildew hair, pasta salad, the carpet of the RC, the earth ball, the village mattresses, the athletic field prota potty, army blankets, sour skittles, towels, the second pine branch up on the right of the panty tree. Green green green. We were floating, stuck in a completely, unbelievable, indescribable high.

Days were filled barely awake, lifting our stuck together eyelids to take in the new day, too tired to function but waiting for campers to sleep so we could stay up and talk. We wandered, we waded, we paddled, we yelled, we screamed, we swam. We strategically voiced our love for ice cream with great hopes of a free treat at canteen on hot days, and knew how to pick the perfect flannel on cold ones. We walked and talked and stargazed and laughed. Sunlight and laughter filled our days. Stars and pure joy filled the nights. On days we were lucky enough, we experienced just enough emotion to laugh, cry, and love.  Endless feeling days flew by as fast as a flying arrow. Gone. Gone. Gone.  Till one more left.


No one can prepare you for the day you must return to utter reality. It's gone. Summer is soaked up like a dry sponge. The nudging fall air blows away those around you. You're summer family is swallowed by an approaching season. I've seen it disappear in the blurr of a robin's egg blue v-neck in the front of a Chevy Malibu, in the back of a van pulled into the courtyard. It's been carried off in boxes and guitar cases. It disappeared in duffels and bins. Its holes are seen in empty crates and empty hooks. Rooms and refrigerators scream vacancy. It makes you question whether or not movement is a certainty. Are we all just pieced together as fragments of seconds? Are we really moving on, or just simple film strips pieced together, unable to be cut apart? We know for certain that it can't be a possibility for us to move on voluntarily. So are we really moving in time at all? Does life still exist beyond this?  It makes you question whether it was all a dream.    And as your tires cross the pavement, and hit the road just off the bridge, the tears falling are no longer summer tears. They are now possessions of the fall.  The emotions just aren't as deep in reality. You're alone. No one can prepare you for the utter feeling of emptiness. Never would I have guessed that the simple act of breathing alone, without the conjoined breathes of 30 others, can make you feel ultimately hollow. The unmistakable absence of fellow lungs supporting life sustaining breaths simply can't be felt until you experience their vacancy. Somehow, the state of their absence is heavier than their conjoined presence. It's the one thing in my life that I have ever experience as being heavier when nonexistent at all than the weight when they're all as one. Coincidentally, it's the heaviest thing I've had yet to bare.  And surprisingly, your heart continues to beat. And beyond all recollection of belief, your lungs can still fill themselves with a completely empty air. Alone.

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