Final gathering

August 4, 2014

Dear Friends,

Look at the sky. Can you see the stars? How many do you think there are? Would you dare to count them if you had all the time in the world?

Dear Friends, look across the lake. Did water ever seem so much like glass? Did you view ever look so much like a painting lost in a museum?

Dear Friends. Look at the fire. See how the light and the shadows dance? Hear the sparks pop and tongues of flames laugh?

Dear Friends, close your eyes and listen to the night. The waves, the quiet wind. And here and there the start of the night sounds—here a croak, there a plop.

Dear Friends, listen even closer. Can you hear the breath—in and out, in and out—of those sat around you? The whisper as we move in the sand? Dear Friends, lean in and listen ever closer. Be still for a moment and really listen. Can you hear it? Flitting among us, sparking from shoulder to nose tip to fingernail. From the crown of a head to the knee, back between our ribs pinballing from one to another, deepening into our bones, can you hear it?

Here a scrap of laughter at a joke that still makes us smile three weeks later. There the glint of the sun on the water when we sat on the dock, watching a perfect sunrise. The scrape of the gravel path as we walk through the dark. The discovery of the first of hundreds of toads. Campers’ smiles and the sleepy greetings of counselors on the impossibly long trek to morning flag. Late nights in the CR laughing, Late nights in the CR crying. Those mornings when it’s finally an oatmeal day. Realizing that tonight is your EE. Listening to the drifts of music from the other side of camp to find that your foot is tapping along. The not so quiet whispers of your campers at rest hour. Falling asleep every night to the song of crickets and steady slosh of waves.

Can you hear it? It’s there. The quiet hum of the web of memories, of experiences, the web of friendship that stretches between all of us.

Dear Friends. Thank you.