Oxford; or, Life in the Woods

I had a hard time deciding if I wanted to go back to work at camp this summer. I spent a lot of late winter and early spring debating if it made sense financially, logistically, etc. As soon as I arrived in Oxford, I knew I made the right decision.

2011 was the best summer I've ever experienced. It wasn't perfect. It was far from perfect. In this one summer I heard more bad news and had more challenges than I have ever experienced. I have never had so many conflicts with the people I love. I have never been physically ill so many times in such a short period of time. I have never experienced so many days of extreme heat. I have never seen so many children cry every Thursday night, not because they were sad to be there, but sad because they can never come back. I have never felt so much pain over leaving a place. Despite all of these hardships, I awoke every morning thinking about how much I didn't want the summer to end.

Sometimes you end up finding a home somewhere you never expected. There's a part in the movie Garden State where Sam and Andrew are talking about the houses they grew up in. Andrew says at some point he realized that the house he grew up in is just wear he keeps is stuff and the feeling of home is gone. Sam says she still feels at home in her house and Andrew says:

"You'll see one day when you move out it just sort of happens one day and it's gone. You feel like you can never get it back. It's like you feel homesick for a place that doesn't even exist. Maybe it's like this rite of passage, you know. You won't ever have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for your kids, for the family you start, it's like a cycle or something. I don't know, but I miss the idea of it, you know. Maybe that's all family really is. A group of people that miss the same imaginary place."

That's sort of how I feel about camp right now. A group of people that all miss the same imaginary place. I love being around Akron and all my family and friends here, but I have felt so disconnected since I've been in Ohio. Over the past four years I've created a second home for myself in the middle of nowhere Pennsylvania. I always told people that even my hometown was boring; I wanted to move away and go to a city and do really exciting, glamorous things. There's a lot of irony in the idea that the home I've created for myself is in a town no one has heard of, where 40 people share two showers and I can't get enough cell phone service to answer a call.

I don't know if we'll ever get to go back, and if we do, I don't know if it will ever be the same. I like the security of a bug free home with walls, but I'd give that up for the comfort of a friend being in the bed next to me. I like having my own car around, but I miss my best friend's voice during our dramatic car sing-alongs. I surely don't miss saying "CIT's GO TO BED" every night, but I miss those kiddos every day and I worry about how their first weeks of school went. If circumstances were different, maybe I would decide I didn't want to work at camp next year, but given the situation now, all I want is for that magic to continue for these kids. I want those kids to get to experience the stay up to late-"firefly" all night-eat too much-cry too often-hug all the time family that comes with being on staff.

Henry David Thoreau wrote in 1854, " "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

I've read Walden many times, but this piece of it stands out to me more now than it ever has before. I came to camp this summer expecting to teach teenagers how to be good camp counselors. I never imagined what they would have to teach me.

I expected I would make friends this summer, but I had no idea how the backdrop of nature would enhance those friendships. I had no idea that this summer would be the summer where I finally understood where I fit in this world.

Thanks for that.