Every year, my parents and I open a camp near Gaylord, Michigan, called Camp Lake Louise. My parents worked there on staff for several years in the 80s, and about six years ago we started going back as a family to open and close the water system and the camp buildings. Since coming to college, I have missed the fall closing sessions, but still enjoy opening every spring. It’s a nice way to relax after an intense finals week, even if I do come home one day and then pack to leave on the very next morning.
Even though I have never been to the camp as an actual camper, I fell in love with the place and it is now one of my favorite places to be. I love hiking trails in the woods, swimming every time I go up even though the lake is spring fed and never seems to get warmer than just marginally not solid ice, and I even enjoy the work, getting the camp ready for another summer season.
But I love the camp for more reasons than just what it is like now. It’s almost unchanged from the way it was when my parents worked there. The camp is a connection, for me, to when my parents were my age. My mother was only a year older than I am now when she started working there. Sometimes, it’s hard to imagine that my parents were ever my age, and it’s nice to have some tangible reminder that they were once as young and inexperienced as me. I can at least hope that I’ll someday turn out half as good as they did.
Getting ready for my first summer job has made this hit home a lot harder for me this year than most. I’m growing up just like they were then, and I wonder if years later I’ll take my kids to my college and tell them about when I was there and what my first summer job was like. I hope I’ll be able to reassure them that even if they feel young and unprepared for the realities of life right now, someday they will have stories just like I do. Stories of learning and making mistakes and becoming a better person because of them. And stories of making new friends and having fun and realizing that sometimes you just have to step back, take a breath, and enjoy life, because it’s too short to waste.
I hope that the camp will continue to exist for years, since it is a place to connect with the past for many more people than just me. Campers who haven’t been there in years still remember it as it was when they were there. It’s an amazing thing to watch someone who came in the 1950s look around and recall certain things that are exactly the same as they were when she was first there. And I hope that I will be able to pass the same legacy on to my kids. To point out the places that hold memories for me and give them some way to remember where they came from and who they may be someday. Places like that are rare and getting rarer, and I’m fortunate enough to be a part of one.
