In 48 hours I'll be in the middle of nowhere, New York. I'll pass the Fingerlakes, Albany, Oneonta, and Utica; Watertown will be the closest city. My New Jersey suburbs will turn into a crowded highway, and then open roads with mountains and the lush, heavy green of summer. Eventually that will yield itself to farmland, and that's how I'll know I'm on the last leg of the trip. I feel the Adirondacks pulling me to them all year, and finally, as country road turns into gravel, there will be no more pulling. I will be home.
My walls will fall and my heart will bulge. This year I'm building a garden, and my buzzed head will grow out at the same pace as my plants. I'll build a fire every night for two months, creating the sacred space where songs are sung, poems are read, the laughing never stops, and tears let themselves stream.
There is a special magic inside of camp people. There's a certain honesty about them. About us. We feel each other's pain and help to carry it. We notice each other's victories, even the tiny ones, especially the tiny ones. We make time. We make space. We are ourselves, unapologetically. All it takes is one. One person is genuine, and the next person will feel comfortable to be themselves, and then the next, and it's a butterfly effect stronger than any other I've ever come across. We're all connected in a web by the same string that pulls on me all year.
But most importantly, we bring the campers into our world. A five second piggy-back-ride will turn into a haul across the entire campground. Morning coffee comes attached with hugs and good-mornings. We invite campers to sit with us. We let them draw and paint on us. We ask and we listen. But we are lucky to listen, because the only people more magical than our staff are our campers. They have talents and thoughts and beliefs more beautiful than you can ever imagine. Our job is to make sure they know that.
Every summer we make the drive, and together, we take the Middle of Nowhere, New York, and we turn it into Somewhere. We turn it into home.
