It’s been decades (gulp!) since I have been at overnight camp. Decades since my younger self walked the paths, sang all the songs, jumped in the lake while morning mist was still rising from it, heard the bugle play reveille to wake us, and heard the loons at night singing us to sleep.  And yet, camp is never too far from my mind.  It could be on a hike in a forest somewhere in the world, where the smell of pine needles warmed by the sun brings me right back to New Hampshire.  Or I hear a crazy song lyric that reminds me of some silly song that we used to sing – and I still remember every word.  Or I’m in a lodge that happens to use the exact style of cups and plates we used at camp, and they make the same sound when being stacked and passed.  I can’t hear a whistle at a pool without instinctively raising my hand for buddy check.  And there is the particular sound of a screen door that slams when the spring attached to the frame stretches and releases that takes me right back to the cabin.  But those loons!  They have a sound I have only ever heard at sleep away camp, whether as a camper so long ago, or as an adult at family camp.  Now I’m a mom to three camp kids, and those sights and sounds belong to them too.  They will someday have their own memories that bring them back to camp, just as I do, no matter how far they roam.

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