After a Long Time With Gratitude
The time I got to send a thank-you
When I was about the age my son is now, I lobbied my parents hard for a trip to summer camp. We’d gotten a flyer through my Girl Scout troop, and even though I’d never done summer camp I was dead set on going for a two-week overnight stay.
With what must have been some apprehension, they agreed to send me.
Camp Occoneechee was built in 1956, in the Appalachian Mountains near Lake Lure, NC. It had cabins, a lake, a ropes course, archery, horse stables nearby, and a charm that by the time I went had already drawn second and third-generation campers.
The shaded paths by the rhododendrons, the cool mornings, the rituals of camp life — they were places and means through which all campers could fit in.
Being younger than most of my unit, though, and new, and (also like my son) independent-minded, I recall feeling separate that first year.
And that’s why, among the things I remember from that first two weeks — the crunch of pea gravel, the lake I refused to swim in (who knew what was in there with me?), the fall upon a gnarly root that was the start of my left knee being the grumpy knee — I remember Elaine.
My memory of her now is more impression than clear: a thing that falls apart if I look too closely.
Blonde hair, a smile. Energy.
Elaine was one of my counselors, and I recall an affinity for her that became an affinity for the place. She would walk with me when our group went to meals, make efforts to bring me into conversations. She engaged me.
And in the months after getting home, through the winter and into the next spring when the new camp flyer came, one of the reasons I wanted go back was the hope she’d be there.
I never saw her again.
But I did get hooked on a place that provided some of the best memories of my life. I returned the following six summers, and even now, in my forties, it’s a rare week that passes without some thought bubbling up from one of them. They are some of my most precious stories.
All because of one person who took a little extra time when she could see I needed it, who loved that place and passed it on.
I never knew her last name. Not long ago though, my mom gave me an envelope of things kept from that year, and in it was a small camp postcard to my parents.
Signed by Elaine, who as one of the counselors apparently wrote postcards to reassure parents. So as one does in this day and age, I went to social media.
And then there she was, on Facebook. Still smiling that smile. A family, now.
I messaged her.
Is this the Elaine who was a counselor at Camp Occoneechee in the late 1980s?
(it was)
What followed was a thank you, for a role she hadn’t known she’d played.
Turns out, after being a repeat camper herself she’d gone back that one year — just that year, my first — as a counselor. A small but lasting thing, that nudged my path one way and not another.
People are like that. Paths are like that.
Sometimes the best thank you is the one we can say after years, after a long time with gratitude we never expected a chance to convey.
Because sometimes, at just the right moment, people pass through our life, offering an everyday kind of inspiration. The kind we can only honor by paying forward, or at least by trusting that we could be.
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