Vacation Log: Reunion Day

On Day 2 of our vacation (I should stop here and note that this was not really "our" vacation -- it was mine -- we didn't do one thing on this trip that Joe would have chosen to do -- I need to send Joe off on a real vacation where he gets to race cars or go sailing and not haul around a camper), we hung out at camp.

I got to see old friends -- this is Susan, she flew all the way from Idaho for the reunion. She was actually living in Idaho while I was also there for four years, but neither of us knew the other was there, living only an hour or so away from the other. Now we are separated by the country again -- I'm sure there's a lesson in there somewhere about keeping up with your friends and all that, but it's really late and I'm having trouble making life-lesson connections.

Here are Casey and Mace all decked out in their "Future Ridgecrester" shirts. Let the indoctrination begin!

Here's Mace having some RC Cola while watching the boys play four square. He's really sitting about 20 feet away from me and the camera, in the middle of the road that cuts through camp. RC Cola and Four Square -- he's already halfway indoctrinated in camp ways and he's not even three years old!

The alumni association auctioned off camp "memorabilia" (i.e., old signs, 30 year old T-shirts worn by a long-time director of the camp, and the rattle off a rattlesnake that the same long-time director had killed one summer during a sock war) to raise money for scholarships and building projects. The sign above sold for over a $1,000. I think the sign below, a newer version of which hangs on a tree beside the campfire area where a sign just like it has always hung for as long as most of us remember, sold for almost $2,000.

I'm usually not serious in my blogs, so you'll have to forgive me this moment -- but those signs sold for so much money because they are reminders to hundreds of girls (now women), of the place where they grew up spiritually. I know God like I do now because of Camp Crestridge for Girls and it wasn't necessarily Johnnie Armstrong's campfire talks, or the Council of Progress that helped me along. I think it was just being in a place God so obviously cherished that I felt cherished too. While I was there this weekend, I realized that what I want most out of these reunions is the chance to just sit by myself for a while by the lake or in the chapel or on the porch of the dining hall without worrying about who might be waiting for me or what I had left undone at home and feel cherished by God again. I know that I'm cherished by God anywhere I am and location is irrelevant, but God feels closer on that mountain.

(I only had to pay $200 for my sign.)