2006 Hazelwild Reunion

hazelwild farm camp reunion '06

for some it started in the house. the big house. barbara had said, "go through and pick out things for the auction." of course that meant opening, peeking, reading, holding up to the light. ten percent of our brains told us we. were. totally. snooping. the other ninety percent, which was found in our hearts, told us we were taking care of things that would otherwise be left unkempt and forgotten. why let her things end up in the local flea when we could take them home and remember?

and it was great. we left the house knowing no more and no less about aunt sissy's life than we knew when she was with us. we learned that her life was always as open to us as it was going to be, and it was enough to bring us back twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years later.

when the sun was out we explored. we took turns showing how good and bad our memories of where things were. the chapel. the boy's overnight camp. we told stories that happened right there - right there by that tree or over there by that bend in hazel run.

we told stories of getting caught and getting away with it, and we instantly remembered how to sneak, duck, giggle, give ourselves away - and never think that perhaps aunt sissy knew everything that went on at that camp because we never once considered the fact that we had to cover our tracks. we were all too busy looking forward.

we communed with each other as a group, and we each wandered off and took our own time to commune with that place on our own, each of us, alone. to remember our own personal story, perhaps the story we don't tell when we are sitting around the campfire. the one i keep between me and the nail near the window on the back porch of evergreen, the one that has been painted over four hundred times and from which i used to hang a picture of petite's away.

as the sun went down each night the changes that had occurred over the years began to disappear and fade into darkness, making it possible for the old, familiar landscape to appear. we could imagine the old grey barn and its long-gone paddocks, the hedgerow in front of little girls, the fallen tree in front of the boys cottage. it was even possible to believe that the horse chatter we heard in the field was that of mr. jack, sugar, pepsi, country gent, thorny, bo bo, black bay, fruit loops, carolyn, weegee, dondee.

but we didn't have to imagine much else. our senses interlocked with our memories and we were treated to bullfrogs. bugs. stars. the old familiar chlorine-eyed haze around the lights on top of the light poles. the smell of hay and manure and mint and pond, the smell of hazel run. the smell of the basement. the smell of the water as it comes out rusty from the tap. the constant drone of I-95 turning into white noise. the view of sis's house from the pool, from the pavilion, from the cow palace, from the barn, from little girls, from big girls, from the pond, from anywhere. the slope in the land and the treeline, the way the gravel on the roads glows brighter in the moonlight than the grass, leading you back to your cottage. the sights, the sounds, the smells wrapped us up and instantly made the last twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years disappear.

i saw beth as a teenager, tara as an eleven year old with hair down to the backs of her thighs. i saw matt as a camper. i saw jim and kathleen as JCITs again. i saw pictures i had seen of denise and mary jo and alyse come to life and laugh with me for the first time. i met new people, people who helped form hazelwild in the 50s, 60s, 70s. i saw myself, one happy, happy camper. and occasionally out of the corner of my eye i would see sis; short white hair, spectacles. laughing. nodding. approving.

our reunion spanned more than 50 years of camp attendance.

i wasn't surprised to find that you all had grown into even lovelier versions of the people i remembered, i was just thankful. it is such a comfort to know that one's memories of special times in your life and the people you knew then were real, that you didn't romanticize them over time, that you didn't bend and warp the people you knew into something that didn't actually exist. it was heaven to be there with you all - exactly the way you are, so much like the way you were.

some of us were open about our sentimentality and some of us kept it inside. but i know each of us took pause before going to bed, before driving away. thanking sis, thanking each other, knowing that this weekend was special, a dream, a wish fulfilled. wanting some way to make it last and not have to start the long hike down the road to where we would have to turn left. or turn right.

feeling two words. thank you. thank you. thank you. thank you.

see you all next year.

A note from Denise: "The one in white"

Yesterday morning I walked though the cottages where I stayed for ten years of summers and had some flashbacks that made me an emotional pile....I was thinking...we campers are finding this bond and we marvel at it. But what it really is is that we went away every summer to this place. This place where we had to make a family...make ourselves work in this unit. So it was kind of like a family that we never really recognized until we went back. We all know our family that we see everyday or every Christmas, but I didn't recognize that this was a part of our makeup, our family until it was taken out and honored.

--Denise