A Summer of Nostalgia

It all started with camp. Camp NaNoWriMo, that is.

How could I direct a camp-themed event without traveling down that gravel road back to the camp of my childhood? Camp Celo, a farm camp nestled in the Appalachian Mountains, and my summer home for five years in a row.

After reminiscing about the meatless Rum Tum Diddy and the counselors serenading us campers to sleep as they wandered among the tents with guitars and lanterns in hand, my memory dog-legged on to all other camps I'd ever been to.

There was the adventurous-sounding but ill-advised Zoo Camp that was nothing more than kids sitting in a carpeted room at the Atlanta Zoo with juice boxes and string cheese, watching videos about the rainforest and the Mesozoic era.

Or Sports Camp, where I humiliated myself time and again, irrespective of the activity. Rope climbing, track, tennis, even ring toss, for pete's sake. Failures all.

And the weird, hormonally charged "outdoor adventure" camp in Pennsylvania that was meant to be the Celo replacement when I got too old to return. Instead, it was my initiation into in-crowds and out-crowds. (I was in the latter.)

But then the blog—this blog!—compounded it all, chipping away the walls of my tunnel vision toward camp and expanding my yearning for ever more nuanced and remote realms of my past.

There was my own blog post about my family's cabin in North Georgia, where berry picking and fishing filled my days, and bull frogs provided the nightly soundtrack.

Jenelle's post about letter-writing just Delorian-whisked me right back to receiving letters from my pen pal Miriam. They arrived as if by magic, beautiful delicate blue international envelopes all the way from Germany. How I missed my friend after she moved back home! How I loved the strange but beautifully formed curliques of her handwriting.

Sarah's reminiscing on preteen crushes certainly didn't help matters (and really brought home for me my all-but-complete disconnection from pop culture when I was a kidlet).

But it was Tupelo's blog post about furry fictional friends that really drove the stake of nostalgia through my already-sentimental heart. I loved nothing more than reading as a kid—especially when I was reading about animals. Starting with Go, Dog, Go! (the first book I ever read) and continuing on through my infatuation with the Redwall books, Jean Craighead George's Far Side of the Mountain, everything Gary Paulsen ever wrote, Island of the Blue Dolphins, Misty of Chincoteague, The Rats of N.I.M.H., Julie of the Wolves, White Fang, Sounder, the Tuck books, The Incredible Journey. Oh, I wanted to be a child of the wilderness, charging off with some fierce animalian sidekick that answered only to me.

As fall creeps on and NaNoWriMo takes over from Camp, I am wondering if the wide-open door to everything I loved as a littler Lindsey will start to close. It's been a summer of reminiscing, and I've relished it.

But I don't honestly know if I can sustain much more longing.

To quote from one of my all-time favorite movies, Kicking & Screaming (circa 1995), "I'm nostalgic for conversations I had yesterday. I've begun reminiscing events before they even occur. I'm reminiscing this right now."

My heart hurts from it all!

What did you love as a littler you?

– Lindsey