Nostalgia

Nostalgia is an interesting word.  It comes from the Greek roots, nostos meaning a return home, and algos meaning pain, suffering.  Originally, it was used to describe severe homesickness.  Over time, it has evolved to mean a bittersweet yearning, usually associated with fond and idealized memories of the past.

It’s almost June, almost the beginning of summer vacation.  It’s a time when I recall memories of summers past, years spent at summer camp, and I am filled with nostalgia. From age thirteen through age twenty-three, my summers were spent at the J Bar CC Ranch Camp, just outside of Elbert, Colorado.  I began as a camper.  My final year was as the camp’s assistant director.  In between are most of my memories of adolescence.

Ironically, the first week of my first year at camp I suffered from nostalgia, in the original sense of the word.  At night, I buried my head under my pillow homesick, ashamed and afraid of being teased.  That phase of nostalgia quickly passed.  For most of the nine years that followed, I looked forward to being at camp from the beginning of June through the end of August. It was a safe place to be and to grow.  Now, my nostalgia is that bittersweet yearning, the lovely memories of a time long past, the experiences that were my transition from child to young adult.

I think of camp and I am flooded by a collage of words and phrases, words triggering my memories and emotions, each calling to mind a story. Horseback riding, swimming, archery. Hikes up Pike's Peak. Camp outs. Campfires, music sung, guitars played.  Star-filled skies. My first ‘girlfriend’. My first dance.  The mess hall, the rec hall, the corral. Capture-the-Flag.  Hailstorms, often followed by rainbows.  Meadows filled with wildflowers.  The sound of pine trees in the wind.  The smell of pine trees in the rain.  The final campfire of summer. Old friends.

Not loving my first year of medical school, I did my second year of medical school over two years, while working half-time as assistant director of the camp.  I was trying to decide whether-or-not to continue my medical training or to make camping my career.  As assistant director, I became involved with boards and budgets, hirings and firings.  Camp was no longer camp.  It was a job.  I returned unambivalently and fulltime to medical school, never regretting my choice. No doubt, though, my years of camp counseling influenced my eventual decision to become a child psychiatrist.

I have a strong yearning to return to camp, just once more, to walk the land that I remember so well.  To this day I can clearly visualize the terrain, every hill and every valley.  Once, many years ago, I visited camp with my wife.  Prior to that visit, I told her what a beautiful place it was.  My wife saw it and was not nearly as impressed.  Yet, she found my comment reassuring.  I told her, “That which is beautiful is not necessarily loved, but that which is loved is necessarily beautiful.”