If you are ready - down the rabbit's hole we go. It was at a summer music camp, yes - band camp (although I played violin and this was more of a music-of-any-kind summer camp, rather than a high school "American Pie band camp" scenario...yeahhh, not that!), in the mountains of northern New Mexico, that I would spend a couple of weeks each year - first, playing instruments as a camper and later, working as a councilor. The camp is magical. It is situated next to the little Jemez River, a stream really, that carves through the calderas, the volcanic group of mountains of the northern part of the state - the Jemez Mountains. Hot springs are still bubbling away and the town I grew up in is nestled into the side of this spectacular setting.
One of my favorite places in the Jemez, right behind the Valles Caldera.
It was in the summer of 2004 that I attended the camp, as a councilor, for the last time - the last summer before busy schedules and other obligations got in the way. The people that I met at this camp, I built lasting relationships with, for even in the short time that we were together, monitoring practice times, organizing marker tag, and leading moonlight hikes, we were sharing stories, experiences, and transitioning, during the summer months, to a new year of growth in our adolescent lives. However, the camp seemed to have this affect on people, young and old alike. Wanda Higgins, the owner of the music camp - a spunky and nurturing 100 something whose heap of children, grandchildren, and now great-grandchildren run the camp - would tell a story every year about her late husband and his conversation with a camper. In the story Mr. Higgins looked into the night sky and saw "the tree holding the moon in its arms and imagined it saying, 'I am mighty.'" I couldn't remember the whole story or the context that it was told in, but I thought the quotation was beautiful. That was 8 years ago, but upon thinking about the story recently, I wrote to an old friend and former fellow camp councilor, Ben, to ask him if he might be able to fill in the gaps for me.
Ben got back to me almost immediately. What a trip! His response instigated an expedition down memory lane as I began to laugh to myself, thinking about the time in my life that I knew him - reflecting on what a silly child I was! It is hilarious how we stumble through childhood and adolescence, into...adulthood? Is that what I'm reaching now? Fascinating. Well, here comes the rabbit hole I started down....
Before I had left for camp that last summer, I had been dating a boy named Beau. He had done some living, was a strong and incredibly open person, was thoughtful, wise, and someone I shared an instant connection with - the waking up with the phone practically imbedded in the side of your face from trying to talk until we both fell asleep - type of connection, but I was a child - intimidated by what it was and I backpedaled from it without the most grace or sensitivity.
I don't think I really put much thought into it at the time - usually my problem, but I was mean for going about it the way that I did. In retrospect, I never really forgave myself for it. Beau called me sometime in the fall and I promised that I would see him, but I flaked on the plans. I tried to call him back, far too late, but I called nonetheless, because I could never quite shake him from my thoughts. When we had been together, things had been overwhelming, scary, and beautiful all rolled into one and I needed to either investigate the pieces of our abandoned immediate connection or to get some closure. I even tried again to contact him after I left for college, but he was without a cell phone and after I asked for him at his uncle's and was too embarrassed by my naivety to follow up with a question as to how to get a hold of him, I gave up.
Beau committed suicide in the winter of 2010. I still remember how I felt when I found out. I remember being stunned and opening up to a friend about it, telling him that I had just found out that someone I had once cared deeply about had killed himself. The words sounded so heavy and alien to me.
Life is precious. Being good to people is monumental and nonnegotiable. Sure, I hadn't talked to Beau in five years; a lot can happen in one year, let alone five, but I still remember how it felt. Sometimes you get the chance to make it up to someone - to prove to them and to yourself, in a lot of ways, that you aren't like that. Sometimes you don't.
I feel really introspective at this point in my life. I feel like I'm at a crossroads, a fork, a juncture - what have you - where I'm being asked, "What type of person are you and what type of person are you trying to be?"
A couple of days ago, I saw a dog laying in the road, seconds after being hit by a car. I was behind a truck that was slowing to practically a complete stop. I was impatient; I was thinking, "What the hell is this all about?" Rhetorical question. Then as the truck skirted to the edge of the lane, I saw the dog, in a puddle of blood as it lay in the middle of the street, still shaking. A wave of horror and panic consumed me - a sickened feeling as I followed suit and veered around the dying animal. Once past, the reality of the situation hit me and I questioned, "What should I do? What can I do?" My eyes shot to my side mirror to capture the presence of a man scooping up the dog and carrying him out of the road. I thought to myself, enraged by my inaction, "Who am I? The kind of person who freezes up - too fearful to do anything? Who watches an animal dying in the road? Who does nothing? What if it had been a person - would I remain en route to my sandwich purchase or would I have the courage to be the person who scoops them up, if only to provide a restful place to pass away? Who am I?"
I felt cowardly.
We carry a great weight with us. Some people call this weight "baggage". Emotional baggage, accumulated through the years as we experience this life as a series of successes and failures. According to Ben, "...she [Mrs. Higgins] told the story about like this, 'one night, the moon was full, and there were no clouds in the sky, and the stars were shining. There was a little boy who looked up at the big tree by the shell (the main concert building) and said, 'Oh, look Mr. Higgins, the tree is holding the moon in its arms!' and Mr. Higgins said, 'Yes', and the tree said, 'I am mighty.'"
Ben didn't remember the moral of the moon story, perhaps it doesn't matter. For me, the camp was a magical place that taught lessons about growing, changing, about the beauty of friendships, and about relationships. It was a place that marked my transition from childhood frivolity to toggling the line between adolescence and adulthood - struggling to find my footing in a world that doesn't always make sense.
I'm trying to make sense in the world, but maybe this should all stay buried - the rabbit holes abandoned. Maybe this is the trouble with rabbit holes; the labyrinth of channels, twists, and turns, that riddle this blog post as well as my expeditions down memory lane, unearthing memories both positive and negative, but not always coming to any succinct conclusions.
In Thailand they also have a lessons about trees - that people should be like trees and grow to be "soft". This way they can bend and change with the great winds of life, without breaking. I try to be resilient and bending despite the challenges that I face, but with hopes that at the end of this story, despite the great weights, "I am mighty".
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