summer visit (July 06)

I want to go camping in the Big Woods. I don't care so much if it's record heat, including the kind of humidity that soaks the day and lasts into the night. I want to cram into a tent in a row of friends, wearing only my bathing suit on top of my sleeping bag, stretching out as much as possible, and spend half an hour trying to fit everyone inside the camera frame. You know the drill: it's dark, the flash is on, and the friend with the best aim or the longest arms raises the camera above, lens facing down. It's a skill and it takes many, many re-takes to master.

Summer break is a thing of the past for some of us in our post-college careers, yet our reunions still bring this kind of retreat into memories. More than anything, I crave the conversations after night falls, when stories are told without hesitation. Camping - in the wild, away from technology and electricity - the only device left for entertainment is storytelling. Sometimes, our stories fall into categories: "tell the story of your first make-out!" or "what is your MOST embarrassing moment... in childhood AND in college?" or "when did you know you had hit ROCK BOTTOM...?" The questions sound sort of simple, and they are, but they can lead to deeper conversations without even trying (relationships, who we want to become, our confidences and hesitations about the future, etc). Of course, sometimes, our constant laughing and interjecting is nothing but that: friends enjoying each other's company, even when it's too hot to move (as it was in this case, when I think Christine finally got our winning shot).

I don't mean to make sweeping generalities about the grandeur of deep, philosophical conversations in the dark. Far be it for me to call most of our side-splitting laugh-fests "philosophical." But as I get farther from college, and life in a pod-suite with a roommate in the bunk next to me, the more I miss the constant presence of immediate community. I need quiet time as much as anyone, even though apparently I'm 30/30 on the Briggs-Meyers extroversion scale (another issue altogether), but there's a lot to be said for piling on a couch like puppies, talking over dinner in the cafeteria, passing each other on sidewalks between class. It's a theme I turn over and over constantly: the small banalities that make up what I value. And this picture, with six beaming, fresh-faced college friends, reminds me that for four years, I took it all in as much as possible.