If you didn’t already know I worked at scout camp. I spent a lot of time working at scout camps. Staff members always have the responsibility to serve and be good examples to all they meet but in addition to the “always on stage” mentality we cultivated I also spent most of my Scouting years serving as a unique “troop friend” for a specific group of campers. I would visit my assigned group daily and work to make sure their week was successful. I would learn their names and eat with them as invited. We cheered as we passed each other on the trails. We became friends.
Then at the end of each week my new friends would pack up their tents, I would chase them around the camp until it was clean enough to pass inspection and they would jump in the cars and leave. I would pause for a moment and watch the car dwindle down the highway praying that they would be safe and wise and that their futures might be as successful as the brightest dream drafted for them. A small piece of me would always leave the mountain with them, hoping and praying that somehow something I did or said, or some experience at camp would make a positive change in their lives.
As the years passed the desire became more earnest and it became harder and harder to watch the trucks drive away. I’ve had to extend my goodbyes beyond the transitory friendships of scout camp. How distasteful was the last week of camp my dear fellow staff members would be the ones driving down the canyon. Each transfer as a missionary brought new friends and new heroes. Now I face the end of my sophomore year of college and separation from sincere friendships. I am traveling 7,000 miles away to live a dream that I have never finished. My roommates are spreading around the country and the world each on their specific tasks and obligations. Our neighbors and friends are each continuing with their lives in such a myriad of ways that I can scarcely delineate who is going where.
This is the end of the experience, we will never return to the ways things have been, for good or ill. Such is simply the nature of mortality. Such is the design we all knew was inevitable when we signed up for this experience.
I will miss the insane cleaning bouts, the huge hastily prepared dinners, the spontaneous activities and the constant search for Josh’s keys. How bittersweet is change! How dreadful our goodbyes!
I have found the last 8 months to be wildly enjoyable and I will dearly miss each one of my old and new friends as I already miss the thousands of youth that wandered through my camps. I pray for your health and happiness and success.
I must end, I habitually write too much in each blog. I wish to plagiarize and paraphrase, albeit way out of context, the words of Joseph Smith.
Come on, dear brothers (and sisters), now the time is past, for friends at first, are friends again at last. Yours as ever,
D. Riley Rackliffe
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