The last day of camp
Prompt: Do you wish you could return to a moment in your past?
I believe that people live for emotion. If people did not experience emotion, they would not be motivated to do anything. You go on roller coasters not because you have to, but because you want to feel the rush and excitement. That is why if I had to return to any moment in the past, it would be the last day of a 7 week overnight camp I went to a couple of years ago. The last day was happy, sad, exciting, fun and bittersweet at the same time which that day extra special. The camp that I went to is called Osrui, and it is a Jewish overnight camp in the middle of Oconomowoc Wisconsin (if you pronounce that right on your first try I'll be impressed). My first year at Osrui was when I was eight years old and as soon as I stepped out of my car for the first time I fell in love. During the school year, I would be constantly counting down the days till I would be back at camp again. Since I live in Champaign Illinois, and the majority of my friends from camp live in Chicago, I don’t get to see them often throughout the year which makes camp all the more special. 2016 was my last year as a camper at Osrui, and it was a special year because I went to summer camp for seven weeks instead of only four.
I believe that people live for emotion. If people did not experience emotion, they would not be motivated to do anything. You go on roller coasters not because you have to, but because you want to feel the rush and excitement. That is why if I had to return to any moment in the past, it would be the last day of a 7 week overnight camp I went to a couple of years ago. The last day was happy, sad, exciting, fun and bittersweet at the same time which that day extra special. The camp that I went to is called Osrui, and it is a Jewish overnight camp in the middle of Oconomowoc Wisconsin (if you pronounce that right on your first try I'll be impressed). My first year at Osrui was when I was eight years old and as soon as I stepped out of my car for the first time I fell in love. During the school year, I would be constantly counting down the days till I would be back at camp again. Since I live in Champaign Illinois, and the majority of my friends from camp live in Chicago, I don’t get to see them often throughout the year which makes camp all the more special. 2016 was my last year as a camper at Osrui, and it was a special year because I went to summer camp for seven weeks instead of only four.
After spending seven weeks with my best friends, a new connection was formed. My friends became my family and my camp became my home. I even began to enjoy the eggy taste of the tap water. After my first four weeks at camp that summer, I could not even imagine sleeping somewhere other than my cabin, or not having “Come on Eileen” blasting through the speakers to wake my cabin up. As the summer rolled on, everyone started to realize that the summer was coming to a close.
The last day was tiring, and sad. We spent the entire day packing our bags and cleaning up our cabins. We all partook in the tradition of painting the bricks of the sidewalk that connects all of the cabins, and we all sat in our beds in our cabins for the last time. Everyone told each other their confessions from the summer which is a way for the counselors to realize just how many rules the campers broke, and for the campers to realize just how much the counselors knew about them.
When the sun set, it was time for my cabin to meet up with the rest of our unit, and that's when the fact that we were leaving the next day began to settle in. We played games, we watched movies and told stories. At one o’clock in the morning, we decided to start a talent show. Some acts were great, and some acts were, to put it nicely, a little sub-par, but the last act featured my friends Ella, Jacob, and me. We decided to sing “Rivers and Roads” by the Head and the Heart.
We took the stage, I plucked the C chord on my guitar, and then the magic happened. Our harmonies were perfection, the guitar filled up the room, and the mixture of our three voices filled the room with emotion. The room was silent and all you could hear were our voices and my guitar. When the goosebumps crawled up my arm I knew that moment was special. When I plucked the last Cadd9 chord to close up the song, I looked up and saw the bittersweet tears rolling down the cheeks of my friends and counselors. Seeing all the emotions conveyed through one song has inspired me to try to continue performing and spreading messages through music. I would love to go back, and experience that moment just one more time.
I was born in Oconomowoc, WI:)
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ReplyDeleteI think that this essay does a good job of capturing the feeling of having a home away from home. I go to a camp all summer too (that I now work at). I totally recognized the feeling you described. I think explaining a moment like the one you're writing about, where there are so many different feelings inside you can be really difficult. However, I think that you did a great job of explaining this. I liked the point about even liking the eggy water. I think that this essay could be even better if you added more descriptors like that in the beginning. You do a great job of doing this when you describe the last day, especially in the last three paragraphs. I do think that you could add a bit to the beginning, though, to help the reader picture the camp. Why did you fall in love that first time? What do you do there? What does it look like? What was your cabin like? Who were your friends there? I really loved the build up to the ending and reading the ending itself. I loved how you described the chords and notes you were playing, what time It was, and what it sounded like.
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