Our Last Summer

The Pepsi vending machine hums in harmony with the bugs outside.  The couch cushion is scratchy below me, making my thigh itch.  I reach down to scratch and think of my youth; as my mom used to drive into camp with me and my sister in the backseat of her Nissan, I’d glance over at this staff lodge and dream of being housed within its walls for a summer.  Years of longing, wishing, waiting, and then finally, summer staff of 2021 and 2022.  Heartbreak of 2021 launching me into friendships of 2022.  These peoples’ parents helped raise me.  Some I never knew before now.  A catalogue of their faces, their attitudes, their personalities, captured by the lens of my camera.  As the weeks of the summer passed, innocence slipped away, and I realized how transformative a summer on this mountain can be.  This is an alphabetical documentation of my friends, my childhood.  A way to capture them, hold them tight within the pages of this work.  To never let them go; keep them here forever.  I don’t want to grow up.