Dear Tamarack,

Goodbyes suck.  I avoid them at all costs because I’m a coward when it comes to facing the end of things.  But there are some things I need to say to you before you leave for good.

I met you at a very chaotic and unhinged time of my life.  It was 1985, high school was winding down and I was facing my future with terror and anxiety.  I didn’t really care too much about anything, much less myself.  The high-risk activities I engaged in were very illustrative of that.

And despite all the evidence against it – you saw potential.  You saw deep into my soul and drew out the long forgotten pieces that seemed to fit effortlessly into your days.  You showed kindness.  You showed patience, you wrapped your arms around me and hugged me as tightly as I hugged you.  Because you were somehow broken too, though I never figured out how.

As many songwriters do when absorbed by love, I wrote a song about you.  If I’m being honest, it was less of a song and more of a cry for help.  A wistful plea to make everything around me stop so I could stay with you forever.  It was me hammering little pictures of you into my memory so I would survive the heartlessness of the world.  It was so personal to me that I thought only I would get it.  But I was wrong.  I was very wrong.

I experienced some of my biggest joys and some of my worst moments when I was with you.  You lit fires underneath me and quickly threw water on them when they burned too hot.  When I was scared to move forward you got behind me and pushed.  When I was exhausted and spent, you lifted me in your arms and carried me.

I learned all of that from you.  I learned empathy and tolerance and commitment and accountability.  I learned how to be a good leader.  I would spend my life developing that gift and ensuring that those who were in my care got it as well.

Those years I spent with you shaped my life.  It’s forty years later and it’s never been clearer that you laid the foundation for what I became.  I am just like you.  Unbelievably flawed but painfully authentic.  The only thing you ever asked of me was to come back once in a while to stoke the fire for others.  I hope I did you right.

You kept that song alive.  It could have gone silent after I left and I would have been absolutely fine with that.  You made it part of people’s lives for forty years.  You gave it context and meaning.  I never told you just what that meant to me.  Still to this day there is absolutely nothing in the world like a dining hall full of people singing my words at the top of their lungs.  As you get older you start to wonder about the legacy you will leave behind, and thanks to you I don’t ever think about that.  No matter what other heights I reached or accomplishments I achieved, that little song I wrote on the windsports dock at 2AM in 1986 is now the heritage of the thousands of us to whom you gave the summers.

I make you this promise:  Every once in a while, when I’m really missing you, I will sing that song.  I will let it conjure up the past for a moment or two until I can get my bearings again.  And I encourage all the other thousands of us to do the same.  After all, that’s what it’s there for.  As long as the song is around, the camp is within everyone’s reach.  Keep it in your heart.

Goodbye old friend.  You are imprinted on me always, my forever home away from home.