Something's Missing

For as much travelling and joy we've both experienced this summer, there still is an enduring emptiness we feel as the summer we've loved so much draws to a close--our trip to the Smith Island Camp on Seventh Lake in the Adirondacks. Each summer we truck our way up there to meet up with our dear friends the Clauss-Veal's, and Brian Smith. It is traditionally our favorite week of the year; a week spent in quiet solitude on a remote island "camp" dating back to 1901. Only recently has electricity been added to the camp, and all our cooking is done on the Queen Atlantic stove you see pictured above. This year was a difficult one to schedule everyone; Brian recently was ordained as an Episcopal Priest and he has started his work in St. Augustine Florida.

Words simply can't do justice what this week means to us, so I won't even try. Andrea, Michael, and Brian are those rarest of friends; we see each other maybe twice a year, but when we do, we seem to pick up where we last left off, and practically finish each other's sentences. Our mornings are spent in the enveloping warmness of the stove heated kitchen, cooking breakfast on cast iron skillets, playing cribbage, and perusing cookbooks which have lived in the Smith family for decades (how about "soup for an invalid" or "squirrel pie?"). Afternoons involve sitting on the huge dock outside of the boathouse, and moving as the spirit leads, whether that means swimming around the island, waterskiing, paddling a handmade Adirondack Guide Boat, or just enjoying the words on the pages of whatever book's we've brought.

The reason for the nostalgia today is because of what we received in the mail only a couple of days ago. Each year, as a tradition, we all write a song about our experiences during the past week. On the last night, we perform the song, while Michael tapes it. Sounds silly I know, but Clauss is a GENIUS with the digital camcorder and all the editing it entails. He is diligent to take ample footage throughout the week of all our (mis)adventures, and then, during the "offseason" when we are back home, he wields the song and footage into what could easily pass for a professionally edited video. Usually we get this a moth or two after the reunion, when we are back in school and work, and watching it usually gives us goosebumps and a longing to be back.

We just received this past year's video--we had to wait a whole year for it. But well worth it, it was. I had trouble watching it though; I worry, as years go by and people get older, that friends and times we love so much might slip away, lost in an abyss deep like an Adirondack lake. I'm sure you can relate: some moments in our time on earth just seemed so perfect . . .too good to have happened. The curse we must endure as humans is that when they DID happen, we let them slip away.

But oh, how slowly they move, begging to be noticed by us; they want our attention. Why can't we give it to them? Why do we turn our heads away so fast? And why do these seemingly perfect moments procure a type of sadness once relived? I read an article the other day which made me mad. Some writer somewhere claimed that within the next twenty years, a type of computer will exist that will be smarter than a human being. And, twenty years after that, one computer will be smarter than the whole human race. I don't need to listen to the garbage. I dont need to read "The World Is Flat." I don't need to fear technology like this.

Will a computer be able to exhale a breath so deep it can feel a whole day's stress float away up into cool northern air? Can it feel the refreshment from diving into a spring fed lake at night, and then surface, float quietly, and marvel at the loon calls in the distance? And can any type of non-human, without a heart and a soul, shed any type of tear, watching any type of video, showing five beautiful friends, dressed like idiots, singing a chorus about "Barbie Dolls?"