Hardtner Love

There are spiritually liminal places in the world - Iona Abby on the Isle of Mull in Scotland, the south summit of Mount Denali in Alaska, places where the veil of Earth and Heaven is translucent and God is clearly present. For me that place is in Pollock, Louisiana.

For several years during my youth I would go off for a week in the summer to Camp Hardtner. Thirty years prior, my mother had gone, back when it was all girls. Camp was the first time I really saw God. School age kids don’t typically have deep esoteric thoughts, but at camp, while lying on a parachute, stretched out in the grass of Milam Field, we could ponder big ideas as we gazed up at the constellations and the Milky Way, heads together with new found friends, while the counselors would sing, and the cute young rector would pray.

I understood community there for the first time, what it meant to break bread with other kids who believed like I did. As we waited in line at the dining hall, messy from a day of watermelon fights and campus wide games of Capture the Flag, we would enthusiastically sing the Doxology to the tune of Chim Chim Cheree.

Talent shows allowed us to be creative. Jamie, all 6 feet of him, would sit on the ratty “stage” couch with his guitar and harmonica and play James Taylor. By the end we would all be at his feet, confirming that indeed he did have a friend. I dressed up as Aretha Franklin, painting my skin dark, and singing You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman, a sign of our naivety to the world and its woeful injustice.

As summers went by, we would push our boundaries. By year four a smoking bench emerged by the girls' cabins and after the evening dances kisses were stolen behind the Pavillion. However, childish fun persisted - canoe races, friendship bracelets and four square.

Thirty years later I remember it fondly, and although I have aged out, my daughter now goes. Her excited stories are familiar when I pick her up at the end of the week. She understands camp as I did: her once-a-year, God-battery-recharge, and it is dear to me how this meaningful place has been passed down for three generations.

This summer, she spread some of my mom's ashes by the outdoor chapel overlooking the lake. My friend Jamie’s spirit now lives there in part too. Time persists, but this place of community and innocence and faith goes on, just as God intended.