East of Lake Eden
When I was seven years old my parents sent me along with my
two older brothers to a boys summer camp.
As I remember it was for five weeks.
Camp Rockmont was located in Black Mountain, North Carolina just outside
of Asheville. Our family lived in
Miami, Florida. I felt far away from
home. In my short life in this world I
felt the pain of separation for the very first time. I was experiencing homesickness.
Apparently there was no turning back. There was no rescue by
my parents. I had to go “cold turkey” as they say in drug addiction recovery
circles. At this very young age
memories of the experience are sparse and narrow except for the emotional pain,
the psychic discordance that I remember and have remembered for a lifetime.
There was a lot of attention from the youth camp
“counselors” as well as the adult supervisors and even the camp principals and
owners. Whatever the duration, I bore
through it and adapted and returned to this place by Lake Eden over the course
of the next five summers.
The final summer was the penultimate camp session for me as
this was the summer of 1964. I was to
hike a 26 mile stretch of the Appalachian Trail starting in North Carolina and
ending in Tennessee. The accomplishment
of this challenge was to be a validation of a boy’s transformation to
manhood. The fact that it was occurring
at the same time of my body’s puberty maturation transformation was doubly
valuable for prepping me for the coming months when I would lose my father to
heart failure.
This same summer I was awakened from my bunk by the camp
owner George and escorted to his family’s home on site and sat down in front of
the black and white television where I would watch my even older brother the
Rev. Nicholas Bosworth say the benediction for the July 14th session
of the 1964 Republican National Convention.
Just this last weekend I had the opportunity to revisit Lake
Eden after more 50 years. It is a much
smaller tract than it appeared as to a young boy. The owner’s house was just as I remembered it and Lake Eden was
more beautiful in color than in the black and white of distant memories.
Much like the last time I was in these parts I took a nice
hike with my dear friend Donna. It was a hike up a mountain to a majestic
waterfall deep in God’s country a little east of Lake Eden.
Bradford Bosworth
March 2015
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