“The Fire Still Burns”

On May 10th during our Open House, fifty plus years after their first summer together, they brought folding chairs and memories instead of sleeping bags and bug spray. They walked, talked, and toured the property long into the afternoon surrounded by nature and memory. Sitting by the main field campfire ring they reminisce about campfires, skits, and stories

It was the summer in the early 1970s when Karl, Kimary, and Debbie first met at Caroline Furnace Lutheran Camp and Retreat Center, a scrappy little camp in the Blue Ridge Mountains with creaky cots in Hogan style tents. suspicious chili, and the best lake you’ve ever swum in. Karl was the quiet one who could whittle anything out of a stick. Kimary was all fire and sarcasm, captain of the canoe team by the second week. And Debbie—Debbie was the glue, the calm voice in the thunderstorm, always ready with a notebook and an extra peanut butter sandwich.

From that moment on, they were inseparable. They survived counselor pranks, ghost stories, and an infamous canoe race where Kimary capsized the boat just to “see if Debbie could swim like she claimed.” (She could. Karl, not so much.) Years passed, camp faded into memory, but their friendship stuck like mosquito bites and campfire smoke.

It had been awhile since they returned to the old camp, even after all of the updates and changes they couldn't believe that the Big Spring looked exactly the same as the one from many years ago. It's wonderful that some things never change, and also that some things do change! The cots and hogan tents were gone, and weeds choked the lake’s edge, but their fire circle was still there. Every conversation would light a new flame, and fall back into the rhythm of old stories, inside jokes, and an odd tenderness that only time could forge.

“I never thought we’d still be doing this,” Karl said, gazing into the camera as they took a selfie in St John's field.

“I always knew we would,” Kimary replied, thinking about marshmallows and campfires.

Debbie didn’t say much. She just smiled, making notes in her mind—one more page in a notebook that had begun half a century ago.

***Note...some of these facts may be made up, but the characters are real and they are still the same friends forever.