Delivering the Mail and So Much More

A few months ago, our residential community had a request for a volunteer to be the mail delivery person to campers for the summer.  So many of us volunteered that we're sharing the work/joy.  This week has been my turn, and I'll deliver two days next week, and then the following week.  

Above is a picture of me leaving Pioneer A, the cabins for elementary school kids.  I was a camper there once, with terrible homesickness, finding comfort from reading a book under a tree.  It was The Little Prince, a book my mom packed in my suitcase for a surprise. 

Originally, I thought I would walk the mail route and get my exercise that way.  One of our residents has said that we can  use her golf cart each week.  This week, with the end of my Social Justice and Cinema class for seminary, using the golf cart makes sense.  Plus, it's so much fun driving the golf cart!

So far, this week, we've had mail that I could have carried by hand, but if there are packages, the golf cart makes even more sense.  But really, I'm just justifying my desire to drive the golf cart around camp.  It makes me want to buy one of my own, a yearning which really makes no sense.  We don't work year-round at the camp.  We don't need a gasoline-free way to zip from place to place.

Still, I must confess that I've gotten a sense of deep peace as I've zipped from place to place, leaving mail for campers in each cabin's mail box, seeing this camp from a slightly different perspective than the one I've enjoyed across decades.

On Tuesday, I could hear the faint strains of music as I drove away from Wilderness, the area of camp closest to the pool.  Could it be?  Yes, it was John Denver singing "Country Roads (take me home, to the place, I belong)."

Not for the first time since moving here did I think, yes, I really have come home:  home to a place where my mom was one of the first camp counselors, where my grandparents' church came for a summer Sunday picnic, where my dad saw the job advertised in the Columbia newspaper (that a Music Week participant gave to him) that would become one of his more long-lasting jobs and the last one, to the place where my family has gathered for Thanksgiving family reunions for almost 30 years, to the place that has nourished and sustained me when I've come for retreats.  I am lucky indeed.