Footprints in the Sand

We all piled in the bed of the old rusty green ranch pickup, 15 girls between eight and 12 years old off on an adventure. There were 15 more of us in the beat up old Econoline van, all headed out for the big weekend trip to Susanville. It was the biggest town close to the summer camp, Wood-N-Peg ranch and we did the trip every year. Normally we would take both camp vans, but this morning one of them wouldn’t start, which is why half of the campers, including me, were going to ride in the bed of the camp pickup instead.

It was an hour drive along dusty roads snaking through the north eastern California desert. The counselors had given us a blue tarp and told us we would all need to hide under it if we saw another vehicle coming,. Luckily there were not many cars on these quite country roads and we spent most of the trip giggling and yelling over the wind, hair blowing every which way. As we started to pull into town on of the counselors opened the cab window and yelled at us to hide under the tarp until the truck stopped. When we finally arrived we unceremoniously threw the tarp off, we had made it to Susanville.

After wandering the museum, looking at shiny black arrowheads and smooth Indian grinding stones we walked three blocks and the 5 & dime store. My camp friend, Erin, and I wandered the aisles. She got fireball candies, but I was more into chocolate, and as I was perusing my options I realized Erin had wandered off. I found her two aisles over, looking at a stack of acrylic signs, nice little pictures with poems written on them. She showed me the one she was holding, a picture of the beach, and a set of foot prints “read it” she urged as she shoved it in my hands. It was some religious poem, I thought the sentiment was kind of nice but I didn’t really understand it, the only religion I knew was the once a year Christmas Eve candlelight service. Still it seemed rather important to her and she kept asking me if I liked it.

There was only a week left of camp after the trip, and eventually it was the last day. This would be my final year, since I was aging out, and I would probably never see Erin again. We had been camp friends since we both started attending when we were 8. As I went into my camp tent for the last time I saw Erin’s bunk was already all packed up, she was gone. I sat on my bunk and wondered if I would ever see her again. It was then I saw the little package on the pillow, I unwrapped it and saw it was that poem from the 5 & dime, with a note from Erin that read “I’ll never forget the summers spent with you”.