I (Still) Love You, Camp Ridgecrest

Some combination of COVID/isolation and Christian Trumpism has made me exasperated by humanity lately. I don’t remember feeling this way about other humans in 2019 or 2018 or all the other years preceding. Sure, I’ve always disagreed with others. But about wearing a mask?? About a president who openly mocks a disabled reporter??? About insurrection???????

What used to feel like common sense and common ground now leaves me standing on opposite chasms with folks that I swear weren’t there 18 months ago. Or maybe I just spend too much time on social media? Oof, I need to close my laptop and go for a hike.

My exasperations blared again the other day when I noticed a bunch of people hating on Camp Ridgecrest. My beloved camp of yesteryear (now almost yesterdecade) recently announced some changes, and we all know white southern Gen X Christian moms don’t like change.

After reading five or six ignorant comments, I just wanted to say, “Don’t you realize how entitled you sound? Don’t you know how blessed you are? Not even to have a son, but to be able to send him each summer to a place in the Blue Ridge where he can encounter God and others who also want to encounter Him?”

And then wiping the tears away as inevitably more stream down: “Do you know how much I wish I had a son I could send to Camp Ridgecrest?”

~ ~ ~

Upon taking several deep breaths, I must confess: I used to be like these women. I used to be ignorant. I used to be entitled. I used to sound a little racist and homophobic, if I’m being hurtfully honest.

I used to think it inconceivable that a Christian could vote for a Democrat for president. I used to think Jesus was only a conservative, if given the American political binary of conservative or liberal.

I used to think all gay people hated Christians. That you couldn’t be gay and Christian, and that gay people only existed outside the Church. That gay people were really angry and attention-seeking with their signs and parades.

I used to think most black people were angry, too. That they had every opportunity white people did to succeed in this country if they stopped complaining.

So, what changed? Why do I no longer think those things?

Stories. Stories change everything. Meet a Christian Democrat or a gay Christian or a black person or anyone different from you, and listen to their stories, and you start to realize something simple yet profound:

Oh. I only know my own experience. I don’t know another human’s experience. Unless I hear it.

I used to close myself off fully to those different from me; to an extent, sadly, I still do. It’s kinda engrained. I’ve been immersed in white Christianity since my youth, from churches and Christian schools to, yes, a Christian summer camp.

White environments are natural; they’re comfortable. Any arena outside 95% white is innately different, even uncomfortable, if I’m honest.

And I hate that.

I’m convicted by this discomfort. I’m frustrated, increasingly angered, when others don’t feel what I feel. How they can either ignore their prejudice or legitimately believe it isn’t there.

I don’t want to feel uncomfortable if the people around me are more than 50% different from me, racially or otherwise. I don’t want to feel this tension. I want none of it.

Is the kingdom of God all tribes, all colors, all nations, all tongues, or isn’t it? What is this thing that white Christians in America feel increasingly threatened?

What is that feeling? And can we cast whatever it is forever into hell?

~ ~ ~

I only worked a single summer at Camp Ridgecrest — just 75 days of my life — the summer of 2012. Dare I say, those 75 days have impacted me more than any other 75 days (until I play two seasons of Survivor).

I was a different man then, to understate things. Just 25, I was crazy enough to follow God’s whispers from one side of the country to another, regardless the adventure, with no second thoughts for how difficult the fallout of following said whispers may be.

After trekking to the Blue Ridge for the first time that summer, I never would’ve fathomed one day living just twenty minutes down the interstate from Camp Ridgecrest. How whether I lived twenty minutes or twenty time zones away, I’d still think of that place on a weekly, if not daily basis.

The good times. The hard times. And all the other times that painfully don’t exist.

One summer. I only worked at Camp Ridgecrest one summer. Didn’t know the place even existed until three years after I’d graduated college when I applied.

How I mourn not discovering Camp Ridgecrest sooner. How I mourn not working there as a college student like most all the other counselors did. What else was I doing with my summers??

How I mourn not connecting a string of summers worked at Camp Ridgecrest like so many other counselors did, and do. The bonds never formed. The adventures never lived.

How I mourn not attending Camp Ridgecrest as a camper. The camaraderie I’d have enjoyed, the lesser sense of “alien” among other boys I’d have felt, the skills I’d have learned, the closer my walk with Jesus would have been.

I’m only twenty miles away from Camp Ridgecrest, but it might as well be twenty dimensions. A bunch of foggy memories along with a million unformed, never-to-be ones.

It’s a fog I can’t shake, follows my footsteps within and beyond the Blue Ridge.

Am I crazy? Obsessed? Why does a camp have such a grip on me after all these years? It was one summer. One effing brutal beautiful summer.

Why do I feel so much? Why do I hurt with a longing for what was and what wasn’t? And why do a bunch of entitled white southern Gen X Christian moms rake me to the core?

~ ~ ~

God, I want a son. The older I get, the more I want it, and the less probable it feels.

I say that as a pragmatic person. I just don’t see how fatherhood figures into the cards for me.

But then I’ve also been surprised again and again. Never thought I’d find a church to attend, let alone get baptized in and belong. Never thought I’d write a book, let alone two. Never thought I’d hug a man, let alone befriend many. Never thought I’d tell a soul about my sexuality, let alone, well, the Internet.

I never thought I’d work at a place like Camp Ridgecrest, let alone write about some of my struggles there. Let alone hear from fellow Ridgecresters, past and then-present, who’ve reached out and said, “Me too.”

God loves surprising me. He delights in parting the Red Sea, again and again. So even if it’s not “probable” that I produce offspring, of course I believe there’s still a chance. How can I not after Ridgecrest? After a dozen other seas parted?

I can’t escape that if ever I did have a son, I’d move heaven and earth for him to attend Camp Ridgecrest for even one summer. To have the adventure I didn’t. To make the friendships I didn’t. To encounter God with others encountering God in ways that can only be described as, yes, magical.

The place could change their tribe names to “apples” and “oranges” and “huckleberries” for all I care. I’d be the luckiest man in the world to have a son on the Bananas Tribe for a single summer of his life, if not many more.

If not also to work there as a counselor like his father before him.

~ ~ ~

I’m writing this at the Panera Bread on Hendersonville Road in South Asheville. The same Panera where I retreated all summer long during my off days of 2012. I’d come here to blog every week. I’d come here to watch a movie rented from the Redbox across the parking lot. I’d come here to exhale and unclench my heart after many stiff inhales and clenched insecurities all week long.

I still come to blog at this Panera nearly a decade later, and I think of Camp Ridgecrest every time. Whenever I look at these mountains outside the window, I think of Camp Ridgecrest. Whenever I think of my journey with masculinity and brotherhood, I think of Camp Ridgecrest. Whenever I think of climbing mountains, literal or metaphorical, I think of Camp Ridgecrest.

I love that place. I will always love that place. I miss that place with a fierce missing I can’t quite put into words. And I’ve tried.

Like a ghost screaming into the faces of the ones he left behind, only for them to walk straight through him.

On the one hand, I’m devastated I only got to spend one summer of my life there.

And on the other, I shudder to think of the man I’d have turned into without that single summer. The implications for today. And for all of the still forming tomorrows.