Photos from Fall of 2006
This is a photo gallery of the crew at King Richard’s Faire and of our recent camping trip.
This is a photo gallery of the crew at King Richard’s Faire and of our recent camping trip.
Camp Montvale has been my home for the past eight summers
Montvale was a YMCA summer camp in the foothills of the Great Smokey Mountains. My brother and I were campers, CIT’s, and counselors there. I guess they closed it last year. There was someone there, Rudy Ewing who used to tell an amazing story about “bug juice” and I had promised to try to find the story for my son Ben. that’s what led me to find this web page where past campers and counselors from Montvale wrote in to the try to express what Montvale meant to them. There were some familiar names on there like Rudy Ewing, Jeff Knox, Jon Nordquist and Scott Goodwin. There were a lot of touching letters there about things, places and people that I knew.
Here’s a letter from Scott Goodwin, who also happened to live a couple of blocks away from me when I was a kid:
What is there to really say about it all? I was a camper for some seven years, a counselor for six more. So many things happened to me on that patch of foothills hardscrabble I couldn’t begin to tell them to you here. The first time I kissed a girl. The first time I really looked into the face of God. The place where I became who I am. I never thought I would be allowed to be buried there, but I sure was planning my memorial service for Miller Chapel. You see, I built Miller Chapel with thirty of my very best friends in the world, one summer over 20 years ago. Trying to explain to you why the place matters is folly. You either get it or you don’t.
I sit at the keyboard, pecking this out, actually crying. As a middle-aged man, pushing forty and waiting for the birth of his first child, I cannot imagine there is anything more valuable than what Montvale has given me, given countless others. I know it’s just a lousy old camp, but are you sure - really sure - there’s nothing left to do?
Will this letter be just another small voice screaming into the corporate wind? Likely. Optimism of youth left me long ago. Still, when I head home to Tennessee every Christmas, I reserve one afternoon to climb Montvale road, to walk the pathways of my life, and to catch the faint glimmers of that optimism that once were everywhere. Will this time be the last?
Do what you must, but please also do everything you can. The world will be a lesser place without Montvale in it.
Scott W. Goodwin
(never did find the story)
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