There are places I remember

There are places I remember “There are places I remember, though some have changed.” I think we all have those places. But only a select few have the Hill: Chappegat Hill (Chappy). It is located in Ten Mile River Scout Camp, Narrowsburg, N.Y. At one time it had been its own camp. When I was there it was part of Camp Kunatah. Chappy closed after the summer of ’88. Kunatah closed several years later. TMR is still running. But not at the capacity it used to. A few weeks ago, a brush fire hit Chappy. Other areas north of the hill were also hit. None of us Chappy campers knew the extent of the damage. We were told the man-made structures (there were not many left) survived. A few days ago, someone known as my leader went up to camp to do some work for the TMR Museum. Naturally, he went to Chappy. A visit to TMR is not a visit if you don’t spend time on the Hill. He saw first hand how this brush fire devastated the remains of the childhood stomping grounds of countless Scouts. He reported back to the individual that served as the chairman of the Troop committee and assistant scoutmaster during the summer camp season. Immediately an email was sent to our scoutmaster and myself. We were devastated. Within a few hours our, ASM sent an email to dozens of former campers. Now some of us are still in touch with each other on a daily basis. Some of us haven’t been in touch in years. But as soon at that email went out everyone was in tears. For us, Chappy is where we grew up. Hundreds upon hundreds of emails flew. We were all devastated. We all started talking about our favorite Chappy moments. These moments included famous camp sayings, activities and more important our teen friendships. I brought up my memories of being the camp vampire. I used to stay up all night. Very often, I would sit at the picnic table by the Palace (the office) in the wee hours of the night. We talked about our famous dead fish fights on our canoe trips. You see our SM would pile up dead fish into his canoe. Anyone who paddled by was fair game to be whacked in the head, chest, or limbs with a dead fish. Other memories included movie night usually the mindless 80s movies. Of course, I own many of them and watch them religiously. We talked about our famous Action Park trips. I fell off the Alpine slide in ’86. We talked about the red stuff that our favorite Italian restaurant, El Monaco’s, poured onto everything, even the salad. The red stuff was their marinara sauce. Across from El Monaco’s was Candy Cone. A cute little ice cream shack with two broken video games. I visited in 1999. It was still the same. Sadly, these places, like our Hill are gone. In 1984, I scored the winning run for the Sigh Figh Space Gators patrol. We won the softball game and that run put us over the top and made us the Chappy Olympic champs. I still have my Gold Medal. In ’85 a few campers and I made much fun of the kid that used to eat his feet. To punish us, our SM made us clean up the whole blow out party. We spent the night cleaning the dining hall and scrubbing lots of pots. We had a great time. Over the last few days, we all shared timeless memories. Of course one particular area we talked about was the latrine. The camp staff torched the precious latrine shortly after camp closed. But in our minds it is still our hub. One camper spent his entire summer sitting on his seat. It was his social network. This was way before Facebook or Linkedin. Well I can go on for thousands of pages. But you get the point. We love camp. We are saddened by the recent turn of events. But maybe it is for the better. We are not there anymore. Our memories will live forever. Nature will rebuild this beautiful site. One day, some of us will take our kids to see where we grew up. It’ll look different. But our spirit will be felt.