Chanco Twice
It is strange… yet laughingly normal to have been reading all the bios and blogs about people I remember so fondly from the rather (ahem) distant past. A Chanco Alumni Association has been formed! It seems long overdue, but I suppose we needed to need it in order to form it, right? Many thanks to everyone involved in the foundation and development of the CCAA. I am proud to be a part of it – and I am glad to be back. I am glad we are all back to save the place that arguably saved each one of us at one time or another in our young lives. I know I have certainly missed Chanco in my life.
You know what I have really missed? I have missed the feeling I had driving down the winding road toward Chanco for Fall Fest. It was the very same (the exact, very same) feeling I remember as I made my way toward camp for an October weekend, or a Youth Senate, or a Happening, or a Staff Week for the summer many years before. I was filled with all of the nervous, happy anticipation of what lay ahead. Who would be there? How smoothly would the weekend run? Would I have time for a shower before breakfast – or would I have to wait until afterward – or (gasp) miss one altogether due to over-scheduling? (These are serious issues, people, then and now!) Would people really show up? Would they have a good time? Would they come back? Would the spirit reach each person in the same way? Would it reach them at all? It is a feeling I remember so clearly of being passionately connected with something so important and so powerful that I couldn’t imagine my life without it… yet, it was my life that led me away from camp, down other roads, toward other destinations. I spent years trying to fill the void where camp had been. I missed the feeling, the spirit of Chanco, without realizing just what it was; but I sure knew as I passed by Zooms, and then “the swamp,” and on past the boy scouts pulling up their socks at Pipsico toward Fall Fest - The butterflies swarmed! I missed the people, the purpose, the Spirit. I missed Chanco. Thank you for bringing it all back… It is so good to be home.
- Helen Somers's blog
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I can't believe I missed it!
I can't believe I missed it! It sounds like it was an amazing time...one that I hope I will be able to attend in years to come.
I am soooo very glad you all are doing what you're doing and I can't wait to reconnect with so many of you whom I have never forgotten and carried close in my heart for all these years.
Take care my friends!! Christy
Fall Fest 2008
Helen, You beautifully described my feelings about Fall Fest and the Alumni Association. You described them as if you were in my heart - well, you are - aren't you? The anticipation of Fall Fest, the work, the nervous anxiety, the reward of the huge response and the continued energy to preserve Chanco. The reconnection with long lost friends. It is amazing. I am so thankful to Greg Willis for this site and for beginning the organization of CCAA, for Boomer (with Helen's support of his enormous, all consuming job) for his energy to reconnect and revive the Chanco Spirit, and to the Alumni for their donations of time, energy and finances to help Chanco. I've written an article about Fall Fest for the Jamestown Cross that I hope to get posted soon (embarrassed to say I still don't know how to do all this web stuff). Just as the drive to Fall Fest was reminiscent of a drive to a October weekend retreat - the drive away was similar, too...sadness that it's over, wondering when it will happen again...missing everyone already...
With love and gratititude, Talley
Wish I could have been there!
Helen and Talley,
Jim told me it was a great success. I wish more than anything I could have been there. Too much going on this year, but there's always next year. Please let me know if there's anything I can do to help. Talley mentioned writing something to say how Chanco prepared me for life, and it sure did, in so many ways. I think about it all the time when I'm working on the Narnia movies. It's like I'm the counselor to the kids in the movie. They even bought me a shirt to wear on set that says, "Perry Poppins." Thank you, Chanco, and to you two especially who made it such a wonderful experience. i will never ever forget that first summer we all worked at camp--1988, the last summer of camp at the old site. Maybe one of these days I'll get inspired and make a movie or write a book about it. i don't know. Some things are too special to articulate in words.
And Helen, the highlight of my whole Narnia tour was coming to speak to your class. I have a special file where I saved all their letters. You are such a wonderful role model about how to "pass it on." I learned so much from both you of you. Hope we can get together again soon!
Love and Caritas,
Perry