there are certain places from your past you just didn't appreciate at the time, but you can see yourself there now, aren't there?

maine, by the ocean, 1998. fifth grade. i had no idea, not the faintest conception, of the kind of innocence and wonder i had there in those days. we were there for a week, they called it "environmental camp," but in reality it was a sort of growing-up experience for us youngfolk and a look into the vistas of natural wonder in the area.

to be back there again, lying on the beach at night while we were told about the stars, me supplementing everyone's interest with snippets i'd learned out of all those astronomy books i used to borrow from the elementary school library. letting go, lying in a circle. kara and i running to the water - we weren't supposed to go in - and waiting for the small waves to come for us, running back like it was a race, or we were running for our lives. the tide pools, the literal rock band, the scary swamp area with the irregularly drawn numbers on awkward shacks which had seen better days, making fun of the principal, passing through areas with "no trespassing" signs and being told it was okay, andy with what must have seemed like the dirtiest forbidden jokes at the time.

in the hall of the mountain king. the minnesota timberwolves.

i argued with my fifth grade teacher about whether to capitalize the "i" in internet. she fell during the trip when we were walking along the road, incapacitated and incorrect. i thought i had fallen in love with some character from a book i had been reading each night with a flashlight, my earliest prototypical engine of sexual fantasy firing waveringly but on all cylinders.

on the last night, one of the counselors sang and played guitar for a few songs, scattered lines of which i remember. the girls cried, most of the boys splashed water on their faces to make fun of the girls. i don't remember what i did. probably nothing. i listened. tried to remember. a lot of it is gone now, and the journal we had to write i kept heavily censored, since the teacher would be reading them. i regret not keeping another one, but i doubt it would have any significance to me today, the memories are enough, or not enough, but all.

we learned how to set tables and i learned the word "queue." i ate kelp. my kite wouldn't fly. we whispered rumours about how bethany might be anorexic, barely knowing what we meant. i mostly just remember the ocean, though; kara and i once again, running as close as we dared to the forbidden water, then back. i think at one point my contemplative nature that began to reveal itself in later years made an early, unscheduled appearance. i must have stared out at the ocean, imagining my life ahead of me like so much of the sea and how i would never have that moment again.