Last evening, I enjoyed an unexpected visit with an old friend and a new one. Janet called to say she was in Sewanee. All those years I haven't seen her vanished when she and Jim took me for pizza, which we ate in their room at The Sewanee Inn.I first met Janet when she 9 years old at Camp Green Cove. One of the youngest children at camp, she was a champion camper -- eager to make friends, to laugh, to learn new things, and to embrace challenges. She embodied the cliche of "live wire." When, toward the end of camp, she was invited on the five-day Smoky backpacking trip, I went down to the trip room to see her and the rest of the group off. Janet's backpack weighed more than she did (somewhere in the neighborhood just above 50 pounds). I'll never forget seeing her muscular, little body supporting that pack.
About a decade ago, we went to a camp reunion together, where we visited with more than a hundred women who crossed many decades of camping . The magic still crackled and we found ourselves still loving camp and each other.
For all the years I've known Janet -- at camp and beyond as an adult in New Orleans -- I've never seen her look happier than she did that morning as she boarded a cattle truck to hike for a week and as she did last night in her room at The Sewanee Inn.
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