Happy Place

We all need a "happy place". Sure it may sound like psycho-babble to some, but after my father died and I couldn't stop thinking about it - all day - all the time - I was advised to come up with a happy place.

Mostly it happened at night. I would lay in bed, trying to turn off my brain and I just couldn't. Images would race through my head. I couldn't stop thinking, worrying, obsessing. My eyes, focused on the ceiling, would betray me by considering new complexities and conjuring old anxieties, keeping me awake. For hours.

So I thought carefully about what my happy place would be. The place where I was completely comfortable and relaxed and at ease. Where I had happy memories. The image I could switch my brain to when I got anxious - that would let me relax and calm down and sleep. And so I decided my happy place was this...















This is Black Pond. It's on the campus of my high school. But before I went to high school there, I went to summer camp there starting when I was in second grade. Every summer for two weeks, I spent hours outside in the blazing sun playing soccer and tennis, swimming and practicing archery, rock climbing and riding the zip wire. And one night during the second week of camp each summer, there was a campout at Black Pond. We would descend the 200-300 stairs with our sleeping bags and personal gear on our backs - each stair a log in the dirt on our way down to the pond. We would have a campfire and hear ghost stories. And we would go canoeing.

Now I'm not a big outdoorsy person, but for whatever reason, this stuck with me as the image that I clung to when I needed to click over from the reality that overwhelmed me. Sitting in a canoe in the middle of the pond, it was peaceful and I felt completely safe. And I was dazzled by the water lilies that formed a lush blanket of green. We even went kayaking in this pond because it was a great place to practice. Didn't matter if you flipped over. Sure we had to wear shoes when we swam in it, but that wasn't the point. It was completely natural and beautiful and it seemed that nothing there could go wrong. Nothing could harm me there.

I would say it's still my happy place. And now as I start to think about where my own children will go to camp and the adventures they'll have in the summers to come, I hope they can have memories of a place like this. A place where the summer seems endless, where their hearts are filled with peace and natural beauty - and where their minds can return to when they face the difficulties of life that lie ahead.