Happy Easter, everyone!

Camp Loowit Alumni

Jeremiah 31:1-6

The loveliest things are incredibly brief.
The loveliest things happen only once.
Years compress to minutes.

Nature does not care about your feelings.
Eight months after the 50-year reunion
of Y campers at Spirit Lake,

Mount St. Helens blew apart
and ruined the pristine lake forever.
It buried the YMCA camp

under hundreds of feet of timber and tephra.
Because of debris, the bottom of the new lake
is higher than the surface of the old lake.

The breathtaking symmetry of the iconic mountain,
proudly emblazoned on thousands of postcards,
is reduced to a pile of charcoal gray.

The Camp Loowit alumni
don’t meet in person any more.
They gather on Facebook.

Most discuss the loveliest hours of youth.
But there are some who celebrate
via the sideways scrolling of photographs

the green transformation of the blast site
and the return of animal life,
and though the site is different,

much different, from what it was before,
a new kind of beauty awaits those
who embrace the words of the prophet,

Again I will build you,
and you shall be built,
O virgin Israel!

Easter Sunday
April 9, 2023