It's funny that it's been five years since I've stood at the bank of the rushing river, washed the campsite dirt from between my toes, or attempted to make pancakes on the fire pit. Five years since I sat in the back seat pretending to be asleep as we drove up to our second home. The place we only went once a year, but that is so familiar and comforting it feels as if we never left.

This was the place where so many of my childhood memories took place. The place that watched as I grew up. Where, when it rained, we would spend hours in the tent betting candy on card games, until one of us decided running outside in the pouring rain through the woods would be more fun. After which, we would wind up in the campground showers trying to get the mud off before we ran out of quarters for hot water.

Thank you for never changing. Thank you for reminding me that even as I grow up, move out of my childhood home, and watch my friends go away to different schools, that some things will stay still. As life becomes infinitely more complicated, as I get a job, apply for loans, and learn how to be a grown up, thank you for reminding me that there will always be a place where life is simple. Where there wasn't phone service, where we ate hot dogs and s'mores for every meal, and even at bed time, the most dreaded time of the day for a kid, we were too tired to do anything besides collapse into our sleeping bags and dreaming of the adventures we had that day.

You were the place that helped make me who I am. Where someday I will bring my kids, to show them that there is a place where everything is innocent and nothing goes too fast. That when everything else is too much and too crazy, there is another world, a world right here on a campsite in the woods, where everything will always be right.

When we drove away five years ago, I didn't know it would be this long until I would be back. But every time I sleep in the giant t-shirts I collected from the camp store over the years, or hang up the pictures we took on our disposable cameras, it feels like I never left. Because even though it's been so long since I've been back, this place never left me. I can still feel the sun on my back and the lurch in my stomach right before I finally jumped off the cliff next to the river. I can hear the owls in the wood and taste the campfire on my food. I may have left this place, but this place never left me.