It’s got to be the most beautiful, most calming place in the whole world. The dirt under your bare feet, the sound of the waves from the lake lapping onto shore, and the sound of the leaves rustling in the wind on a late night walk. It’s no where special, but to me, it’s serenity. I sit on the dock overlooking the lake every night I’m there; my feet ankle deep in water, creating ripples every time I move them to and fro. The croak of a frog in the distance makes me smile as I soak up the last rays of the sun. As it sinks, the sun creates beautiful streaks of fiery orange across the sky and turns the clouds a yellowish grey. Nothing could be more beautiful than this.

In its final moments, the sun hides behind a dark patch of trees and kisses the sky goodnight, promising to return in the morning. It’s now the moon’s turn to watch over on lookers beneath and provide them with just enough illumination to see the beaten path that guides them back to their camping site. The lake has now become and ocean; so deep and so dark that I can’t see the bottom anymore. I pull my feet from the water and hug them close to my body for warmth. I sit huddled like this for a few moments until I remember my discarded hoodie at the other end of the dock. I stand and run to retrieve it and throw it over my body, then walk back out to where I was prior. I lie down on my back and stargaze. The stars are the prettiest I’ve ever seen them in my life. There’s not a cloud in the sky and no city smog to cover up the sparkling diamonds. They seem so close to you, you feel like you could reach out and yank one right out of the sky to cherish forever. I lie there for a while, just starting into the sky, invisible to passers by. I begin to think about how many people don’t ever take the time to do this, and it saddens me. Everyone simply underestimates star gazing. They just think they’ve seen it all before, it’s the same stars every night. But what they don’t realize is it’s not. The sky is constantly changing and no night sky is the same. A shooting star flies across the sky, proclaiming it’s dignity before dying. I quickly make a wish, hoping it will come true in the near future, knowing that it really won’t.

I then begin to think of the times when I was younger when I came to this place. Life seemed so simple back then. You could scream and run around here like maniacs and nobody would care (besides your parents) because they know that kids will be kids. But now as an adolescent, I understand how irritating it was for them. All those kids running around in their bathing suits, playing in the lake, promising their on shore parents that they’ll get out in five more minutes. All the kids want to do is play in the water. They don’t want to eat, they don’t want to go to bed, and they don’t want to ride their bikes. They just want to swim. I was the same way. When I came here and went swimming, I was a fish. I lived in that lake. The water was so clear; you could swim out ten feet and still see the bottom. But it’s not like that anymore. Times change, and so have I.

Being a teenager is a lot harder than being a kid. You make your own choices in life and you take the full responsibility for all those choices. You can’t run to your parents anymore to “kiss it and make it all better”. At least that’s how it is with my parents. They allow me to learn from my mistakes. And I have.

This last time I just described was my first time going back to that camp site in years. There a few reasons why I hesitated on ever going back. But the most painful of all is that it used to be a place where I had the most memories with my mom; good and bad. The last time I went there with my mom wasn’t a good time, in fact it was the worst of all, so I held off on going back. I didn’t want to deal with all the memories that would flood my memory as soon as I entered the drive. I got convinced on going back with some people from my youth group who I hadn’t seen all summer. So I went and released every emotion I’ve held inside me for years on that dock. And I realized that I missed the sunsets and the stars out there. And one day, I’ll be able to reach out and yank one of those stars out of the sky to cherish forever.