Camp, in Monongahela National Forest, West Virginia (Photo provided by Melinda Walton)

With spring on the way, my thoughts turned to clearing out my spare room. It could be an office, a workout room, both! As with every good project, things got messier right away. Full bookshelves needed to be moved. Stacks of books soon crowded the floor, spilling into other rooms. The vacuum got hauled in to get at newly revealed spots. Shelves dusted, books back in place, a work table converted to desk duty, the room started to take shape.

Ever my nemesis, distractions began tugging at my attention. Do I need to move the pictures around on the walls? Should I move the dumbbells to another room? What about those boxes? I should probably go through them and see if I can pitch some of that paper into recycling.

I picked up an old blue, 4-by-6 inch spiral notebook. The kind you get from the store to make lists in or keep track of things. Peoples Drug Store, Alexandria, Virginia … This was an old notebook. I opened it and was instantly taken back to the summer I was 16. It was a log I’d kept of a nine-day camping trip with the Explorer post I’d just joined in the spring of 11th grade. The post was based at NASA Goddard and was mainly about computers. We had speakers, workshops, presentations, and every summer included a Super Activity trip. This was my first one.

All else fell away as I began reading the log. A packing list! Everything from a rain poncho to bug dope, a clunky metal canteen borrowed from my oldest brother — with a red canvas cover and belt hook, another brother’s two-man pup tent and many other items, all in an old Boy Scout backpack. Also listed was “Death of a Salesman” — required summer reading for 12th-grade English.

I was up at 5:30 a.m. that first day to get my younger brother’s paper route AND my own route done. He was away at the beach with half the family and would be back the next day. Ready by 8 a.m., I was about to read the comics when my ride arrived. Of the group, two were good friends, the rest I didn’t really know — 11 in all: three adult chaperones, three girls and five boys. Day 1 was loading up the van and station wagon, followed by a long drive to West Virginia. We met our caving guide, then filled our water containers at what our guide called “Pissing Tree Springs.” Camp setup went well. Pretty sure most of us were novice campers.

Over the next few days we explored caves. We crawled — sometimes through muddy tunnels on hands and knees, or climbing, belaying, up sheer rock, then scrambling up a dusty mountain in a cathedral-sized room. Sleeping bats high above. Turns out that dusty mountain was hundreds of years of bat guano. We got the hang of the carbide headlamps with only a few singed jeans or hair. At the outset, the guide told us the caver’s unwritten law and motto: “Take Nothing but Pictures, Leave Nothing but Footprints, and Kill Nothing but Time.” I liked that.

Time. Time is something we had a lot of. As I read over the entire 42 pages that 16-year-old me had written, I was fascinated by how full each day was, but at the same time how leisurely it all seemed. There was never a rush. While two or three were tasked in turn with meal prep or cleanup, the rest of the group was free to read, roam, talk and explore. In three nights at the first camp, we found blueberries, giant rocks, a stream to swim in, trails to a lookout, and all the way up to the mountain’s peak. We saw deer and fox, heard ravens, owls at dark and coyote in the night.

It wasn’t all caves and hiking. Other days included a tour of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory where one of our leaders had worked, a ride on the Cass Scenic Railroad, a horse ride some opted out of, and at one campsite, swimming, rowboats and pedal boats were available.

Thinking back, it occurred to me that the idyllic trip was a sort of prehistory to our current times. No such thing as cellphones, laptops, GPS or even internet then. Maps were on paper. If a phone call needed to be made, a drive to the nearest town was required to find a gas station, drug store or diner with a pay phone we could use. I think the chaperones only did that twice. The teens didn’t think to call home and talk to parents at all. The few pictures we took were with actual cameras, and the film would have to be developed at a photo shop before we’d see which pictures had turned out. At night we sat around the campfires we’d made, singing crazy songs — “Good Ol’ Mountain Dew,” “Fish Heads” — telling stories, toasting marshmallows, talking, laughing, listening to each other. Conversation moved easily, quieting as the fire dimmed. Then we looked at the dark sky, spotting satellites, pointing out planets, constellations and telling what we knew of stories in the stars.

My reminisce prompted some cyber-sleuthing to see who I could find this many years later. Facebook didn’t exist back then, but it’s a great tool now for finding ghosts from the past. I did find a fellow camper, one who had figured prominently, and I made an old new friend into a new old friend as we recounted our other memories of the trip. Social media, the internet and cellphones reconnected us, but if those had existed when we were kids, would we have even taken that trip?

The addictive nature of social media seems to divide us even as it gives us so-called better access to each other. We sit in classrooms, meetings, cars, restaurants, even at home on the couch or in bed, looking at the screens, scrolling, scrolling, giving our time away to nothing and not even talking to the people around us.

I’d like to think that the past year of isolation has made us more aware of what’s truly important. It’s not on a screen. Look up. It’s us. Friends, strangers, family, neighbors. Seeing each other, talking, smiling, laughing and really listening. Look up.