A place to escape

The history of this place, as I know it, started 64 years ago when a river was dammed and the reservoir formed, joining 26 separate lakes in a hilly area were once stood 226 variuos buildings. The result? One reservoir, a size of 1572 hectares, with unnaturally winding coastline and 75 islands. Abandoned buildings and old graveyards isolated on an island are common here.

Memories

My family had a tradition to go camping here every year for a week with another family. They had two kids around the same age as me, my sister and brother, so the five of us spent lots of time together. We would swim with a homemade raft, explore the place at night, play board games and build a tree house.

When me and my brother grew older, we started doing long adventure runs with our dad. To end them, we would have a long swim, from one shore to the other, sometimes with islands and peninsulas in between.

The entire area was overgrown with mostly unattended wilderness. The camp was hidden from everyone else. It was our own escape from the outside world.

Changes

A few years ago, not far from the camp, a tourist trail opened up. The place wasn’t as secluded any more, but we could still find privacy at our camp.

Then the whole forest surrounding our camping place was cut down. The camp became naked, visible by anyone on the tourist trail.

Through relatives of our friends, we found another camping place nearby that we could camp at. We camped there for two years, but this year was the last. The place has almost completely lost it’s charm to us. The only real thing left now is mostly just memories.

Now

I looked at our old camping place again. To get there, I had walked through a grassy plowed field; there is no path left to the place. I could hardly remember how everything looked back then, but some bits of memories did come – enough to get a tiny sting of nostalgia. Even at the camping place, it was difficult to place how everything looked back then. Only when I was looking at the lake, with my back to the field, I could pretend everything is still the same. When I turned around again, the place felt alien.

Returning to this place for 18 years of my life, it always stayed the same. Sometimes, anxiously, I did wonder that we would grow up and the place could loose it’s value to us. But I’ve never thought that the place itself would reject us. People seem to have a habit of ruining places, and for this place it really isn’t the first time.

I plan to return to this place, every year or so, to walk the tourist trail. I would love to experience again the bits of my childhood that are still visible and the imaginary memories of people who lived here 64 years ago.

With the world changing so quickly, can we ever find such a place and have it stay the same?