Fourteen Years

My family and I just recently returned from our annual camping trip to Tahoe. We've been going to the same special little campsite almost every year for about fourteen years. It's always fun to go back, to revisit old memories and make new ones.

I'm always left with an odd bittersweet feeling after returning from Tahoe. Like many traditions, this camping trip tends to enhance my view of the passage of time, and makes me see a little more clearly how quickly change occurs and how short our time here is. The rocks and mountains, trees, rivers, and lakes, have hardly shown the difference of fourteen years. Yet now my nephew is learning to crawl in the places where my siblings and I once built ant houses and fairy gardens. 

I could give two thousand words, but I think two pictures will more than suffice to paint the idea. This first one is of our first trip fourteen years ago, and the second is of our most recent trip, not four days ago...

That is the same rock, although I think it must have shrunk, if only a little bit...