Page "fiction" Paragraph 1029

Nothing in all the preceding years had had the power to bring me closer to a knowledge of profound sorrow than the breakup of camp, the packing away of my camp uniforms, the severing of ties with the six or ten people I had grown most to love in the world.

In final separation from them, in the railroad terminal across the river from New York, I would nearly cry.

My parents' welcoming arms would seem woeful, inadequate, unwanted.

But that year was different, for just as the city, in the form of my street clothes, had intruded upon my mountain nights, so an essential part of the summer gave promise of continuing into the fall: Jessica and I, about to be separated not by a mere footbridge or messhall kitchen but by the immense obstacle of residing in cruelly distant boroughs, had agreed to correspond.