On My 9/11...

I've been inspired to write this blog posting after reading The New York Times earlier today about 'happy' memories on 9/11. These aren't exactly happy memories per se, but they aren't unhappy either.

On my 9/11 I was with my friends and classmates from my entire grade 10 class up north for a weeklong leadership camp. I was only 14 and when looking back through the journal I wrote at the time, I was a child but thought greater of myself - typical teenager mentality. I had my reasons for being so gallant including the fact that I finished one adventure to Iran and the UK which had lasted for over a month that previous summer and here I was on another.

That previous summer, I had seen so much more than before. It wasn't the typical going-to-see-family trip that we had previously, but I saw my ancestral homeland's ancient history, a decent piece of Europe, and now I'm with my school on an adventure that would stay with me. I have been traveling to various places in Europe, Iran and the United States since I was a two-year-old, but these last trips really stuck with me.

Back to 9/11, we had just finished breakfast and were waiting to do the day's activities in each of our groups. It was at that moment that the first plane had hit the WTC Tower but we were clueless of it. There was no internet, no 24-hour news channel to turn to, nothing. We were disconnected from the rest of the world and would soon be going on our activities.

We were innocent yet we were growing up and discovering ourselves at 14 when the world changed.

When the towers fell, my group was lost in the forest. Doing a compass activity, somebody made a typo on the navigation sheet and we ended up going off in the wrong direction! Even the navigation counsellors were puzzled with the new scenery - that definitely was not a good sign!

We finally made it back to the camp right around lunch with not enough time to debrief but I think we all learned something about ourselves in that activity in the midst of being lost. We sensed fear because we were lost but banded together on getting back to the camp based on memory and teamwork.

By this time, I and many others were still blissfully unaware of the fear, terror, paranoia and suffering that was happening just south of us.

Only two days into this experience and all of us were quickly becoming friends, laughing together, and just enjoying ourselves away from home and school - what a different world we were in.

The bad news came from one of the teachers who was chaperoning this trip at around 1 PM. "There has been an attack in the United States today" he says to which I had no idea how to react. "Today, the world has changed," he continued and I look out to my fellow campers since at this point, I don't seem to understand what he's saying. The magnitude of the situation hit me when I saw one of the counsellors welling up. This was serious.

All of a sudden, we learned about airliners hitting buildings in New York, the White House was bombed, loss of life in the tens of thousands and all sorts of other apocalyptic stories. Could this be true or was this a way to bring the campers even closer together?

A lot of questions went through my mind, but the show went on. There was still no way in getting the information and I was a bit of a visual person so hearing or reading about it didn't exactly work for me.

I cannot remember what my group was doing that afternoon, but we had about two hours of free time after the activities before dinner and instead of going for a swim like I always did that week, I stayed and listened to the radio that one of the guys had in his cabin but I lack an imagination so this whole incident was still difficult to comprehend. The best thing to do was to wait it out until we would get home - three days later!

That evening after dinner, there was a campfire where we sang songs, some of the counsellors and campers did skits among other things. There was no talk of what had happened that day, the latest news or anything at all.

We continued to laugh, make jokes, and were back to being normal. The next few days we all spent together were doing more activities, a massive Olympics-like game between all groups, and a dance!

Once this week was over, I had this feeling that we were all more than just friends, that we were a tight-knit family. This feeling went right through high school all the way to graduation when we chose our different paths.

Eight years have gone by since that one week of discovery. Many of us who spent that week together up north are still friends, have moved on to greater things and have embarked on our own amazing journeys. Thanks to technology, we're still in contact but I can't help but wonder if what happened during that week was a contributor to us all being close. The answer may seem obvious to you, but I'm scratching my head...

This blog entry is my last one for a very long time because of what is coming ahead for me so this one is for all the friends made during that one week when the world went mad and we had to depend on each other for strength.

White Pine; September 9-14, 2001.