Life Changing
It’s about 5:45am Sunday and the smooth whirr of another tent’s zipper awakens me. I am sleeping in Beaver Brook Shelter #5, Corman AMC Harriman Outdoors Center, New York. I surreptitiously unzip our tent, not wanting to wake my husband who will never be disturbed by such a minor annoyance.
Rolling out of the tent with a thud, I grab sneakers and phone. I can see the moon is still full through the treetops but it is setting quickly.
The marina is calm, scattered kayaks bumping hips, waiting for paddlers. Even vertically, I cannot fit the tall trees and moon into the same frame as the still lake.
I don’t capture the image I want but I have the memories of a weekend outdoors in Harriman State Park. It may not be the most dense of forests or the most reflective of lakes but it is our chance to enjoy nature at her finest. Summer weather with just enough humidity to encourage a swim in the lake with its mysterious ribbons of warm and cold water. Enough breeze for our kayak search for the blue heron my campmates have talked about on the far side of Breakneck Pond.
We are two of seven here for a Chinese Yoga Weekend, which turns out to be Tai Chi and Qigong blended seamlessly with Rudyard Kipling animal tales by Tai Chi Easy Lee from Rochester. Three meals outside, at picnic or cafe tables outside the mess hall. Our AMC team leader Trish presents Boda boxes of Sauvignon Blanc and Pinto Grigio, Trader Joe’s generic Pirate Booty, and camping wisdom around the blazing fire ring.
Yesterday on the beach deck I met Eileen Baptistin Level, a program director for teen and young adults from Opportunity Hub. She had been taking pictures of her “kids”: 18 to 26-year-old youth from Brooklyn who rode New Jersey Transit to paradise. They tower above one blonde toddler and the Israeli preschoolers who want to share their water guns.
“I love it here,“ she declares, “just to watch them play, it’s life changing; it gives me hope for the world…” So much spray swirls around us you can’t tell the difference between their colorful swimsuits and the rainbow of AK47s filled with warm water. “It’s such a tough age, transitioning from childhood to being adults when you don’t even know what that looks like.”
It's only two days into the weekend yet I have heard that phrase life changing a few times already. (I commented that supported camping was like The Fresh Air Fund for grownups during our Happy Hour and Genie chimed in, “I was a kid from Bed Stuy and the Fresh Air Fund changed my life.”)
Henry David Thoreau was not the first to note how magical time in nature is. The humming crickets, roaring campfires, chafing dishes of pasta, rocky hiking trails and welcoming Bath Houses. Heavenly: the chance to burrow into a borrowed tent at night and cuddle with loaner sleepings bags. It is our welcomed home to rest in after a day of too much play.
Our new best friends from Tai Chi are all members of the AMC, the O.G. outdoors org celebrating its sesquicentennial in 2026. I know I will join as soon as we have a cell signal again. Their work – getting folks out into the woods, making it affordable and easy – is priceless.
We will come back. And listen. And learn from those moments that matter… life changing.
Kyle McCarthy and her husband were invited to spend August 8-10, 2025 at the Corman AMC Harriman Outdoors Center in Harriman State Park, New York by the non-profit Appalachian Mountain Club organization. They operate facilities in seven U.S. regions. This post was edited by Keith McCarthy, an avid Substacker.