Nostalgia

My family has been going to Fort Stevens State Park since before I can remember. It's a beautiful Oregon coast state park, decked out with yurts, cabins, regular campsites, bike trails, hiking trails, old war batteries, the Peter Iredale shipwreck, gorgeous ocean views, terrible showers, the whole kit and kaboodle. Even a lake, if you prefer. 

The last time we went, I was in 6th grade. Until this year! We went back!

It's interesting to see which parts are my favorite now, as opposed to my favorites in elementary school. Back then, the highlight of the trip was riding around the camp loops on our bikes, messing around with new friends and walkie-talkies. The beach was for digging huge holes and climbing huge dunes. I didn't even know the lake existed. It was never important, as I had other beachy matters to tend to. 

This year was different. Awesome, but notably different. I still rode my bike, but through the trails to the historic sites. Heh. To get the 12-year-old me anywhere near a crumbling bunker or a boring ol' jetty, you would have had to haul me, kicking and screaming. By the way, that says tons about how cool my younger siblings are. They're between the ages of 8 and 16, and they didn't have an issue. i daresay they even had fun.

Fortunately I've grown wiser over time, at least in relation to my opinion of historic stuff. In all honesty, I could spend a whole day sitting inside the Magazine Room in Battery 245. That's the best room in that battery, because the acoustics are just the coolest ever. I'd probably sing the day away, if there was no one around to be bothered. It wasn't only for the acoustics that I loved it, though. 

Battery 245 was my favorite. Walking through the concrete-paved halls, I kept feeling really really nostalgic. All the people that walked here decades ago... Such a different time. What was on their minds? Were husbands far from home? Were women running from stereotypes? Were there dramatic, secret love affairs? Were best friends killed? Was there nothing very interesting at all, just military life as usual? I don't know even what this battery has seen. I read a bit about what it was capable of, and the pressures it was prepared to face. But the quiet conversations among soldiers aren't there.  The laughter and jokes aren't written on a plaque. There is no memorial for the thoughts of home and of a better time. That flu bug that went around? I didn't hear about it. The favorite book, carefully tucked away under a soldier's bunk? Gone. The insecurities of a commanding officer, unsure of his capabilities? No one knows that story.

The rooms in that battery have been stripped bare. Nothing remains but the skeleton of something that used to be great. Now it serves as a canvas for teenage artists, a playground for kids who only see the now, a tourist attraction for frazzled soccer parents, and a trigger for the elderly, searching for bits of their past. 

Maybe it's just because I'm a girl with a crazy imagination. Maybe there was never any flu bug, cherished volume, or hidden self-doubt. Maybe it doesn't matter if there were. The facts are enough, we know everything about the fort, its entire timeline is documented in full, it's under control, we got it. 

My question, however, is this. Who is going to control our history? What's going to be remembered from my world? What aging walls from my time are kids going to graffiti all over? What will be written on plaques and designated important, noteworthy? What will be forgotten? That feeling of nostalgia wasn't only about the times that have already come and gone. It was for the times that will come, and will go. The times that are, but are already slipping away. How do we leave a lasting legacy? Books? Movies? Relationships? Buildings? Government? Religion? Music? Photographs? Being "fruitful and multiplying"? Clean energy? Internet blogs? All of the above? None of the above? Does it even matter? 

I believe it matters. And yet, all I have are these questions. Maybe the only solution is to live the best lives we can. Make the best music we can. Build the strongest buildings we can. Save as many natural resources as we can. Raise our children as best we can. If all else fails, at least we've positively impacted the present age. Perhaps that, in turn, will positively affect the ages to come.