Recap: Five Generations, One Spring, and a Quiet Return
Finding stillness where the signal fades, and the past walks quietly beside the present.
This weekend, I’ll be away from campus—Gail and I are taking a long drive to Hot Springs, Arkansas, where we’ll meet our children, their spouses, our grandchildren, and my mother for a few days of family, fellowship, and lots of swimming. It’s a post-Father’s Day gathering, but it’s more than a holiday. It’s a chance to pause, reconnect, and remember.
Off the Grid, On Sacred Ground
On Sunday, we’ll do something special. About 60 miles west of Hot Springs lies Camp Albert Pike, a Depression-era campground managed by the U.S. Forest Service. It was a place my father, Tom, visited with his father in the 1950s. My brother Steven and I went with him many times in the 1970s and 1980s. And this week, I’ll return—with my grandchildren.
Camp Albert Pike was closed to overnight camping after a tragic 2010 flood swept through the area and took the lives of more than 20 people. But the memories of the place—its swimming holes, the smell of pine, and a little spring that pours from the side of a mountain—have endured. That spring, Dad told us, was a hidden treasure. A trail, maybe 300 yards from the campground, leads to it. Water emerges cold and clean from rock. It’s been flowing into the Little Missouri River for generations.
In an age of dopamine loops, algorithmic nudges, and relentless digital buzz, we’re going off-grid—at least for a day. No cell service. No notifications. Just family time, swimming in the Little Missouri River, and a quiet pilgrimage to a place once visited by two earlier generations of my family. This weekend marks the moment I take myself, along with the fourth and fifth generations, back to a spring that flows from rock, tucked into the side of a mountain.
The Deepest Changes Come Quietly
Sometimes we talk about transformation as if it only happens in boardrooms or through technology. But the deepest changes often come when we return to something ancient—when we touch roots that will eventually stretch beyond our own lifetime. Camp Albert Pike is one of those places for me. It’s not just where water spills out of a rock face or where we once pitched tents; it’s where memory itself takes on weight and form.
Norman Maclean, the great American author and University of Chicago professor, once said that all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. These timeless, quiet places, marked more by presence than progress, bring our memories near. They existed long before our lifetimes and will endure long after. As I walk that trail with my grandchildren, I’ll carry my father and grandfather with me. In a world chasing new things, returning is the most powerful thing we can do.