Recap: What Changes and What Doesn’t

A return to Camp Albert Pike and the quiet truth that most change happens in us.

Last week I wrote about returning to Camp Albert Pike, a quiet place tucked into the Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas. It was a preview of a visit 40 years in the making, and I wasn’t sure how it would feel to see it again.

Now that we’ve been, I can tell you: the place is still there. Still flowing. Still special.

We made the drive out on Sunday, my wife, my mother, our kids, their spouses, our grandkids. Four generations represented in one pilgrimage. And Camp Albert Pike, for the most part, hadn’t changed a bit.

The spring was still pouring out of the side of the mountain, just as I remembered from 1983. Cold and clear. The same faint trail leads to it. The same leaves soften the path. My grandchildren played in the same water I once did, and I got to watch them experience what I first experienced with my father.

The swimming area? Still popular. The Little Missouri River curved just as it did four decades ago. If you took away the cars and the closed buildings, you might not guess the year was 2025.

Of course, time has left its marks. The campground remains closed due to the tragic 2010 floods. The small store is shuttered. The changing rooms and shower stalls are closed. But the place itself, the landscape, the rhythm of the river, the feel of the air, remains stubbornly, blessedly unchanged.

And that’s what struck me most: the change wasn’t in the place. It was in us.

Memory wears a familiar path

There’s something humbling about standing somewhere that has outlasted you, not just you, but your parents and grandparents too. Places like this become more than geography. They become memory made physical.

And maybe that’s the lesson. The world moves fast. We age, our families grow, and nothing seems to hold still. But sometimes we return to a place and realize: it didn’t need to change. Because it was pretty close to perfect.

I’m deeply grateful my children and grandchildren have now seen what I once saw. And I have no doubt they’ll return. Twenty or thirty years from now, long after I’m gone, the water will still be flowing from that rock. That thought brings me peace. And confidence.

For one day, we were off-grid. No pings or screens. Just river water, sunlight, and memory. Sometimes, that’s all we need to be reminded of who we are and what lasts.