"Lewis and Clark"

Until I wrote the below list, I'd totally forgotten about playing "Lewis and Clark."

I think that the game was some kind of reaction to growing up in suburbia, where there was no new ground to discover. We used to go to Valley Forge park and try to get lost. It's pretty impossible. You head into the woodyiest thicket you can find. The overgrowth gets thicker, you head in that direction. You definitely try to head *away* from the sound of cars.

The first time that we played was in Strafford. I think that we had been at Jen Hartman's house with Rachel. It was drizzeling a bit. I think we all decided to walk through the woods on the theory that we'd get less wet. I think we may have spent hours wandering around. I think Jen was bored for most of it.

In the park, it was really hard to get lost. I know that park relatively well now though -- from all of the times that we tried. The best we ever did was out behind Devil's Road by the service station. I think that there are old quarries back there. Rachel had freaked me out about that place with vague insinuations of sinster activites. It was terrifying at night, so Gretch and I went there during the day. We tried to get lost. We got the closest that we ever had to being 'lost' [it required a lot of suspension of disbelief] -- we were behind such thick brush that, although we could see where the road should be, we couldn't actually *get* to it. I think that we had to get on our tums and bellycrawl under things. I remember seeing a place where deer definitely slept and being impressed. That was in June of my senior year.

Things were never the same after I went away to college. I guess that's just normal. Rachel visited me a couple of times, but Gretchen was never allowed. We talked. She was in the hospital a few times. I came home in May and went to the Conestoga Senior Prom becuase Gretchen and Megan begged me to. I remember, at the prom, they played NIN's "Closer" and Dr. Pollack (our principal) was very much unprepared for 500 or so students chanting "I wanna fuck you like an animal." Gretchen was so amused by that.

Honestly, it's very possible that I'm mixing up memories from my senior prom and Gretchen's. A lot of my memories from middle school and high school kind of blend together that way. For the most part, they blend into a terrifyingly bright picture of giggly all-nighters, too many pixie stix, moshpits to "Bohemian Rhapsody" at high school dances, and energy.

Gretchen and I had drifted apart in the last few years, but we always stayed in touch. My mom used to say that Gretchen and I fed off each other -- we could be so much more hyper together than we could ever have mustered apart. I feel like the part of me that's manic, spontaneous, and ready for anything is gone without her. I know it's not true, but it won't be quite the same without her.

-Christine