August 29th, the first night in our tents, I woke up at 3am with the biggest pee I’ve ever had to take in my entire life. I seriously thought I was gonna pee myself less than a day being at training camp (what a first impression). So I grabbed my phone for a light and stumbled through an unfamiliar campsite in the dark, in order to find a precious porta potty to relieve my pee.
Satisfied with my lovely pee, I walked back to my squads camp cite (SQUAD D!). As I waked back, I looked up at the starry sky and found my little dipper. I thought this group of stars WAS the real little dipper for a long time, but after tear-jerkingly discovering that it is in fact is not, I started calling it my little dipper, because its alway reminded me of my last day living in Mississippi.
It was a cloudless night in Oxford Mississippi as all of the Hampton family laid on their backs atop their backyard trampoline, relishing the last night they’d ever spend in their first home as a family. My dad pointed to a small cluster of stars in the endless starry sky.
“Thats the little dipper!” he said surely (little did he know). “We’ll still be able to see it when we move to our new home in Colorado”.
I liked that cluster of stars.
Ever since then, my little dipper always reminded me of home, and of the night I discovered that home is more than a place. But a people.
And that first night, it served as a lovely reminder.
I feel more and more at home with my fellow racers and leaders here at training camp everyday. I don’t think of it as leaving behind my old home and stepping into a new one though; more like my home is simply expanding.
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