I pulled into Easton Mountain on a Monday afternoon not entirely sure what to expect. I knew the campus. I knew the schedule. I had been here for this same event last year, but knowing a place and belonging to it are different things, and last year it had taken me a couple days to feel the difference.
This year it took about three minutes.
I dropped my bag in my room. I was sharing a room with John, who I met last year at Easton. We had kept a real connection with through the year visiting from NY to NVC a couple times and him coming to NY once. Once we got settled we went out to the deck to see if anyone we knew had arrived yet. Kevin was already there. I met Kevin last year as well and had some good chats, spent some time together, dressed in drag one night with John and the three of us attended the authors night in costume. After the week ended we said our goodbyes and went back to our separate lives. I hadn’t kept in touch with Kevin over the year. Not for any reason, just that life gets busy. This year, when he saw me he opened his arms and pulled me in like I’d never left. We picked up right where we left off last year, as early friends.
Within an hour of arriving I wasn’t a returning guest finding my footing. I was already home.
That’s the thing about Easton that I didn’t fully understand until I came back a second time. The community doesn’t reset. It holds. Something gets built between people in a week on this mountain that doesn’t dissolve when everyone goes back to their regular lives. It just waits. And when you return it’s waiting for you here exactly where you left off, sometimes deeper than where it left off.
Thomas is another good example of that. I knew him from last year, remembered sitting at authors night listening to him read his beautifulpoetry, thinking this man has something worth knowing. We were friendly but we didn;t get the chance to really build a connection. This year something shifted. We found time to really talk. He shared things he was carrying. I shared things I was carrying. Two men who barely knew each other the last time we saw each other, now becoming, in the span of a quiet conversation, genuine confidants. That doesn’t happen in ordinary life. Not that fast. Not that honestly.
By the end of the week I had deepened acquaintances from last year into friendships, and made new ones I didn’t see coming. I sat in workshops that challenged me, laughed with people I now call friends. I danced on Saturday night after the closing circle with John and DJ Sean playing gay anthems. I walked the labyrinth. I shared meals with guys who asked real questions and waited for real answers.
And somewhere in the middle of all of it I noticed something I want to try to name accurately because I think it is important. I felt like I mattered.
I felt like I mattered
Not in a general, affirmational way. I mean that I felt it specifically. That the people around me wanted me here. That my joy added something to the room. That my anxieties were safe to say out loud. That my heartache didn’t make anyone uncomfortable. That all ogf me, the caring, the worrying, the laughing, the struggling, was not just tolerated but genuinely welcomed. These men became my extended family for a week, and like the best families they didn’t ask me to edit myself before walking in the door.
As gay men, we spend a lot of our lives editing. We learn early which parts of ourselves are acceptable in which rooms. We get good at it. So good that sometimes we forget we’re doing it.
Easton Mountain is one of the few places I’ve ever been where I stopped. I didn’t have to edit a thing about myself and no one was expecting me to because they were also not editing anything about themselves. We all know how speacial and fleeting that feeling is. I have found a place where I can reach that feeling whenever I am there.
I’ll be back next year for a third year in a row. And I already know that I’ll belong and I’ll be welcomed and that I’ll feel it on day one.
