It turns out, you can go back again.
Thirty years later, I successfully and cheerfully finished a backpacking trip with a Scout troop, much like the one I remember on Isle Royale when I was thirteen.
This one was through the Porcupine Mountains in the UP of Michigan, and it was wonderful. (Just as wonderful as the scenery and the experience was the chance to do it with my 15-year-old son.)
I am sometimes a little sad about the former students who aren’t singing as adults. Did I fail them in some way? It’s my hope, after all, that every student becomes a lifelong musician in some capacity.
But now I truly know: I didn’t go for a multi-night backpacking trip for thirty years, and it all came right back. I have to trust that singing in a choir will come back to those students when the time is right, too.