This past weekend, July 17th - 19th, was Anniversary Weekend, which means TPL Social Club just turned four. Four years since Roberto and I took this place over, four years since the inception of TPL Social Club, four years of building something with all of you. Between hosting the meeting, running the Twin Ponds Lodge Awards, and organizing and cataloging all the donations for the silent auction, in addition to doing all the regular day to day tasks it takes to run this place, I don't think we stopped moving the entire weekend. And somewhere in the middle of all that running around, exhausted as we were, I kept catching myself just full of gratitude for this whole thing.
I want to talk about support, because I think when people hear that word they immediately think dollars. And look, the financial support matters, I'm not going to pretend it doesn't. Keeping this place running and growing costs real money, and every dollar that comes in from members and from friends of this place goes right back into making it better. I'll never stop being grateful for that.
But that's only one kind of support, and honestly it's not even the kind that keeps me going day to day. What keeps me going is watching someone show up on a random Tuesday just to spend some time clearing trails. It's the member who notices someone sitting alone and pulls up a seat. It's someone sharing our posts, tagging a friend, telling their people about this place in circles we'd never reach on our own. It's the folks who talk about TPL out in the world, not because we asked them to, but because they're proud of it. None of that shows up in a fundraising total, and all of it is exactly what makes this place what it is.
There is a magic to this place, and I'm not the only one who feels it. I get asked about it all the time, what is it about this place? And I honestly don't know the answer. The best I can figure, this place runs on trust and on people choosing, over and over, to be good to each other. That's not something Roberto and I can manufacture. That's you. Four years in, I'm more convinced of that than ever.
We held our annual meeting of members this weekend. If I'm honest, that meeting stresses me out more than almost anything else we do — there's so much to cover, attention spans only last so long, and who actually wants to come to the lodge to sit and listen to a meeting? I covered what I hope were the most important things without boring everyone too much. We talked about where TPL Social Club is headed, gave the state of the club, and got everyone up to speed on a few important things for both the Social Club and the Lodge. I'll do a proper recap of everything covered in a separate post, because there's real news in there worth sitting with on its own.
And then Saturday night, we handed out the Twin Ponds Lodge Awards. If you've never been around for these, they're entirely made up categories, invented by us, that exist for exactly one reason: to stand up in front of everybody and publicly thank the members who go above and beyond. There's no prize beyond a plaque and the room clapping for you, and somehow that's always enough to get people a little choked up, myself included. Every year I'm reminded how many people in this community are quietly doing more than anyone asked them to, and the awards are just our way of making sure that doesn't go unnoticed.
Four years. I could not have guessed, back at the start, what this would grow into, or how many of you would show up and make it yours. Thank you for every form that's taken — the dollars, the hands, the shares, the conversations you have about this place when we're not even in the room. All of it built this.
