Camden tucks away memories and mementos in a time capsule for future citizens
Camden Town Manager Audra Caler and Select Board member Alison McKellar bury the Camden 2020 Time Capsule in the Mechanic Street parking lot. (Photo courtesy Alison McKellar)
Camden Public Works get the capsule ready for burial. (Photo courtesy Alison McKellar)
The capsule leaves its longtime home at Camden Public Works headquarters for the parking lot. (Photo courtesy Alison McKellar)
Camden Town Manager Audra Caler and Select Board member Alison McKellar bury the Camden 2020 Time Capsule in the Mechanic Street parking lot. (Photo courtesy Alison McKellar)
Camden Public Works get the capsule ready for burial. (Photo courtesy Alison McKellar)
The capsule leaves its longtime home at Camden Public Works headquarters for the parking lot. (Photo courtesy Alison McKellar)
The crowning — or subterranean —glory of the recent Mechanic Street Parking lot rebuild in Camden is a large canister constructed from sewer pipe and festooned with stars. It is a time capsule filled with thoughts and photos and mementos representing Year 2020, to be opened by Camden citizens in 2040, a gift of history.
Last week, community members buried it with a modicum of ceremony, laying the four-foot-long tube horizontally against a brick building wall, and covering it with a layer of historic bricks, themselves carefully picked from the banks of Megunticook River, and representing a century past, when the riverfront in Camden was home to industry.
Originally crafted for Year 2000 but never filled and buried, the four-foot-long capsule has been artistically transformed for Time Capsule 2020, reflecting a current emphasis on recycling, in general.
The time capsule was filled this past month thanks to a community effort to collect the thoughts of those living through the strange days of 2020, when a pandemic swept across the world, and humanity confronted an unfamiliar sense of fragility.
What’s inside the capsule includes a packet contributed by Camden-Rockport Middle School students, artwork and books from local authors and artists, climate change reports written by Watershed School students, letters from local news editors, and material from students, all waiting for the moment in 2040, when Camden citizens lift the lid and discover what folks from now left for them for then.
But here is a poem that does now reside in the capsule. Written by Brook St. Laurent, it is a message for the times.
Dear Future,
How much have you changed?
What can be seen and what has been lost,
Where once stood greenery, does there now stand stone and steel? When I was young the world’s changes were few.
Why, I hope that things have improved
And not worsened.
Dear Future,
Do green leaves still cling to trees in late August?
Or do they now become crippled early, shaded a spectrum from yellow to red to brown?
Has America followed the path of equality or equity, where once the country lacked in both? Do crickets still creek and frogs sing their high-pitched tunes late at night
As a pillow cradles your head,
And with the comfort of a large blanket can you sleep soundly,
Or has the world grown too warm for such pleasures?
Does it still snow as it once did
With wondrous flurries,
Furious and unrelenting, leaving thick rolling heaps of snow;
Or perhaps heat has caused it to dissipate before escaping grey, grumpy clouds.
Do wild animals still roam this earth in the comfort of natural habitats, or
Must children and adults alike travel to zoos to witness those same creatures
Prowling tamed, behind barriers of metal bars and reinforced glass?
Perhaps I yearn for the past
Or relish the present.
And maybe, I still hope for a better future.
~ By Brook St Laurent
Brook St. Laurent, 17, is a senior at Camden Hills Regional High School at the time of this letter/poem’s creation.
She says to the future: “I hope it was enjoyable, and that you can draw meaning from my words; I don’t have much practice writing poetry. My final wish for this letter is for it to have provided you with the opportunity to truly reflect.”
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