For many of them, this is a one-time experience. It seems to happen fast. We wake up and it’s the last travel day, our six fifty-seat buses leaving early in the morning for Athens. Now, I see the campers. Some are wearing their new shirts. The phrases approach, as I maze around our departure point. “Believe the Hype,” “I Bleed Blue and White,” and “Just Keep Smiling.” I look out over the area of sky above Glyfa beach. It is brightening.

The landscape seems to turn. Things from their own experience here come to mind as they look for the last time at the Muster Station, at the wall of the Trapezeria, at the Fig Tree, and finally at the Pines. This year I don’t look through any of the bus windows with any sort of focus. I look at the faces of the staff, I scan the reactions the campers hold in their faces, then I look at the face of our driver, Kosta, before I go back to sleep until the first rest stop, just across the Patras bridge.

The new thing about the Athens day for this session is Nea Makri, and the monastery of St. Ephraim the newly Illumined. We do the normal things until the early evening, when we reach the monastery, near the port of Rafina. I marveled, several times over the course of this day, at how much room there is in Greece for the sun’s light. This is especially the case over the width of water.

I did not think much about the rest stops. Surely, I was in place, keeping tabs on the Bus Leaders, and hoping that at some point in their lives these campers and staff would recall the fixed points of iconographic beauty and physical beauty that the monastery of Osios Loukas offered them as teenagers. But mostly I thought about the new thing for this session: The monastery of St. Ephraim.

I follow Fr. Evagoras into this place that is new even for us. This is an enclosed complex, with the entrance to a church straight ahead. I look at all the doors and buildings. I walk through the courtyard, towards the chanting. I look at Father and Niko Savas as they figure out the next step. The saint, who has been part of my life in many ways, is probably inside that church, I think.

Nothing is just sudden. One day, Father was really focused on his computer screen. He kept mumbling things. “Wow,” was one of them. “Cool,” was another. Finally, he said, reading from a webpage, “Teenagers come to venerate him as the source of healing for things such as drug and alcohol addiction.” He looked up, and in his way, said, “We’re definitely going here second session.” We discussed St. Ephraim all of second session.

While we moved through second session, we also prepared the camp to experience St. Ephraim. Now we were planning how to move Ionian Village through the monastery of St. Ephraim in Nea Makri. We are pilgrims, not tourists. The Ionian Village experience is an experience of being in a different place, with faith at the forefront. We are pilgrims, not tourists. We have prepared each other for this site. Any caffeine that was ingested at Osios Loukas has nearly worn off. But this is what we do. We are pilgrims.

Konstantine Salmas is assistant director of Ionian Village.