When she was six years old, Erin Paisan fell in love not only with Camp Mystic in the Hill Country of Texas. She specifically fell in love with the Guadalupe River, which was the life force, the energy, the joy, of Camp Mystic. Decades later she still remembers with perfect clarity the very moment when she fell in love with the river. As she told the story to the New York Times Daily host Michael Barbaro, she and her mother were picking up her brother from a nearby camp. Six-year-old Erin saw the girls of Camp Mystic playing, splashing, smiling, in the Guadalupe River. She turned to her mother and said: “I want to go to that camp.”It was far from inevitable that she would be able to go. Camp Mystic is a century-old camp. Generations of the same family would go, m’dor l’dor, from mother to daughter to granddaughter. Erin’s family was not a generational family. And they were not, in her own words, an elite family. Her parents were divorced. Her father was not in the picture. And yet somehow, she was accepted at Camp Mystic, which she joyfully attended from ages 10 to 16. She loved Camp Mystic so deeply as a child that every year she packed her trunk in December. She loves Camp Mystic so deeply as an adult that she has instructed her family, when she passes, to have her remains spread at the camp.She loved that all the girls got a fresh start. Nobody knew or cared how rich they were, how big their house was, what kind of reputation they had at school. In the regular year, Erin Paisan was the child of divorce without a dad who was seen as a geek, in her words. But not at Camp Mystic.She shared that when her husband can’t sleep, what centers him is thinking about golfing 18 holes at his favorite golf course. When Erin can’t sleep, what centers her is thinking about the river at Camp Mystic.But wait a minute. Didn’t that river at Camp Mystic flood last weekend, claiming a heartbreaking number of innocent lives and leaving a heartbreaking number of devastated families? How could Erin Paisan find calm by thinking about the river at Camp Mystic?But the problem is deeper than that. While the flooding of the river last weekend was by far the worst and most catastrophic, it has not been the only flooding. There was also flooding in 1978, when Erin herself was a camper. She remembers being moved to higher ground and going two days without food because the waters were so turbulent that counselors could not safely bring the hungry campers the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Then there was a flooding of the Guadalupe River again in 1987 which had deadly consequences.With all that loss, with all that tragedy, how could Erin Paisan still love the river? This question gets at a deeper question. What does it mean to love deeply? What does it mean to love deeply a person? A place? Our nation? Our homeland?