Arriving

Do you remember arriving at camp? 

As a camper I always arrived in a car pool, so I was with other campers for the two hour drive from Nanaimo, with a stop for burgers and shakes at Hannigans in Sidney, and there were always many campers and staff milling around by the time I arrived.  It was great to jump out of the car and look for friends,  rush to my cabin and claim the best available bunk, and then go back to watch the later arrivals for pretty girls and friends from last year, but my strongest memory is of later years, and of driving into an empty camp in my own car. 

Whether it was the original site, with its mile-long dash down Landsend Road to the turn at the caretaker’s house, past the tool shed, up the short curving road to the lower parking lot and campfire pit and the upper parking lot beside the lodge, or the CLEC Center with its comparably long dirt road access, through the gate to the circular upper parking lot, I always wanted to be the first to arrive. 

The last stretch of public road was an exit  from the outside world where I seldom fit in, to camp, where I lived,  breathed and belonged.  I knew every curve and bend, and could almost drive either road in my sleep, and at rates of speed that I now shudder to think of.  But at the camp boundary, I would slow, savouring the arriving, and the feeling of coming home.   I can still picture the Sylvan Acres sign on the little knoll in front of the tool shed, the caretakers house, and the ancient paved road leading up into the trees on the left, and the bent bar gate on the right side of Landsend Road blocking the road down to the beach, almost 25 years after the closing camp.

When I used to arrive at the empty camp a few hours early, everything belonged to me, and everyone who arrived after was coming into my camp.  I would walk over every part of the property, savouring a silence broken only by the distant waterfront waves and the chirping of birds, taking possession.  Returning home from the outside world.  My sleeping bag and pack could remain in the car.  I was moving in emotionally.

I have been to camps without this feeling of ownership; where the camp is like a summer hotel providing a camp experience or employment.  The facilities are amazing, the maintenance and chores are professionally done, and the staff are selected from large application pools each year.  Campers moving up to become staff are a rarity rather than the rule because they have to be the most qualified applicant to get the position.  Everything is fabulous, until the camp hits financial trouble or a better program opens up in the next community.  Then the campers and staff move on, because they have not invested in the camp, and the camp doesn’t belong to them. 

Imagine if that great hotel you stayed at last year on vacation had a fire and needed help to rebuild.  You might be willing to take a job rebuilding it, to earn money for the summer, but would you volunteer, and miss out on a paycheque altogether, just to get that place back on its feet?   The greatest strength of Sylvan Acres has always been the fact that it develops ownership among its campers and staff. 

I once heard that the original camp was built using funds from a number of church members who mortgaged their homes in order to raise the necessary money to buy the property and the materials needed to build the camp.  Imagine doing that today.  Imagine fifty or a hundred former Sylvan staff or campers taking out second mortgages on their homes to build a new Sylvan Acres, so that their children and grandchildren could have the same experience at camp that they did.  It boggles my mind.  Those of us who enjoyed Sylvan Acres owe a tremendous debt to those who sacrificed to build it for us.