Why Blog Now?

                My five  year old son came to me this week with a very serious look on his young face.  I could tell something was on his mind, but was not prepared for what he told me.   “Mommy says that it’s not good to be sneaky” he explained, “but I always get sneaky ideas at night.”

                Now, those you you who have only known me in my married state will be wondering where this could come from.  Those with a more distant knowledge are laughing.   The footprints I thought I had covered up have been discovered.  The sins of the father... well, you get the idea. 

They say that sea turtles, born after their mother has buried them in the sand and left them to their own devices, instinctively  head for the water, and once there, they carry on their lives just as their parents did, without ever having met them.  But how?  How could my son be so much like a part of me he had never seen?  What did my son need from me now?

The solution to my problem?  My son needs camp.  More precisely, he needs Sylvan Acres.  I need Wayne to tell him “Don’t let me catch you sneaking around at night.”  I need Joanne to take him out in a canoe and point out seals swimming past the camp, to validate his importance simply by being willing to spend time with him.  I need someone who carries Carol’s compassion in their memory to tell him that he is special, to encourage him when he feels unloved, and to lead him through evening devotions in the cabin before he falls asleep.  I want Elizabeth to give his sister the bathing suit talk.   I want Adam and Jordan to lead him in singing, and Chris to teach him how to row a speedboat safely back to the dock.  I want him to have memories of summer days and nights as special as the ones I have.  I want him to know that Wayne was right.  It’s not wrong to be sneaky at night.  It’s just wrong to let yourself be caught.

                My Sylvan Acres started on Landsend Road in Sidney, moved to Lake Cowichan waterfront, and then to the hill above the lake.  The places I spent my summers as a child, youth and adult are no longer there, but the time I spent is still in my heart, and in my mind.  The friends I grew up with are no longer close by, and some are gone from this life, but my memory of them, and the words they spoke and their friendships are inside me. 

To me, Sylvan was more than a camp; it was a life, with all of the good and bad experiences that any life must contain.  The fears, the happiness, the peace, the loss, and most of all the laughter, were all there, and cannot be taken away by the sale of a piece of land.  All that we worked for, all that we built, all that we lived, exists still in those we shared it with, and for that I am most thankful. 

This blog will be my chance to share those memories and that life with those who were not able to be there, and to rekindle the memories of those who were there with me.  I hope that you will share with me the Sylvan Acres that was, and strengthen the desire to build the Sylvan Acres that must be there for your children when they need it most.  I want my son to have the pleasure of hunting your children through the darkness fifteen years from now, to make being out at night a challenge and a memory worth having.