I turned the corner to the entrance. It was the same road, and the same big yellow school bus that, years before, I rode as a camper and then as a camp counsellor. When making that turn, if you had been to camp before, you knew exactly when to start. You would time it so when Bus 3 rounded the corner and entered the main camp you would be in full voice; all 40 kids screaming the camp song. It became a battle between buses. Kids would talk about that day’s winner around the flagpole.

“Bus 3 was the loudest!” one young boy announced. His statement met with jeers from the Bus 6 line! “Bus 6 can’t be beat!”, they replied! The battle would go on all summer.

I closed my eyes.  In my mind I could hear the roar of the young campers as their excitement grew. This was my camp, their camp. It was a pride of exceptional levels!

I opened my eyes and looked down at the camp entrance… it was gone. The trees, grass, and wild flowers grew over the once well travelled path. I trekked down the road, hoping to see some of my past, the place where I grew up. As I turned the corner into main camp, the was nothing: The kitchen, brownie lodge, south lodge, the directors cabin, the flagpole. They were all gone. There wasn’t a trace. Like nothing ever existed. Decades of childhood memories had to be just that – Memories. I looked for anything to touch, to hold, to look at but there was nothing. It felt like I had dreamt all of those summer stories.

I walked down to the waterfront, the path so overgrown I got a little lost through the forest, the same woods that I could navigate in the pitch black without hesitation. I had to hike along the lake to find the waterfront area. I got there, but it was nothing now, just a few feet of sand. Drift wood covered the once large beach area, weeds filled in the holes.

I closed my eyes again. I could hear splashing, laughing, people swimming, I could hear my counsellor telling us it was time to canoe, to learn a new stroke, the J, the C… quiet now; gone but not forgotten. As I walked up the old service road I finally found a piece of the past. A couple of old archery stands, fallen over and covered in Moss. There was the proof. I had been here and so had thousands of other kids over those 40 or so years. I became a good person here. My mom made a choice so many years ago. Send Stuart to camp. I went. It made me in part who I am today.

I heard the words of another camp director who retired earlier this year. He said, “I wanted to retire while I still loved what I did.”

I still do love it. I was missing something though, but I regained it back at that old waterfront; the innocence, the fun, the purity of it all. I truly hope that the thousands of campers that have been part of YLCC over the last 25 years will have such strong warm memories so that when they close their eyes they can remember the good, the laughter and the friendships. These were incredible deposits into my memory bank. My youth and not my whole life is richer for it.

My old camp is gone, but it will never be forgotten. As I drove away, I thought of what it was and how it could just disappear. That was hard to understand. When I reached the top of the road I noticed an arrow nailed to a post. The arrow with the camps name on it was pointing to the direction of the camp; the camp that no longer exists. I stopped my car and got out. I looked up at the sign and jumped up to grab it. I pulled it off that pole and held it close. I needed that sign more then the place where it the camp once stood did. The last physical proof that the camp ever existed is with me. I put it up at my camp. It hangs not the wall of our dining hall. That way I can see it everyday, so I can remember why it is that I do what I do.

I still think that Bus 3 was the loudest!