Keji

When they were babies they'd open their eyes knowing something new.  Like magic, they'd wake up and know how to smile, sit up, crawl, talk.  With each turn of my head they grew, and when I turned back they were someone new. 

Last week we spent camping at Kejimkujik National Park.  The park has been a part of me as long as there has been a me.  Who knows, that very well may be where I became an anything.  Every single summer of my thirty-two years I've spent time at Keji.  It's home.  There is a scar on my right foot from hitting a tree on my bike.   The tree is bigger now, it's bark chewed from handle bars who caught in the same place as mine. 

We take the kids.  Like my mother I mark the campsite number on their hands so they don't get lost.  Or if they do, an adult can send them the right way.  Then we set them free.  With a ride down the trail we blink and our baby becomes a boy, our boy a young man. 

Like a rite of passage, they grow here each summer, just like I did.  Owen even has a scar from crashing his bike.  I couldn't love it more.