A Scout’s Campfire is the blog of a 40-something former Eagle Scout who is now an assistant Scoutmaster in North Carolina. (Link via Scoutmaster). Yesterday the Campfire covered the ever-popular How Safe Is Backwoods Water? debate, and today’s entry links to something called WikiWalki, which sounds like yet another attempt to get hikers to Google-map their travels and post them online (When Cyberhobo perfects this technology — and discovers how to motivate hikers to actually use it — Two-Heel Drive readers will be among first to know, I promise.) There’s only 14 trails in all the United States at this moment, but hey, Wikipedia started out small, too. Can’t be too long before the “edit this entry” wars ensue over Appalachian Trail spurs.

Just to get back to Scouting for a moment: despite the uniforms which convert every good American boy into an immediate social outcast (I always felt ridiculous in mine), and despite the needless fray over gay Scouts, and despite the inherent social conformity of Scouting, and despite all the other perfectly legitimate criticisms, Scouting has one big plus that balances out the minuses (I’m all about the Karma after watching “My Name Is Earl”): It gets kids outdoors. I never got past Tenderfoot, never cared about being an Eagle Scout. Yet I accepted every Scouting annoyance because it was an organization of grown-ups who would take kids like me on hikes and camp-outs. Long as that remains the case, I’ll be able to co-exist with Scouting.

Scouting isn’t perfect, but let’s face it: in a perfect world there’d be nothing to complain about, and what fun would that be?