Winter Warlock delivers a broadside, after reflecting on his childhood of camping, canoeing and backpacking compared to the feeble offerings of his boy’s Cub Scout troop.
My best camping recollection from those days was always the January campout — in the days between Christmas and New Year’s our Scoutmaster would gather the unsold Christmas trees from the area and dump them off at a wooded area where we had our troop camping location. Then one weekend in January we would go out there, drag the trees for about a mile and half to the campsite, and pile them up. In teams of 3 or 4, we would strip the branches off with machetes, and use the trunks to build lean-to frames in the woods, and the branches to seal in the lean-to’s. The first time I did this, I remember we built a traditional top-only lean-to, and we woke up with our sleeping bags covered with snow. In subsequent years we learned to build full shelters, to the point where our problem was not snow, but the fact that we had actually built Indian-style sweat lodges!
February always meant Klondike derby, where we would build dog-sleds, with wheels, and use boy-power to traverse a course thru the woods. The goal was to use orienteering skills to get to the right place at the right time – at which point you should have found various skill stations where you would be tested. This was a contest between the troops of our district, and was a high point for the year.
My son had joined the local Cub Scouts a couple of years ago, and I was as excited as he was at first. It didn’t take long to see that something was different from when I was involved. First, the emphasis was not on the Scouting principles I had learned, but rather on how quickly one could get their books signed off to move onto the next rank. Outings were few and far between – admittedly these were only Cub’s, but with no associated Boy Scout troop, there also seemed to be nothing to look forward to. The drop-out rate among the boys was high, and I am still trying to convince my son to get involved again but with no success.
I’m still fairly convinced a main issue is those goofy shirts with obnoxious patches Scouts are expected to wear. As each year passes these Infantry-Circa-1919 outfits look more and more ridiculous. Heck, I felt silly in mine in 1973.
But anyway, I wonder what the Scoutmaster thinks.
I don’t really know where to begin; is Scouting still relevant?
Is education? Is mentoring? Is camping, backpacking, canoeing, rock climbing, cycling, hiking, pioneering? It is all what one chooses to make of it.
As Tom so eloquently demonstrates on this blog hiking is more than putting one foot in front of the other; there are spiritual, psycological, physiological factors at play that make hiking more than a walk in the woods.
Scouting is more than a bunch of nerdy kids wearing uniforms or overzealous parents trying to advance the interests of their children.
Observe a community or classroom anywhere in the world and you will conclude that boys instinctively form groups, adopt uniforms, establish standards, develop a credo and create initiatory challenges. While most educational systems battle these instincts scouting gives them a means of positive expression. Boys yearn to belong, to gain acceptance and approval outside the confines of their family. Their imperfect search for guidance and understanding is often met with suspicion and misapprehension. In adolescence they try on lots of attitudes and poses paradoxically seeking approval from the adult world in their very rebellion against it. It can be a tough time for everybody.
We all more or less hammered our way through adolescence in whatever way we could. Some had it easier than others. There were some people who made the process more difficult for us and some who helped. That’s part of the reason that I am a Scoutmaster – I’d like to help. I like to go camping, I like to teach, and I like to cook over a fire.
Scouting, for all the protestations otherwise, is not an ideology. It is a movement with a program that recognizes how to channel the unstable energies and excesses of adolescence. When scouting doesn’t work as it should it is usually adults who have made a real mess of things; it is almost never the fault of boys.
As with any pursuit there are various levels of commitment and interpretation. Some are shining examples of relevance – some are otherwise. Like most things Scouting is what one makes of it.
Look past the uniform (by the way everybody wears a uniform in one guise or another) and see for yourself.
Thank you Tom, and thank you Clarke –
Since posting my commentary on Scouting I have heard from many folks, and most, like Clarke, have done their best to show me that there is still a place for Scouting, if done right. My son’s pack was about two things – selling popcorn, and advancing rank. In fact, at the end of the year, he was advanced to the rank of Wolf, and he had never once done any of the real Tiger program requirements. Over the course of one school year there were three den meetings, and maybe three Pack meetings. My fear then is that this is what it had become – a badge mill, much like some of the school systems that move illiterate kids to the next grade because what else what they do with them?
I am very encouraged to see that there are people like Scoutmaster Clarke and DenLeaderBob who not only believe in this, but appear to make it happen for their troops and packs.
I have begun searching again for a Pack for my son, and am using some of the excellent guidelines DenLeaderBob suggested – I will let everyone know how it goes, but I do appreciate the insights provided by everyone. The ‘blogosphere’ is an excellent source of guidance and information – thank you all.
WinterWarlock