Camping with Scouts
Overall, a fairly good weekend.
I went camping with the Cub Scouts out in BFE (also known as KY, about 45 minutes East of Florence)
It was a guy’s only thing (sorry Den Mothers). Which was just as well. Three days of heat and humidity, a stream that boys are prone to ‘fall’ into, and sweaty guys makes for some most interesting aromas as they cook/marinate overnight in tents.
The scouts hopefully learned a little about map reading and compass use. Ok, if a quarter of the scouts remember just a quarter of what was said, I’ll be happy. Some actually tried, while the others tried to set fire to each other with the magnifying glasses and everyone complained about the heat.
They spent a lot of time fishing, soccer, and trying to launch model rockets.
The first night we had ghost stories and s’mores. Nothing like feeding a lot of sugar to scouts right before messing with their minds and then getting them to sleep. It doesn’t work, and yet people keep trying it.
Most of the stories sucked. Apparently, the art of story telling is dead in the kid generation and not much better in the adult. The leaders told stories that other grownup might appreciate, but the kids barely listened to. The Packmaster and me actually managed to remember/invent stories that kept them interested. Nothing from college days and frat pranks… but rather the classics, ‘You see that mound over there, past the stream? There used to be Indians living there, but they were cursed…’
I managed to spin off a tale that idea that involved a fight scene between the Indian’s shaman and a Manitou, stirring up tons of (fireballs) i.e. sparks, a cloud of steam (from the cup of water I threw on the fire) and several mighty whacks with the Talking Stick (as the Forest helped the shaman, LOTR-style). I actually got applause, which just floored me. The idea of walking around the fire holding a big stick was Seriously Cool to them.
After that, the kids were more willing to add their own stories, mostly to get a chance to either smack the fire with the Talking Stick or to stir up great clouds of sparks and smoke. The kid’s stories were an almost random set of images from recent horror movies linked together in rather bizarre order, often missing elements like people and theme and any sort of continuity, but they liked it. And that’s all that counts.
Every father there seemed to have an area he helped in. A few with cooking, a few others with kid-control. I wound up with Fire. Splitting wood,
getting the kids to find kindling,
keeping the kids from trying to split wood,
keeping the fire going in spite of the kids best efforts to beat it to death with well-intentioned poking and heaps of dead leaves,
keeping the kids Out of the fire,
keeping the materials that are in the fire restricted to non-toxic combustibles. (No, Billy, plastic bottles don’t go in the fire, or unopened pop cans, or those model rocket engines…)
On e of the few issues I had was that both the Packmaster and the Ast. Packmaster were strongly in favor of just letting the fire burn itself out at the end of the night. ‘Its in a fire pit, and its not that big and we don’t want to have to make a new one tomorrow.’ They went as far as to take the larger pots of water and dump them so I would nt use them. I disagreed, a lot. I pretty much ignored them. And with the kids help, doused it with all the leftover, half-full water bottles making wonderful blooms of steam and sound that the kids thought, again, was Really Cool.
The only other camping issue I have with scouts is their heavy use of Styrofoam, and heavily prepackaged foods. All that plastic and garbage added op VERY quickly for just the 2 dozen people we had. No burning of paper plates (as they only use Styrofoam) Me and mine were the only ones to use washable kits. I tried talking to the others about it, but was drowned out/ignored most of the time. What happened to scouts going Green?
Yes, they cleaned up the area very, very well.
But still generated more than I thought was necessary. At least they refilled a few of the empty water bottles once (But that was so they could pour it on their buddies), but we created 150 empty plastic bottles, some of which get recycled, but most didn’t. It grates on my nerves! I try to lead by example, but I think I need to try a lot harder next time (cant lead if no one follows). I’ll bring paper plates (to burn) for everyone and large Sport-sized water coolers and waxed paper cups and as many washable ones I can find.
Oh, and a Recycle bin.
Washing the plates is too big a step. One battle at a time.