Spiders

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

We arise early.  Why?  Because it is camping and the boys can’t sleep past 6 a.m. when they are camping and less than 14 years old.  Brother Baker has brought the fixing for a wonderful breakfast for the leaders of eggs, kobasa, and potatoes.  The youth get cold cereal, pancakes and eggs.  With due respect to the other leaders, Bro. Baker leaps to the head of the class. 

It is off to merit badge classes for the scouts.  As I mentioned before, first day not much gets done and since this is the first day for morning classes, they are quickly reminded about why they look forward to summer break and that parts of scout camp are really nothing like summer break.     

A couple of the folks get to swim, boat, hammer, dye (no mother’s don’t worry – not die), shoot, and fingerprint.  Speaking of which, our first completed merit badge takes place in Handicraft (no surprise) as a scout finishes fingerprinting (no surprise).  Robert is able to complete his dream purchase of a hatchet and proceeds to scour around for things to embed it into.  The number of sticks in camp which have been denuded and sharpened to a point is reaching the range where I would expect my Aunt (if she were here) to say we have more such sticks than Carter’s got liver pills (she used to say this when Carter was in the white house which was always very confusing to me but I later found out this had nothing to do with him).  A few scouts head out to work on their observance of nature as part of environmental science.   This involves sitting in two spots for twenty mintues 3 times.  They generally do this as a group which almost always serves to scare off the wildlife but also keeps them awake. 

Tonight dinner is the semi-traditional tin-foil dinner night.  After a little e-coli incident shut down camp they don’t send things out raw anymore.  Instead they provide some already boiled and seasoned potatoes, pre-cooked hamburgers, and some baby carrots.  Mr. D makes a fire with just 2 matches and the boys proceed to throw their meals into the fire and pull them out just about every 30 seconds to see if they are done and then put them back in with incrementally less protective foil until they either give up and eat it cold or accumulate so much ash inside the meal that they achieve that smoky flavor they apparently love.  I pull out the secret weapon (bbq sauce – thanks Doug Nichols!) and eat mine.  We did have apple pie for dessert.  That was delicious! 

Sam joins us and is warmly greeted by the youth.  Just after dinner one of our members takes off to attend the wilderness survival camp out.  For the survival camp you can only take what you can fit in your pockets – no sleeping bag, etc.  He isn’t taking the merit badge, he just thought it would be fun.  When he meets up with the group going the other scouts tell him – dude, if you aren’t doing the merit badge, you DON’T want to go.  He goes anyway.

Flag retreat includes a pitch for world scout jamboree in Japan next year.  Just under six thousand including airfare and travel around Japan.  First payments due in July.  And our FHE speaker gets another chance to address us – think he takes it?  Do scouts whittle sticks to points?  He encourages our youth to be like the staff.  I appreciate the sentiment but hold out hope for something more lucrative for my kids such that they can take better care of me in my old age (which the scouts generally already think I’ve reached.) Not that I don’t appreciate many of the wonderful staff who put up with a lot…

As dusk settles into night we once again are asked to “come see” various lethal spiders in tents.  No scouts were harmed in the process; I can’t say the same about our 8 legged co-habitors. Around 10 pm the rains came, which are actually a very effective means of driving the animals into their abodes.