Friday night through Sunday morning our quiet campsite loop
in Garner State Park was delightfully noisy as Cub Scout Pack xxx from San
Antonio, moved in for their winter Freezzery – overnight tent camping. Eighty boys and girls (yes scouts are now
co-ed) and their parents came for two nights and Saturday of activity.
We were right in the middle of the 40 campsites taken by the
Pack. Other non-scout campers had been deferred to the other camping loops
(Garner has something like 500 campsites in four different areas). But as we were already here we were left
right in the middle of the group .
The head of the Pack, Randy, stopped by to make sure we were
not being bothered, and when I told him my son had been in Scouts from age 6
(Tiger Cubs) to age 18 and was an Eagle
Scout and had brought Margo and I into scouting too, he invited us to the
Saturday evening campfire program.
Randy, a slim, tall, mid 30s friendly fellow, was the master
of ceremonies for the campfire – probably 200 folks gathered in a campsite lit
up with some strings of yellow Christmas bulbs and the fire itself.
“Congratulations to those of you who came and tented
overnight Friday,” he proclaimed. “The
park ranger says it got down to 29F last night ,and so you win the Polar Badge
for camping, an award for sleeping in a tent overnight when it goes below
freezing.”
“I want to introduce to you, a former scouter from Minnesota,
Mr. Hanson.” And so I step forward a
little into the ring and wave “Mr Hanson
told me that in Minnesota they have their winter campout and earn the Zerio
Hero badge, if it gets cold enough there.
Do you know how cold it has to be?
Yes, it has to go below zero overnight.
That makes our below 32F look like a mild night. Thank you for sharing, Mr Hanson!”
The campfire had some announcements – the last campout for
the Webelos 2 group, the Lions group welcomed as new scouts and future events
listed. Then each of the Tigers, Bears,
Wolves, Webelos 1 and 2 gave a skit. el
One, “The Viper is coming” was one done in scout camps
probably since Baden Powell started the scouting something like 115 years ago,
and done by our own boys back when Scott was in scouting in the 80s and
90s. Each boy runs out had yells something
like “danger, the Viper is coming!” until the punchiline when a boy comes out
with a pail and towel saying “I’ve come to vipe your vindows and doors.”
Cub Scouts are from something like 5-11 before they move
into Boy Scouts. Although there were
more boys than girls, many girls were there.
At that age one can’t tell them apart, other than a few of the girls
wore shoes that sparkled in the dark. “It makes much more sense for parents” a
nearby family with tents told me, “we don’t have to do two separate events for
our boy and girl.”
The pack was absolutely noisy until 9 pm and then shut
down completely until some 7 am mumbling
and bumping as they got up and headed to a home-made taco breakfast across the
road from us. The only problem was the
mass move to the bathroom this morning as I too didn’t get up until 7 am.
Scouting was something foreign to me – an activity a few of
my friends from St Croix Falls did for outdoor activities. We rural kids did 4-H and only wondered as
each summer we saw groups of boys dropped off from Hwy 87 trudging by the Farm
on Evergreen Av headed to the scout camp on Trade River and Cowan Creek out on
the Sterling Barrens – maybe a 5 mile hike.
That seemed a long distance to carry a pack and spend a week
in the mosquito, deerfly woods along the creek.
They used land owned by Northern States Power company, the same place
that was the picnic area from the 1860s on for folks living on the
barrens. It was the place where in 1939,
the Old Settler’s picnic was held, and later evolved into a primitive horse
camp before being sold by Northern States to a former Boy Scout friend, Jim
Miller, who a few years ago sold it to the state for part of the Wild and
Scenic River area.
When Scott came home from school and said he wanted to be in
Tiger Cubs at age 6 (at the time he was going to Byron elementary) we thought
OK. His friends had decided to join and
so we did too. For Tiger Cubs, a brand
new program to catch younger boys, each set o parents hosted one meeting and
had some activity for the boys who came with at least a parent or maybe
two.
Scott continued in Cub Scouts, but Margo and I pretty much
stayed out of it until at age 11, he announced he wanted to continue into Boy
Scouts. When he signed up, it came with a letter addressed to parents that with
his entrance into Troop 42 of Byron, MN, we too were expected to take a part
and told we must come to a meeting of parents to get our volunteer roles.
Chuck Ruemping and Roy Kruger were Scoutmaster and
Assistant. They told us in no uncertain
terms that a boy in Scouting in Troop 42 came with his parents, and that for
him to continue a parent must volunteer for some job with the troop. And the listed jobs like fund raising, book
keeping, camping and many more.
Having a tent and having liked camping from the days when
Mom and Dad borrowed Clarence Westlund’s tent, air mattresses and car top
carrier and headed to Yellowstone Park in June of 1958 (?). and then Margo and
me tenting around the south-west-north boundaries of the USA back in 1973, I
enjoyed tenting. And so I signed up for
a year of monthly campouts and a week of summer camp as one of the adult
drivers and campers.
After a year, learning about winter camping and realizing
that sleeping bags with pictures o giraffes and bears on it, didn’t keep one
warm in February, Scott and I had accumulated the basics of camping gear and
had learned a great deal about outdoors camping.
Scoutmaster, Chuck Ruemping, announced that spring that with
the graduation of his son from the troop to head to college, he was stepping
down into assistant scoutmaster and leaving scoutmaster role open.
Gary Egbert, Troop 42 committee chairman called me and asked
me to take on the Scoutmaster position.
I had become an assistant scoutmaster during the year, a role that gives
digntity, prestige yet very little responsibility other than sort of parenting
in the background. “Gary, I am brand new
to scouting. I still don’t know the
basics of ranks, merit badges, rules and regulations of scouting. All I have done is tagged along with the boys
on campouts and sat in on the weekly meetings.
You can find someone much better for the job, but thank you for asking.”
A few months later as the fall active season for scouting
approached (during summer the weekly meetings were discontinued and only events
like canoe trips and summer camp went on), the pressure increased as no one
stepped forward and finally in a weak moment, I said, “Well, I suppose I could
do better than no one taking the job, but I sure don’t know much about
scouting.” Roy and Chuck assured me they
would stay active for the coming year and with them as guides, I figured it
would work out.
Once I agreed to become Scoutmaster, I got signed up for
three 3-day weekends at Wood Badge training – training for scout troop
leaders. That was what I needed as it
actually taught me the principles of scouting.
You are there as an adult to advise boys, but troops are meant to be led
by the boys who learn leadership skills while they plan and carry out their own
activities. When I realized that, it
became a much more interesting and actually easier job as I was there to help
them accomplish what they wanted to do, and that failure of an activity was not
really a problem as it instead was a learning process.
Anyway, I was the official Troop 42 Scoutmaster for 3 years,
and then stepped back into assistant scoutmaster for many more years. And so when I joined the campfire ring last night,
it brought back memories of 1986 – 1999 when, if I remember the years right,
was an active scouting leader. During
that time we canoed the St Croix River, Boundary Waters and many more rivers
and lakes often; we went to the Philmont New Mexico mountain camp and
backpacked up and down the mountains, did a dozen summer camps (Margo joined us
sometimes there – although it was early days in women becoming scout leaders
too) and earned several zero hero badges, 50 milers on foot, water and bicycle.
Scott and four of his class and
age-mates from Byron all earned their Eagle Scout awards, and in general Margo
and I spent countless hours in Scouting.
And when I look back, it was not only good for me, but I like to think
that we helped steer some boys into being better adults.
Adam, Scott H, Brad, Scott A, Bob – classmates in school and
fellow Eagle Scouts