Be, be, be prepared; the motto of the boy scouts

In the last couple of week, I had two big events with my 11 year old scouts.  Ont Friday and Saturday June 14-15, we were at Adventure Park, which is a scout camp just for 11 year olds.  It is at the end of the road on the North Fork of Hobble Creek, east of Provo Peak and takes most of an hour to get there, mostly because the last 2 miles are a terrible road.  (They say 2 miles but it seemed like 10, all twists, turns, rocks, bumps, and dust.  The camp is in a pretty setting however, rather primitive and wooded.  There is just a dribble of water in the Creek at that point.

I went with some trepidation, concerned that it had been a few years since I had camped with scouts, and that maybe my old body couldn’t put up with sleeping in the wilds and chasing 11 year olds for 2 days.  But I could, and it was still fun to be in camp with boys.  The comaraderie, the joking, watching the guys learn and explore still had some magic.

It was sort of a “de je vous” experience.  I remembered how similar I felt after my first heart attack, and that was 29 years ago.  I was insecure about what my body could tolerate for a time, and steered away from strenuous outdoor stuff.  After a couple of years someone pushed me (maybe Larry Kn) to go on a backpacking trip to the Uinta Mountains with the older boys in the ward.  Was Matthew in that group?  Anyway, I resolve to not do anything too strenuous, like climb a mountain.  I knew I could carry the pack OK, but also that they were planning to climb a peak to flash signals to other scouts on other mountaintops.  The day came and we were camped right below a mountain called Cleveland Peak, which is on the ridge above Moon Lake and Brown Duck basin.  The kids and leaders stated the climb.  It was not technical, just taking strong legs and strong lungs.  Boyd W was there as a member of the Bishopric, about 10 years older that I, and we resolved to stay together in camp.  However, as we saw people start to climb, we decided to follow them slowly to a point where they disappeared over a ridge.  After a few minutes we made it comfortably to the ridge and we saw the climbers ahead of us hiking toward the peak.  My body and heart and lungs were doing just fine, so I kept going clear to the top with the strongest of the group.  It was now obvious that there were no limits physically on what I could do, so at that hour I lost any fears and insecurities about pushing my body.  It was a wonderful revelation that allowed me to have a number of other outdoor experiences, without anxiety, over the next number of years.

I thought about my Cleveland Peak epiphany as I was finding last week that my 76 year old body could still enjoy a good camp with the scouts.

Mt. Nebo

Also, on this very morning, Randy R (my new assistant) and I did a 5 mile hike with our little patrol.  We did the Spanish Fork River Trail and River Bottoms Road loop.  We had Josh with us and also Sterling M and Ethan C.  We stopped every half mile or so and shot a direction with a compass.  We made it a contest, where each boy would shoot the direction and tell us their reading, then Randy would shoot the same object and the kid the closest to Randy’s reading would win.  At first the variation was quite wide like 20-30 degrees, but by the time we approached our car, they were coming within 2-3 degrees of each other and Randy.  For the last shot, which was the peak of Mt. Nebo, two of the kids had readings of 200 degrees and Joshua called it 199 degrees.  Randy, the politician that he is, announced that the official direction was 199.5, and everyone was happy.  This is the best that any group I have had of 11 year olds, in mastering use of a compass.

Wendy fixed a waffle breakfast for all of us before we went at 7:30 am.  It took us over three hours to hike the five miles.  The boys found lots of things to explore along the way and I was glad for the not so fast pace.  I came home and took a long nap, and now am not the worse for wear for my latest scouting adventure.