A Scoutmaster's Blog

We are in the final week of the Christmas season. This time of year always reminds me of one evening in August of 1992 when I was with my troop on a trek at Philmont Scout Ranch. We decided to spend an evening around the campfire celebrating Christmas and singing songs. Yes, it was odd, but it was also a lot of fun. During the fun each of the twelve of us took one verse and made a new version of the Twelve Days of Christmas. I have written this to the blog during a previous year, but I thought it might be fun to look at it once again.

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The Philmont Twelve Days of Christmas.
On the twelfth day at Philmont my ranger gave to me;
twelve meal packs (Tom)
eleven Sierra cups (Tim)
ten hikers hiking (Josh)
nine bottles of iodine (Nathan)
eight backpackers packing (Ross)
seven teriyaki helpings (Corey)
six good meals (Paul)
a five mile hike (Jason)
four hot showers (Al)
three dirty socks (Peter)
two Powerbars (Greg)
and one pemmican bar. (Steve)

Have you been on a Philmont trek? What would you have added as a verse to the song?

You can read more about our evening of Christmas at Philmont at
http://www.melrosetroop68.org/High%20Adventure%20Journals/Philmont92part6.html

Here is a little puzzle for you and your Cub Scout. This Christmas tree contains the four latest Hallmark Beagle Scout Snoopy ornaments. Enlarge the picture by clicking on it, and then try to find them. One features Snoopy and his troop canoeing. Another shows them camping. One is the troop hiking. And the last has them roasting marshmallows over a campfire. Can your Cub Scout find all four of them in under thirty seconds?

It was a good weekend plan. We would arrive at the campsite Friday night, set up camp, have a relaxing evening, sit around the campfire, and go to bed. After breakfast on Saturday we would work with the younger Boy Scouts on their Tenderfoot Rank, play disc golf, try our luck fishing, go for a pontoon ride, maybe go swimming, and end the day with a campfire. We would take down camp Sunday morning after a quick breakfast and head home for Father’s Day.

The permission slips for the outing were due on Monday, the 21st. Only one Scout, out of ten Scouts, turned in his slip on schedule, but others said they planned to attend. One more turned in his fees on Tuesday, another on Thursday. Food was bought Thursday night for five boys and two adults.

I received a call Friday afternoon in inform me that one Scout was ill and would not attend the outing. I received another call after I got home from work from another boy who told me his mother was ill and that a family function had come up so he would not be going on the campout.  That left only one Scout to go camping Friday night since the other two Scouts planned to join us Saturday morning. After a few phone calls, we decided to change it to a one day event.

Saturday morning arrived. The Boy Scouts were to meet at my house at 8:30 am. Only one arrived on time, and he came alone. His brother was sick that morning and would not be attending. The last Scout arrived 20 minutes late. We were down to only two Scouts and two adults. I was not pleased, but there was nothing I could do about it.

We stuck to our Saturday plan. We worked on advancement. We played disc golf. We went for a pontoon ride around the lake. We caught a few fish. We enjoyed eating some-mores around the campfire. It was an enjoyable day for everyone involved.

Unfortunately, food for four people for four meals had been bought. We do not have any other weekend outings planned until August. The dried good will keep of course, but other foods will have to be used.

As a scoutmaster I was disappointed with the turnout, only two for ten. I realize that I have no control over sickness and family activities, but it is still frustrating. I will get over it though. Summer camp is coming in July and we have a decent group attending that.

(This is part 2 of an article about the Boy Scouts of Troop 68 and the role playing game of Dungeons and Dragons.)

To many of the Boy Scouts who have played Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) in my fictional world of Tenne the countries of Givemea, Acirema, and Minta are almost as real as Brazil, Germany, and Egypt. They know the cities of Givemea, Pleasantville, and Dogrum almost as well as Sauk Centre, St. Cloud, or Duluth. Games have been played in the forest, the desert, the plains, and the mountains.

When a new player begins playing I will usually start him out with a human character. Once he has joined in several games and learned the basics of the game he may chose to create another character of a different race. Elves and half-elves have been the most popular, but there have been dwarves, halflings, and gnomes. There have even been a couple half-orcs. My world is based on the first edition books so there are probably fewer races available to players then the current fourth edition books.

One feature of Dungeons and Dragons that I like as both a gamemaster and a scoutmaster is that the boys usually have to work together as a team to accomplish the game’s objective. They have to help each other battle the monsters. They have to brainstorm ideas to solve the riddles and traps. They need to protect each other through many situations.

Sometimes I like to add a special theme to a game to see how the boys will react in different circumstances. Some of those topics have included racism, chauvinism, homeless children, and slavery. It has been interesting to see how they handle these topics.

It has been fun to watch the development of villains in my world. Most of them only last for one game, but two villains have become legendary. Brutus, the human, and Gary, the green dragon, are villains that were designed to be in only one game but somehow became bigger, badder, and more villainous. Each became so powerful through various games that each were around for nearly a year’s worth of games before they were finally defeated.

Several of the boys have taken the time to write stories based on their character’s adventures. Those stories have been posted to a subsection of our troop’s website and to a special forum that has recently been created so the boys can post the stories themselves. The stories can be found HERE (site) or HERE (forum). Take a moment to read them. The boys have written them from their characters point of view.

I was nineteen when I was introduced to a roll playing game called Dungeons and Dragons (D&D). A couple of my high school friends and I would get together on weekend when we were home from college and play a game at Chuck’s house. He had been introduced to the game by his college friends and he was eager to introduce this world of fantasy role play to Neil and me. We had a great time hanging out with each other during those games.

After I became an adult leader of Boy Scout Troop 68 I wondered if the Scouts would be interested in playing D&D. I talked to a few of them and they thought it sounded like fun, so I learned how to be a dungeon master (game master) and began to create dungeons and a world they could explore.

I will never forget the first game I hosted. Two of the Boy Scouts played. We created their characters and began the game, which only lasted for fifteen minutes before those characters were killed by monsters. I learned a lot about being a game master during that short time. I had managed the game by the rule books. I needed to use the books more as guidelines and fit them to the gameplay. Once I began doing that the games lasted longer and they were more fun. More boys wanted to get in on the action. Nearly 100 boys have played in my world during the last thirty years.

The realm of Tenne, the world of my D&D games, has grown to have quite a history. While many games are the simple explore the dungeon variety, there have been quite a few quests and other types of adventures. Villains have come and gone, giants fought, and dragons killed. There have even been wars between countries and gods. Some of the player’s characters have become legendary. Some of the games have become a part of the lore of Tenne, passed down from one group of players to the next.

To this day I am still amazed at how the boys, and sometimes myself, can get caught up in the game. They become very attached to their characters. They can recall events from past games that I have completely forgotten. When the guys who played in the 1980’s get together, they talk about their games with such clarity that it almost seems like it was a Scout camping trip they attended. Many of them still have their character sheets just in case they get the call to play again when they come back to town.

Most of the D&D games I host begin at 6:30 in the evening and end near midnight. Of course, there have been shorter games and some that last quite long. The longest game was a twelve hour marathon. We all got so caught up in the adventure that no one was watching the time.

Sometimes I have to remind the Boy Scouts that D&D is not a part of the Scouting program, but I have been known to use the promise of a game as incentive to get the patrol or troop to earn advancement or complete a project well. There have been many times while sitting around a campfire that the boys have discussed past games and strategies for future games.

(…to be continued.)

“Good morning Vietnam!” blared through the speakers as the Boy Scouts of Troop 68 were awakened Sunday morning. As Robin Williams continued to do his “radio show” the Scouts quietly crawled out of their sleeping bags and began packing their gear for the trip home. Our weekend at Camp Stearns was nearly at an end.

Four of the troop’s seven members participated in the activity. Three of them left town Friday evening and the fourth joined them Saturday afternoon. It was a laid back, fun winter outing. We rented one of the heated buildings at camp but we still had fun activities outdoors.

It was already dark when we arrived at Camp Stearns Friday evening. The boys kept busy playing Risk and watching the 1970’s movie, The Posieden Adventure. (Yes, we do bring a television and dvd player with us on our winter outing.)

We worked on advancement Saturday morning after a breakfast of bacon and french toast. In the afternoon we played nine holes of disc golf while wearing snowshoes. It was a very warm February day, probably in the upper 30’s. I thought it was funny that we were walking through mud and water puddles while carrying snowshoes in our arms on the way to the golf course.

Most of us had never worn snowshoes. It took us a few moments to get them strapped onto our boots. We discovered that we still sank a few inches into the snow. A couple of the boys made a comment that they did not think the snowshoes helped very much. When a shoe came off the boot of one of the boys they discovered that the snowshoes helped out quite a bit.

On the way back to the building we noticed that the broomball field had no ice, but plenty of mud, so the boys decided to watch a another movie, The Mummy. This was followed by a religious service and supper.

In the evening we dressed in warm layers and walked to Camp Stearns’ well lit sledding hill. It is a large hill which provides great sledding. Unfortunately, walking back up the hill can wear out a person after several trips. The boys had fun sledding for nearly ninety minutes before they declared it was time to play another game of Risk.

That brings us back to Sunday morning. The boys barely said a word as they packed their gear. This group of 14 to 16 year olds have already been on plenty of weekend outings. They knew the routine. Within a short amount of time things were packed and we were sitting down to breakfast. We were on the way home before 9:00.

Don’t you just love it when the Scouts work well together and get things done without having to say anything to them?

There has been a message that has been going around the internet for a few years already. Last week it appears as a column in the local newspaper. You may have already seen this, but I wanted to post it anyway because I grow up during this time period and can relate to it. I have seen it titled “The Things We Survived”. I do not know who originally wrote it but I congratulate them on capturing the spirit of the times.

To all the kids (and Scouters) who survived the 1930s, ’40s, ’50s, ’60s and ’70s!!

First, we survived being born to mothers who may have smoked and/or drank while they were pregnant. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn’t get tested for diabetes. Then, after that trauma, we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs covered with bright colored lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, locks on doors or cabinets, and, when we rode our bikes, we had baseball caps, not helmets, on our heads. As infants and children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, no booster seats, no seat belts, no air bags, bald tires and sometimes no brakes. Riding in the back of a pick- up truck on a warm day was always a special treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle. We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle, and no one actually died from this. We ate cupcakes, white bread, real butter, and bacon. We drank Kool-Aid made with real white sugar. And we weren’t overweight.

Why? Because we were always outside playing, that’s why!

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day. — And, we were okay.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride them down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes.. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.

We did not have Play Stations, Nintendos and X-boxes. There were no video games, no 150 channels on cable, no video movies or DVDs, no surround-sound or CDs, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet and no chat rooms.

We had friends, and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth, and there were no lawsuits from those accidents.

We would get spankings with wooden spoons, switches, ping-pong paddles, or just a bare hand, and no one would call child services to report abuse.

We ate worms, and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever. We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls, and – although we were told it would happen – we did not put out very many eyes.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend’s house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them.

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn’t had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

These generations have produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers, and inventors ever. The past 50 to 85 years have seen an explosion of innovation and new ideas. We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all.

If you are one of those born between 1925-1970, congratulations!

So, are you a survivor?

If you are or have been a scoutmaster you may have had young boys in your troop that really look up to you. Everything you say is truth. Everything you do is amazing. You are their “Scouting Idol”. They will follow you everywhere, do whatever you tell them. As I scoutmaster I try to do my duty as well as I am able. I admit, at time it feels great to be truly awesome in the eyes of a young Boy Scout, but it is pretty tough to live up to that standard. Here are a few examples of my “awesomeness” this year as a scoutmaster, at least in the eyes of my Scouts:

– hitting the black center of the target with all five shots at the rifle range during summer camp. Most Scouts are happy to hit the center of the target with a couple shots.

– hitting the apple with an arrow at the archery range. Although, to tell the truth, three of my Boy Scouts did this last year, but none of them did this year.)

– getting a hole in one at the first green of the miniature golf course, to which one of the Scouts commented about how playing a game with me was so unfair.

– teeing off on the camp’s disc golf course and throwing the frisbee so well that it flew through a grove of trees to land only ten feet from the basket. The boys were simply amazed. (So was I, to tell the truth.)

But then, reality crashed in and the awesomeness leaves me, like later on that same miniature golf course when it took me seven putts to sink the ball on one hole. Or when I missed the target at the archery range. Those type of things bring a scoutmaster back down to earth.

A huge reality check came not long ago when I was playing disc golf with Sergio, an alumni of Troop 68. He and I were playing at a local course for the first time. The first several holes went well for me. Then we discovered water traps in the form of streams, marshes, and bogs. My game suddenly became all wet, literally. It was like the water had a strong magnetic pull on my discs.

To make a long story short, by the time we finished the eighteen holes my socks and shoes were caked with mud. I tried washing them off at the park but ended up throwing the socks in the trash. I drove home barefoot because I did not want the smelly shoes back on my feet. The worst part of the game was when I lost one of my throwing discs in a bog with shoulder high grass. After ten minutes of searching I finally gave it up for lost. It was literally like throwing ten dollars away.

On the up side, I still won the game, even if by only one throw. Even after the reality check I guess I proved I was still awesome. Don’t you agree?