Camping Merit Badge - Front Country vs. Back Country Camping

[blw2]

My Godfather was a Eagle Scout (1936) and as far as I know spent most of his adult life camping every weekend from late March through late October (Wisconsin). He spent 4 years of WWII in a Japanese prison camp having been a Marine captured at Wake Island. Then he spent a few years in the US Army in Korea. He was a fuel oil distributor spending most of his time outdoors year around. When he wasn't working he was riding his bike around town. I really think he hated to be indoors. Before becoming an Eagle he was a "city-boy". Maybe he was a city-boy, but he surely wasn't a Parlor Eagle in any sense of the word. I like to think of myself as an avid outdoorsman, but compared to him, I'm really just a Parlor Scout myself.

 

People have lost all concept of what adventure really is all about. Any scout who plots how to fulfill a camping MB while sitting on the sofa talking on the phone, really doesn't get it.

 

Stosh

Stosh

Is your Godfather still with us?

If he is, please encourage him to record his story. Help him write a book.

Interview him on video.

something.... please.

 

If he's not with you any longer, did he leave any memoirs? Write a book about him.

 

Stories like his are becoming more rare by the day.

[Rick_in_CA]

The simple reality is that going out and camping is harder to do today than it was 50 years ago. A local scouter talked about when he was a boy scout in Sacramento, the boys would just grab their gear and hike down to a clearing next to the river. They would bring their fishing gear, and 22 rifles and camp there for a week. Every day or so the scout master or a local cop would drop by to see how they were doing. Other than that they were on their own. They did this off and on most of the summer. If any group of scouts tried that today, a bunch of people would probably end up in jail. When I was a boy scout, I remember being allowed to camp in places that normally didn't allow it because we were the Boy Scouts. I remember some troops and patrols doing overnights in local city parks (almost impossible today).

 

Today, scouts can't go camping without a train of adults providing transportation and supervision. For many urban and suburban scouts, the nearest camping locations are an hour away by car. How many troops have a camp location they can reach with public transportation of some kind? Or simply hike too? Very few. How many camp grounds no longer allow open fires of any kind? Or don't allow wood gathering (usually for very good reasons)? The real "costs" (in effort, time, equipment and money) to go camping is higher than it used to be. So we shouldn't be surprised that there is less of it than in the "good old days".

 

None of which means that troops shouldn't try to have fun and challenging camping programs!

[NCMountaineer]

Perhaps camping is harder now in some parts of the county; but in this particular case it appears to be a situation of doing the bare minimum. For a lot of kids theses aren't isolated cases but a pattern. They only end up hurting themselves and often times look back later in life and wish they had applied themselves more. I bet in this particular case there will be lots of future opportunities to do these requirements as part of a backpacking trip.

[Stosh]

I remember 50 years ago as well, and there is a point to be made for BSA today and what it was 50 years ago. There were plenty of times my buddies in the patrol and I would go camping without adults around. Some of the best outings we had. We had a few farmers in the area that were scouts or former scouts and had plenty of "woods" around to find a spot to camp. I wonder if they would even allow the boys to dig latrines anymore. We had to for ALL scout activities except summer camp. We never camped in established campgrounds. Not that they were full, because I remember a 4th of July weekend in a state park in Wisconsin where my folks had a 8mm film projector and the ranger just had a camera, but no way to see his home movies. We threw up a screen and put on his home movies for him and his family on Friday night and Saturday morning there was a pickup load of firewood dumped next to our site. By the way, the four families in our group were the only ones in the park that weekend. My godfather was one of them, he loved to build 8' council bonfires! The ranger came back with family on Saturday and we all had sodas and popcorn and watched the movies again but this time around a huge bonfire.

 

Stuff like that remains in the realm of memories because one isn't going to find many pulling that off today. I do know, however, remote areas where one can hike back in so far that no one can find you and you can sill primitive camp within 20 miles of my house. Just gotta look around and ask a few of the guys "sneaking out in the woods" to camp.

 

I haven' primitive camped since... well last summer with the Mrs. 2 day kayak paddle with overnight along the shore.

 

Stosh

[Kudu]

Did you guys all flunk Wood Badge?

 

Delway's Scout understands the true meaning of "inclusiveness." Ask any Den Leader with a plush toy critter!

 

The whole point of Camping Merit Badge requirement 9b is to get parlor boys to Eagle without ever walking into the woods with packs on their backs.

 

If a Scout hates camping (as it is defined by Baden-Powell), then he can ride his bike around a parking lot for four hours, rappel at the mall, or float downstream for four hours. That's what camping is!

 

Watch any Wood Badger explain our Congressional Charter and you will see that Delway's Scout understands "innovation:" The ability to break the spirit of the law by playing word games with the letter of the law (which is only six words to define the backpack option). I know one adult Eagle who has his Scouts walk around a family campground with empty packs and a pedometer to log the four mile "backpack" for option #2. Another adult Eagle Camping Merit Badge counselor has Scouts walk with empty packs around the block at Scout meetings to accomplish the same end.

 

Now really, why is it that Camping Merit Badge is the only badge with an option for Scouts who hate the subject of the badge?

 

In a perfect world, every indoor Merit Badge would have the same option we give boys who hate camping:

 

"Explain to your merit badge counselor the concepts of simple interest and compound interest, OR float downstream eating cupcakes."

 

Sentinel: There is a leadership term for doing Scouting "the right way."

 

It's called "adding to the requirements."

[Stosh]

My Godfather was a Eagle Scout (1936) and as far as I know spent most of his adult life camping every weekend from late March through late October (Wisconsin). He spent 4 years of WWII in a Japanese prison camp having been a Marine captured at Wake Island. Then he spent a few years in the US Army in Korea. He was a fuel oil distributor spending most of his time outdoors year around. When he wasn't working he was riding his bike around town. I really think he hated to be indoors. Before becoming an Eagle he was a "city-boy". Maybe he was a city-boy, but he surely wasn't a Parlor Eagle in any sense of the word. I like to think of myself as an avid outdoorsman, but compared to him, I'm really just a Parlor Scout myself.

 

People have lost all concept of what adventure really is all about. Any scout who plots how to fulfill a camping MB while sitting on the sofa talking on the phone, really doesn't get it.

 

Stosh

He's no longer with us and after many years of campfires I have a ton of great stories, but alas, not many on scouting. I did not know about his Eagle until I read it in is obituary. He had a son (only child) that was a scout, but was bitten by a mosquito at WINTER camp and died of encephalitis his first year of scouting. I'm sure that's why the scout stories were never shared. I still remember him being buried in his scout uniform. I'm sure there are a ton of elderly gentlemen that if one were to ask around would have similar stories if asked.

 

I remember my geeky high school principle that I always gave trouble to. I didn't realize that his experience of parachuting into Normandy on D-Day with the 101st Airborne could have given me a ton more trouble than what I was giving him. Again, I didn't know about that until I read his obituary many years later. My uncle served on a PT boat that was captained by John F. Kennedy, again another story I read about in his obit. A mild mannered man that owns an unfinished furniture store here in town suddenly showed up on the History Channel on a show about covert operations in Laos during the Vietnam War. He was a captain of a squad that probably has stories to tell out the kazoo! I sure wish I had asked!!!!! Maybe one of my scouts would do an Eagle project on it.

 

The treasury of knowledge this world loses every single day is rather unfortunate.

 

Stosh

[Eagle92]

My Godfather was a Eagle Scout (1936) and as far as I know spent most of his adult life camping every weekend from late March through late October (Wisconsin). He spent 4 years of WWII in a Japanese prison camp having been a Marine captured at Wake Island. Then he spent a few years in the US Army in Korea. He was a fuel oil distributor spending most of his time outdoors year around. When he wasn't working he was riding his bike around town. I really think he hated to be indoors. Before becoming an Eagle he was a "city-boy". Maybe he was a city-boy, but he surely wasn't a Parlor Eagle in any sense of the word. I like to think of myself as an avid outdoorsman, but compared to him, I'm really just a Parlor Scout myself.

 

People have lost all concept of what adventure really is all about. Any scout who plots how to fulfill a camping MB while sitting on the sofa talking on the phone, really doesn't get it.

 

Stosh

Stosh,

 

One of the Eagles I know did a collection of oral histories for his service project. He got the info on how to do it from the state archives, got tape recorders and tape donated, and sent folks folks out to interview vets. The transcribed it and turned it over tot he state archives.

 

Unfortunately 1 vet I know refuses to talk about anything he did in Vietnam until it becomes declassified, by which time he'll be dead. I had the opportunity to read his full biography that the wife gave me when I nominated him for the Silver Beaver, and I was like "DDDDAAAAAANNNNGGGGG!"

 

I take that back, one thing he did say was that the VC and Vietnamese Scouting officials in his area had an unofficial truce not to attack scouts on camp outs, which the VC honored

.

[Stosh]

My Godfather was a Eagle Scout (1936) and as far as I know spent most of his adult life camping every weekend from late March through late October (Wisconsin). He spent 4 years of WWII in a Japanese prison camp having been a Marine captured at Wake Island. Then he spent a few years in the US Army in Korea. He was a fuel oil distributor spending most of his time outdoors year around. When he wasn't working he was riding his bike around town. I really think he hated to be indoors. Before becoming an Eagle he was a "city-boy". Maybe he was a city-boy, but he surely wasn't a Parlor Eagle in any sense of the word. I like to think of myself as an avid outdoorsman, but compared to him, I'm really just a Parlor Scout myself.

 

People have lost all concept of what adventure really is all about. Any scout who plots how to fulfill a camping MB while sitting on the sofa talking on the phone, really doesn't get it.

 

Stosh

I know a very elderly gentleman who served and when I asked him about his "exploits" he just shrugged and smile and said, "Not everyone can be a hero, I mended shoes." I told him, those soldiers who had their boots mended wouldn't agree with you." He said, "Maybe not." and smiled.

 

Stosh

[Kudu]

The simple reality is that going out and camping is harder to do today than it was 50 years ago.

Baloney.

 

50 years ago (1964), few if any Boy Scouts had ever heard of a backpack waist belt, which changed Delway's back country travel as radically as the invention of the stirrup changed the history of warfare.

 

If anything, the worldwide test of a First Class Scout, a 14 mile overnight backpack Journey with a heavy pack hanging directly off our shoulders, was harder 50 years ago.

 

But the whole point of backpacking is that a Boy Scout's direct experience of nature can be the same now as it was 50 years ago.

 

Note that the "simple reality" apology for Parlor Scouting is a description of front country Patrol camping, not Delway's back country backpacking. As such:

 

50 years ago we did not take rifles backpacking. Those of us with Svea 123 stoves did not bother with campfires. Or hatchets. Or gathering firewood. No law then or now prohibits unsupervised teenagers from backpacking in national forests (or most state wilderness areas). Such venues are free, not "more expensive." State-of-the-art backpacks from the 70s & 80s can be purchased now for $5. We never stayed in one place for a week in the back country, and no adult ever checked up on us. We did not use public transportation for backpacking: When I got my driver's license we drove 100 miles to the Adirondacks on school vacations (oh, DuctTape, I lost your Email). I know "21st century" Scouts who drive 200 miles after I get them addicted to backpacking.

 

So why can't "21st century trained" Boy Scout leaders tell the difference between a backpacking trip and a Patrol outing?

 

48 years ago the father of modern Wood Badge, John Larson, won the battle to replace outdoor leadership with indoor leadership:

 

http://www.whitestag.org/history/history.html#1965

 

So now Wood Badge is designed for Den Mothers, the "Patrol Method" presentation of Scoutmaster training replaces Patrol Leaders with adult-led EDGE theory (nobody noticed), and we pay our Chief Scout Executive a million dollars a year to bash camping.

 

But Delway the good news: If you stick to your guns (and also give your most mature Scouts some freedom on two-deep back country trips), your Troop's backpack program can become popular beyond your wildest dreams.

 

Check out our January backpack "Cumberland Island National Seashore: Day One" (and Day Two)

 

https://plus.google.com/100437668559826261011/posts

[Sentinel947]

Did you guys all flunk Wood Badge?

 

Delway's Scout understands the true meaning of "inclusiveness." Ask any Den Leader with a plush toy critter!

 

The whole point of Camping Merit Badge requirement 9b is to get parlor boys to Eagle without ever walking into the woods with packs on their backs.

 

If a Scout hates camping (as it is defined by Baden-Powell), then he can ride his bike around a parking lot for four hours, rappel at the mall, or float downstream for four hours. That's what camping is!

 

Watch any Wood Badger explain our Congressional Charter and you will see that Delway's Scout understands "innovation:" The ability to break the spirit of the law by playing word games with the letter of the law (which is only six words to define the backpack option). I know one adult Eagle who has his Scouts walk around a family campground with empty packs and a pedometer to log the four mile "backpack" for option #2. Another adult Eagle Camping Merit Badge counselor has Scouts walk with empty packs around the block at Scout meetings to accomplish the same end.

 

Now really, why is it that Camping Merit Badge is the only badge with an option for Scouts who hate the subject of the badge?

 

In a perfect world, every indoor Merit Badge would have the same option we give boys who hate camping:

 

"Explain to your merit badge counselor the concepts of simple interest and compound interest, OR float downstream eating cupcakes."

 

The requirements aren't the entire program. One can not add to the requirements but still help Scouts have real outdoor adventures without it being Webelos Three.

[qwazse]

My Godfather was a Eagle Scout (1936) and as far as I know spent most of his adult life camping every weekend from late March through late October (Wisconsin). He spent 4 years of WWII in a Japanese prison camp having been a Marine captured at Wake Island. Then he spent a few years in the US Army in Korea. He was a fuel oil distributor spending most of his time outdoors year around. When he wasn't working he was riding his bike around town. I really think he hated to be indoors. Before becoming an Eagle he was a "city-boy". Maybe he was a city-boy, but he surely wasn't a Parlor Eagle in any sense of the word. I like to think of myself as an avid outdoorsman, but compared to him, I'm really just a Parlor Scout myself.

 

People have lost all concept of what adventure really is all about. Any scout who plots how to fulfill a camping MB while sitting on the sofa talking on the phone, really doesn't get it.

 

Stosh

A former Vietnamese scout told me that their 1st class journey was an all-night solo "camp out" on a stump in the jungle. Unknown to the scout, they arranged for the dad to keep an eye on things just a few feet away (close enough to intimidate big cats, but far enough to be completely unnoticed until morning.)

[qwazse]

It's not stretching the requirements to request that - because of your extreme claustrophobia - counseling sessions be held as far away from within four walls as possible. The boy could earn Disability Awareness in the process of getting Camping.

[Kudu]

Did you guys all flunk Wood Badge?

 

Delway's Scout understands the true meaning of "inclusiveness." Ask any Den Leader with a plush toy critter!

 

The whole point of Camping Merit Badge requirement 9b is to get parlor boys to Eagle without ever walking into the woods with packs on their backs.

 

If a Scout hates camping (as it is defined by Baden-Powell), then he can ride his bike around a parking lot for four hours, rappel at the mall, or float downstream for four hours. That's what camping is!

 

Watch any Wood Badger explain our Congressional Charter and you will see that Delway's Scout understands "innovation:" The ability to break the spirit of the law by playing word games with the letter of the law (which is only six words to define the backpack option). I know one adult Eagle who has his Scouts walk around a family campground with empty packs and a pedometer to log the four mile "backpack" for option #2. Another adult Eagle Camping Merit Badge counselor has Scouts walk with empty packs around the block at Scout meetings to accomplish the same end.

 

Now really, why is it that Camping Merit Badge is the only badge with an option for Scouts who hate the subject of the badge?

 

In a perfect world, every indoor Merit Badge would have the same option we give boys who hate camping:

 

"Explain to your merit badge counselor the concepts of simple interest and compound interest, OR float downstream eating cupcakes."

 

The requirements are precisely the program:

 

"The real Patrol Leader will...find that the requirements are not something separate from Scouting. On the contrary, Scouting is the Requirements" (Green Bar Bill).

 

http://inquiry.net/patrol/index.htm

[Kudu]

It's not stretching the requirements to request that - because of your extreme claustrophobia - counseling sessions be held as far away from within four walls as possible. The boy could earn Disability Awareness in the process of getting Camping.

That's how I did it.

 

"Arrange to be ... four miles into the middle of nowhere. Scout and patrol have to hike there to present his gear and cook lunch for you. Tell him to bring his blue card..."

[scoutergipper]

Did you guys all flunk Wood Badge?

 

Delway's Scout understands the true meaning of "inclusiveness." Ask any Den Leader with a plush toy critter!

 

The whole point of Camping Merit Badge requirement 9b is to get parlor boys to Eagle without ever walking into the woods with packs on their backs.

 

If a Scout hates camping (as it is defined by Baden-Powell), then he can ride his bike around a parking lot for four hours, rappel at the mall, or float downstream for four hours. That's what camping is!

 

Watch any Wood Badger explain our Congressional Charter and you will see that Delway's Scout understands "innovation:" The ability to break the spirit of the law by playing word games with the letter of the law (which is only six words to define the backpack option). I know one adult Eagle who has his Scouts walk around a family campground with empty packs and a pedometer to log the four mile "backpack" for option #2. Another adult Eagle Camping Merit Badge counselor has Scouts walk with empty packs around the block at Scout meetings to accomplish the same end.

 

Now really, why is it that Camping Merit Badge is the only badge with an option for Scouts who hate the subject of the badge?

 

In a perfect world, every indoor Merit Badge would have the same option we give boys who hate camping:

 

"Explain to your merit badge counselor the concepts of simple interest and compound interest, OR float downstream eating cupcakes."

 

That's an interesting take. So once a boy has completed all the requirements, he can't do "Scouting" anymore. We should come up with some other name, I guess.