{"id":3967,"date":"2013-02-07T06:00:17","date_gmt":"2013-02-07T11:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allandouglas.com\/blog\/?p=3967"},"modified":"2025-04-21T01:56:41","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T05:56:41","slug":"cold-camping-an-unforgettable-scouting-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/cold-camping-an-unforgettable-scouting-experience\/","title":{"rendered":"Cold Camping \u2013 An Unforgettable Scouting Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Hello Dear Reader! February 8th<\/sup> is my birthday: Happy Birthday to me! Should you feel magnanimous enough to offer me a birthday gift, go here <\/a>and tell the world what you think of this blog by leaving a review. I\u2019d really appreciate that!<\/div>\n
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During my early teen years my father encouraged me to join the Boy Scouts of America.\u00a0 I believe he felt it would make me more receptive to the idea later on of following in his footsteps and joining the military.\u00a0 It did not – sometimes I wish it had.\u00a0 But I did learn quite a bit while in the Scouts and I met some nice people \u2013 and a few weird ones.<\/p>\n

Because we were a military family and my father\u2019s duties required us to move to a new location annually, I experienced life as a nomad.\u00a0 As such, I got to taste life as a Scout in several different troops.\u00a0 Most were large, one was very large; more like an army than a troop, and I did my exercises and assignments, I earned my badges and did my best to stay out of the way until we folded our family tent and wandered off to Dad\u2019s next assignment.\u00a0 I\u2019ve never been very outgoing; I mean what\u2019s the point, I\u2019m going to move in a few months and just have to leave any friends I make behind; right?<\/p>\n

But one troop was very different.\u00a0 Mom, and my younger bother and sister and I were deposited at Lincoln Nebraska, where Mom & Dad\u2019s family were while Dad went to do a year in Viet Nam.\u00a0 The scout troop here was not an extension of a military base, not run like an ROTC program.\u00a0 It was quite small in fact; maybe 20 guys between 12 and 18 years old.\u00a0 The Scout Master; we will call him Mr. Preston, was very wise and quite cagy.\u00a0 He taught me more about life in the year I was there than all the other troops did combined.\u00a0 Not the least of which was something he told me once: \u201cToday is the \u2018good old days\u2019 that you will look back on someday; enjoy them while you can.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Winter
Winter Tent by beauford00<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One of the merit badges I earned while with this troop was my Cold Camping badge.\u00a0 To get it we had to prepare for and survive a minimum of three full days camped out \u2013 in tents – in weather that stays below 32 degrees.<\/p>\n

One of the differences between this troop and the others was that when we went camping with Mr. Preston, we did not load our gear in a truck and board buses for the ride to the camp grounds.\u00a0 We divided up the gear among the campers, strapped it all to our back packs and hiked \u2013 with everything we needed on our backs \u2013 to the camp ground.\u00a0 If it was ten miles away, we hiked ten miles out and ten miles back.\u00a0 This time, we hiked in the snow.<\/p>\n

We brought good tents, we brought extra ground cloths, we brought heavy sleeping bags and enough of the proper clothing to \u201clayer\u201d so we could stay warm when inactive, yet be able to skinny down some while chopping wood or wrestling with bears.\u00a0 I\u2019m just kidding; we didn\u2019t chop any wood – we beat the bears so THEY chopped the wood.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We set up the tents in a ring and built a good fire pit of stones and earth in the center.\u00a0 We gathered LOTS of firewood!<\/p>\n

The first night got very cold and several of us were having trouble sleeping so we kept the designated fire tender company.\u00a0 One of these guys was Roger; a rather annoying fellow who liked to whine and complain about just about everything.\u00a0 He came out wearing practically every bit of clothing he had brought and sidled up close to the fire to warm his hands (through mittens, no less).\u00a0 Roger whined and the tender relented by stoking the fire a bit, but countered that it would be Roger who goes to cut more wood \u2013 in the dark — if we ran out before morning.<\/p>\n

After a bit Roger was feeling warmer.\u00a0 He moved back and sat on one of the log chunks placed around the fire pit for seating, stretched out his legs and propped his feet on the stones surrounding the pit.<\/p>\n

No one had much to say; it was late, most of the guys were sleeping and wouldn\u2019t appreciate a lot of conversation waking them too, so we sat quietly and contemplated the hypnotic beauty of fire, the way the blue, yellow, orange and red colors dance around with one another like some macabre ballet.<\/p>\n

After a while one of the older guys started chuckling.\u00a0 Roger had pretty well dozed off sitting on his log.\u00a0 \u201cRoger\u201d the older fella called in a heavy whisper so as not to awaken the camp, \u201cRoger, wake up!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHmph, wha\u2026 Huh?\u201d Roger snorted<\/p>\n

\u201cRoger, are your feet warm enough now?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYeaaah!\u201d smiled Roger sleepily, \u201cThey\u2019re nice and toasty now.\u00a0 Why?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause your shoes are on fire.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHuh?\u201d<\/p>\n

Sure enough, little licks of flame were climbing up the rubber soles of Rogers hiking boots.\u00a0 Roger couldn\u2019t see the soles of his own boots, and he figured we were pulling his leg anyway, but he slowly brought one foot around and crossed it across his knee to inspect the boot.\u00a0 The result of his casual, sleepy inspection was a decidedly girl-like shriek followed by a lot of beating and flapping at his boots.<\/p>\n

\u201cStand up you ninny, put your boots in the snow.\u201d<\/p>\n

You might be surprised at how difficult it s to extinguish burning rubber!\u00a0 Even stomping around in all the snow he could find took what seemed like forever to put out the flames.<\/p>\n

By now Mr. Preston and most of the others were on scene to see what all the shrieking and stomping was about.\u00a0 The rest of us night owls were laughing so hard we could barely breathe let alone talk.\u00a0\u00a0Roger slumped onto a log, shaking and pale.\u00a0 Eventually we managed to explain that Roger had given himself a hot foot, but it\u2019s out now.\u00a0 Mr. Preston inspected Roger\u2019s boots to be sure no serious damage had been done to the lad, then chastised him for falling asleep with his feet so close to the fire.\u00a0 He then ordered everyone but the current fire tender to turn in and get to sleep.<\/p>\n

Though we were ordered to lay off of teasing him about it, Roger sulked for the rest of the camping trip, mumbling under his breath things like, \u201cBrand new pair of boots.\u00a0 Dad\u2019s gonna kill me.\u00a0 Durn laughing hyenna\u2019s; I could\u2019a been killed.\u00a0 I hate camping.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fortunately Rogers boot soles had not burned through, only some of the tread melted away, so that long hike alongside the snowy road back to town was not nearly as unpleasant for him as it could have been.<\/p>\n

How about you?\u00a0 Have you a\u00a0camping tale to tell? A winter adventure?\u00a0 Feel free to share.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hello Dear Reader! February 8th is my birthday: Happy Birthday to me! Should you feel magnanimous enough to offer me a birthday gift, go here and tell the world what you think of this blog by leaving a review. I’d really appreciate that! * * * * * During my early teen years my father … Continue reading “Cold Camping \u2013 An Unforgettable Scouting Experience”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[19],"class_list":["post-3967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-adventures"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3967"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18946,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3967\/revisions\/18946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}