Scouting

I was recently called as the Young Men's President in my ward. Since then it seems like all my thoughts revolve around how to help the young men accomplish their scouting goals. There is a lot of work to be done here. I don't have any scouting records to know where each boy is at. The only way to get that now is to ask each boy to tell me.

I've remembered my scouting adventures since becoming YM President. I remember going to an organized scout camp in Utah, where I'm from. I don't recall the name now. We had a large scout troop. There was probably 20-25 active boys so we always had a great time at these things.

On this particular scout camp there had arisen a dispute between some in my tent with those in another tent. I don't even remember what the disput was. But I do remember we were in our tent when suddenly someone let our poles down. Quinn Capson, who was always larger than the rest of us, stood up when suddenly something came flying through the air and hit him in the head. We didn't know what it was then but later discovered it was large branch with a huge knot in the middle of it. I guess he was lucky he wasn't knocked out. He ended up jumping out of the tent, chased the person who threw it, and started beating him up. It was an all out brawl in our camp. What's odd is I don't remember there being any leaders around. I'm sure there were.

Well, eventually the fight was broken up, kids went to the tents to cool down. Quinn was furious and said he wanted to go home. We had to convince him to stay. Later that night our leaders did have us all apologize to each other. I remember it being a rather spiritual experience and something that eventually drew us all closer together.

I also remember an experience with dirty socks. A young scout named Jon Van Horn was tent buddies with me and Quinn and Micah Christensen. Jon dressed in full scout uniform every day. He was the most consistent scout out of all of us. There was one problem. He only brought one pair of scout socks. This was a 5 day scout camp. Well, after about 3 days the socks smelled so bad that it made our whole tent smell. It became so bad we wanted to banish him from the tent. Once the leaders smelled it they forced him to wash his socks and wear something else. That was a relief.

And the final memory at this scout camp was earning the canoe merit badge. Quinn and I decided to do this together. He had some experience with canoing where I didn't. One of the tasks was to paddle a canoe in a triangle using just the J stroke out of one side of the canoe. This wasn't a small triangle either. At least it seemed a long distance then. Well Quinn finished relatively quickly compared to me. It took me about 3 times as long as Quinn. I struggled with that J stroke but I eventually passed and earned the canoe merit badge.

However, if you were to ask my wife how my canoing skills are now she would probably roll her eyes, and say "Oh my gosh, let me tell you about the time he and I shared a kayak." Then she would probaby relate the time we were in Mexico paddling through a small creek to get to a large cenote. We were one of the first to leave and the last to arrive. :-) Ah, it was a joyous time. She was pretty upset with me by the time we finished and since then she's never wanted to share a kayak with me.