Going where the helicopters cannot follow

It must have been a slow news week or else Time, Inc. has laid off the people in charge of ferreting out real issues.  The November 30th Time Magazine cover trumpets the dangers of “over parenting,” aka “helicopter parenting.”

This anxious parenting bit is nothing new.  When our sons were in the Montessori School in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the mid-80s, I thought we were in the epicenter of that kind of behavior—“Yes, I know that those are the school rules, but this is our child . . . .”

We see over-parenting in Scouting, but in this organization we have one big advantage over schools and other places who suffer from the parental obsessives:  we take the Scouts where their helicopters cannot follow:  out in the wilderness.

Paria Canyon Paroxysms: BLM website is the pits

Our troop plans to hike Paria Canyon during Spring Break in March.  Paria is a wonderful slot canyon that begins in Utah and comes out at Lees Ferry along the Colorado River in Arizona.  Hikers slosh along--often in the river--for 38 miles.  At its narrowest, the canyon is about 15 feet wide with sandstone walls that go up hundreds of feet.  A wonderful place, but not one to be caught in during a summertime flash flood.  That's one reason we go during Spring Break.