I wrote this in 2001, when word reach me that Fred Dellinger, one of the Scoutmasters when I was a boy, died. His granddaughter sent me this photo, in which he looks younger than I am now. He seemed so impossibly old when I was a Scout.
On the day that Fred Dellinger, Jr. died, about 40 Cub Scouts of Pack 171 and their families woke up just west of Boulder, Colorado in the Rocky Mountains on what for many of them was their first Scout camping trip. When they came out of their tents at Camp Patiya—8,000 feet above sea level—they could see the snow-covered peaks of the Continental Divide. They could smell Ponderosa pine, and they could feel the crisp bite of fall in the air. If one could write a script for a perfect first Scout camping trip for a boy, this was it.
