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.

Making the Cover of Backpacker Magazine

Our troop is headed for Paria Canyon on Spring Break in March, assuming we can snag some permits in the next 10 days.  The cover of the January 2010 issue of Backpacker magazine has a photo of Buckskin Canyon, which terminates into Paria about eight miles down.  We always spend our first night up in Buckskin on a high bank.

Seeing a place I've been on the cover of a magazine always brings out two opposing thoughts.  First, I'm thrilled to see some place I've been in a magazine.  Right after that thought, however, I always think "Dang, now everyone will want to go there."

I've never through-hiked Buckskin, which is supposed to be the longest slot canyon in the world.  When we go to that area, in late March, it is very cold in there, and the pools of waist-deep water make it tough.  We usually hike up it from Paria for a couple of miles, however, and it is always awe-inspiring. 

The kinds of Scout parents we want

Our troop is approaching maximum size, and we are facing an onslaught of potential new members.  While we decide just how large we can reasonably go, we kicked around the idea of what kind of parents would jump a Cub Scout to the front of the line.  Here we go, starting at the top:

• An ER Physician. Having that kind of medical expertise on wilderness trips and summer camp would be primo.  We once had a pediatrician father in the troop, and he was wonderful.  I once saw him remove cactus spines from a Scout with duct tape, and hiked in Alaska with him as well.  

Keep myself physically strong

One of my personal saints, H. L. Mencken, said it best:  "There is always a well-known solution to every human problem--neat, plausible, and wrong."

Exhibit A in simple solutions are the "no tolerance" policies in schools regarding pocketknives.  It happens every year--a Scout goes on a camping trip, leaves a knife in his pocket or day pack, goes to school, the knife gets found, and he gets suspended as if he were a member of the Crips or Bloods.  In cases such as that, no tolerance equals no sense. 

Exhibit B is the new Scouting policy for overweight leaders and boys.  The "Annual Health and Medical Record" sounds innocent enough--a new medical form--but the devil is in the details.  Here's a paragraph from Scouting magazine (my emphasis added):  "The Annual Health and Medical Record, which takes effect in January 2010, restricts participation in high-adventure activities based on standardized height/weight ratios. For wilderness outings where health care is 30 minutes or more away, Scouts deemed too overweight won’t be allowed to participate."

This is, so to speak, huge.  And it is wrong.

Eulogy for a Scoutmaster

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. 

Old School Summer Camp

I had a chance in September to visit one of the older summer camps in America.  Adirondack Camp is located in upstate New York on a peninsula extending into Lake George, which is parallel to the southern end of Lake Champlain.  The Camp began as a boys camp in 1904--six years before Scouting was established in America--but now welcomes boys and girls ages 7-16.  The camp is quite rustic; take a look at the lodging below.