Twenty years ago, I got my Eagle Scout 🦅

It’s hard to imagine that it was 20 years ago this autumn that I finished up my Eagle Project and all the required merit badges. Time sure goes by quickly.

I was involved with scouts from the era of Cub Scouts through Boy Scouts, I got my Arrow of Light badge as a Cub Scout, Eagle Scout badge and even did the ordeal to get my Order of the Arrow. I served as Assistant Scoutmaster for a while and a Merit Badge counselor for five different merit badges.

So I had quite a bit of experience with Boy Scouts.

I often think of Boy Scouts of teaching me more what not to do in the woods then what to do. There was many weekends days of hauling heavy aluminum pots in the woods and boiling pasta over smokey fires we dug out of the snow bank. Those constantly finckey propane lanterns and stoves, the charred bread and cakes we made in the reflector ovens.

When I started camping on my own, I went with all liquid fuel stoves, electric lights from the inverter on my truck rather than use a camp lantern. I camped under a truck cap, it was years before I bought a tent. Bungee cords rather than tyranny of tying ropes. Even the meals were different than camping in Scouts – much more fresh foods from the cooler. I never stayed in state campgrounds. Maybe it was my rebellious twenties more than anything else.

I probably can’t think of the skills and values that I learned in scouts but there was many, and when my rebellious twenties faded into my 30s, I started to tie more taught line hitches and ultimately bought more propane applications and started cooking more in the camp oven, which is a variation on the reflector oven. I even tent camped from time to time.

Scouts taught me to value the woods, to pick a good campsite, pack appropriately and lightly when backpacking and day hiking. To find firewood and build a fire in the most adverse conditions. To not fear the wilderness but be prepared for adverse conditions. To navigate the woods and not become more than temporarily disoriented. To respect but enjoy the wilderness.