So, you want to be a what…?

As a youth, my family moved several times. Southern California, Arizona, the SF Bay Area, Sacramento, and back. Through it all, Scouting was a presence in my young life. Cubs in Arizona, Scouts in SF and Sacramento and exploring back in Southern California.

It was a constant in my life and gave me a group of friends every place we landed. One memorable summer stands out in my mind.

In 1966, as a 14yo Eagle, I served a neighboring troop as a Junior Assistant Scoutmaster. The dads who provided the adult leadership were new to Scouting. The Scouts were young, you know, to a 14 year old soon-to-be high school sophomore. The boys were 11 and, maybe 12. To my eyes, even the 12 yos were, well, young. Instead of summer camp at an organized council camp, these dads had decided to do a week long camp in the Sierra Nevada Mountains next to a lake they knew. There, we would pitch our tents and live for a week.

These dads were more familiar with hunting camps with large cook stoves and heavy canvas tents and cots, and someone whose only job was to prepare meals and clean up after each meal. This light-weight camp left them with a few questions about survival- both theirs and their charges’.

I was more of the carry your own stuff in, build a small fire and cook what I could carry and prepare in the standard BSA messkit kind of camper. My troop camped each month at a camp site that we had to hike 2 and a half miles into. Not only did it give our Scouts their five mile hike requirement, it made us appreciate that we had to carry in everything that we might need. That included our food and cook gear.

So, bacon and eggs, hamburgers, rustic spit chickens and other rustic fare were the order of the day. If I could fit it in my pack and heft it to the campsite, I was, as they say, good to go.

The dads had brought some cook apparatus and coolers for the storing our food. They took a couple of boy ‘volunteers’ to help with meal prep. It was quite a chore to feed the 20 of us on the trip.

After a day or two of canoeing on the lake and battling the ubiquitous black flies and yellow jackets, the boys and I got down to the business of preparing camp fare. That is, my style of camp fare. Cooked over an open fire. (Yes, we were able to do that in the ’60’s). It was quite the experience showing these eager pupils how I survived and cooked. They all gave it a try, with the dads watching and learning. None starved, got a serious disease. And each one of them left that camp a few days later with a few new tricks up their sleeves.

And I think the dads changed, too. They saw that these boys were ready to take on more tasks than the dads realized they could.

It was quite the week. Blue skies. Tons of fun. A new appreciation for solitude. And a new appreciation that each of us is capable of far more than we let ourselves believe.

It is an experience I would not have had in any other venue or with any other organization. I am eternally grateful to Scouting for teaching me these subtle life lessons.

Submitted by: Howard Dutra of Roseville, CA