A Peculiarly Dutch Summer Rite: Children Abandoned in the Night Woods
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Re: A Peculiarly Dutch Summer Rite: Children Abandoned in the Night Woods
#42“with only a primitive GPS to indicate the right direction” ... so these kids are more at risk of being kidnapped than they are of getting lost. I’ll admit that I think it’s a bit weird to make kids walk home in the night, but the author does a terrible job of making it sound suspenseful. This activity has gotten a lot safer since GPS became widespread. I kind of feel bad for anyone that went through this in the 80’s…
Kids being kidnapped is not the first thought of Dutch (and Belgium?) parents.
Example: We were at the Zoo with friends from the US and one of their small kids was out of sight for minute at the very large playground.
My first thought: Will show up, but is there any water nearby? Their thought: he's kidnapped!
(kid did show up few seconds later)
I guess you're far more likely to drown than to get kidnapped in The Netherlands... (Most children learn to swim before they are 6 years old here)
Droppings were really cool by the way and in the eighties when I grew up we only got a compass or nothing at all (no gps or cell phone). I was no boy scout, it also happens at school trips and birthdays.
Re: A Peculiarly Dutch Summer Rite: Children Abandoned in the Night Woods
#43> with only a primitive GPS to indicate the right direction. They have GPS ? That's not even navigation, it's just a hike. Why bother to blindfold them if you're then going to give them a reliable device which will tell them their location within a few meters?
I imagine "primitive" may mean a device that shows you longitude and latitude only. Or keeps a track of where you've been. Without maps, you'll still need some knowledge of how to use the thing. Yeah, not as difficult as a compass and topo map alone, but also not as easy as Google Maps.
The photo in the article appears to show a Garmin GPS60, which is a solid if dated GPS receiver that might be considered primitive to the extent that it can't show you a map of where you are.
Re: A Peculiarly Dutch Summer Rite: Children Abandoned in the Night Woods
#44“with only a primitive GPS to indicate the right direction” ... so these kids are more at risk of being kidnapped than they are of getting lost. I’ll admit that I think it’s a bit weird to make kids walk home in the night, but the author does a terrible job of making it sound suspenseful. This activity has gotten a lot safer since GPS became widespread. I kind of feel bad for anyone that went through this in the 80’s…
Kids being kidnapped is not the first thought of Dutch (and Belgium?) parents. Example: We were at the Zoo with friends from the US and one of their small kids was out of sight for minute at the very large playground. My first thought: Will show up, but is there any water nearby? Their thought: he's kidnapped! (kid did show up few seconds later) I guess you're far more likely to drown than to get kidnapped in The Net…
I just got back from visiting a friend in Amsterdam, and it was a delight to see how much everybody just assumed kids would be safe on their own.
I'm pretty sure the US had the same attitude when I was growing up; I know I spent the bulk of my summer days roving the neighborhood. It's weird to me how much that has changed. Especially given that kids can be constantly tracked and contacted via cellphones, you'd think that they'd be roving farther!
Re: A Peculiarly Dutch Summer Rite: Children Abandoned in the Night Woods
#45Grew up in the U.S. mid-atlantic, and spent many weekends camping out during my teens with the boyscouts -- at various levels of difficulty. The culmination was the annual "winter survival" campout where we were dumped miles off in the woods in the middle of the winter for 3 days with food, a sleeping bag, a box of matches and our pocket knife and had to survive for three days.
As it was often at freezing and sometimes snowing, we had to build warm shelter (fast), start a fire, dig a latrine, find water, and get a meal prepped before dark on the first day and basically survive the cold with everything we knew. Our shelter had to be weather resistant, warm and sustainable enough to make it a couple of nights.
Boys below a certain age and rank weren't allowed to participate as it was simply too dangerous. Night temperatures often went far below freezing and I remember waking up with my camp mates to see who's shelter had fallen in under the snow, and who had the most leaves stuffed into their sleeping bag for warmth -- despite that we'd all not be able to feel our feet for a few hours until we got moving. It was an amazing lesson in how the body's survival mechanisms work.
We had two adult chaperones along who "glamped" in full gear and were available for emergencies. More than once boys had to leave early due to the cold, or a shelter falling in on them or simply giving up and throwing in the towel.
This was all way before cell phones were common. At the end we'd have to break camp, clean it up as if we had never been there (leave no trace), hike and landnav our way back out of the woods with a rough map and directional reckoning using nature (no compass!) where we'd be treated to a hot meal, a hot shower (in that order) and an immediate blow-by-blow of what went right, what went wrong and awards were given out for exceptionalism in various facets of the camping arts. Most boys also earned various scouting badges and things during the event just by way of making it the entire way.
I didn't care much for the Boyscouts, but I eagerly looked forward to that activity the years that I could do it.
I'm pretty sure we were all secretly being trained for a Red Dawn scenario. The in-joke in my troop was that the Scouts were America's premier youth paramilitary organization.
Re: A Peculiarly Dutch Summer Rite: Children Abandoned in the Night Woods
#46Quite topical as Jamboree starts this week. I was flying out of Ecuador late last week and saw a bunch of excited scouts on their way to Jamboree and it made me smile. Are there any other bizarre coming-of-age scouting traditions that other countries follow? This article immediately made me think of USA’s similar tradition, the snipe hunt: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snipe_hunt
We had a tradition of sending new scouts over to other camps to ask for a "left-handed smoke shifter" to better control the smoke coming off of the camp fire. No such thing exists of course, but sending off new boys (and receiving similar new boys from other camps) was a hilarious tradition and a bit of light hazing that nobody ever broke.
One older scout even crafted a piece of equipment he instructed the newbie to take with him to ask for a replacement part.
Re: A Peculiarly Dutch Summer Rite: Children Abandoned in the Night Woods
#47U.S. scouts have a special society known as Order of the Arrow ("OA", https://www.cityonahillpress.com/2008/04/10/the-secret-behin... ). There are various ceremonies and rituals involved, but I remember the trial my father described to me -- being sent out into the woods overnight with an egg, a single match, and not much else.
It's been ~25 years since I was initiated and went through the "Ordeal".
Your father's story sounds about right. We were led through the woods (in the middle of the night, after the "tap out" ceremony, with no flashlights) all the way around to the other side of the lake at our summer camp and that's where we spent the night. I think we were given a light blanket to sleep on/with but I might be wrong. The next morning we were "picked up" and began the physical work part. The entire "Ordeal" lasted ~24 hours -- during which you were not allowed to speak.
Honestly, it's a lot scarier than it sounds. I grew up out in the country and spent a lot of free time as a kid out in the woods so that was no big deal to me (later, I participated -- as "Kichkinet" -- in other initiation ceremonies). Many of the "city kids", though, did not sleep a wink that night.
I've still got my "Brotherhood" sash somewhere around here. Around the time I received that, I "discovered girls" and my time in the Boy Scouts quickly came to an end.
Re: A Peculiarly Dutch Summer Rite: Children Abandoned in the Night Woods
#48These sound like night exercises from infantry school.
Re: A Peculiarly Dutch Summer Rite: Children Abandoned in the Night Woods
#49I too have fond memories of droppings in my boyscout times (Belgium) ... I remember a particular one where we had to find our way through a forest before midnight ... it was then followed-up by midnight (catholic) mass at an abbey close to the edge of a forest to calm us down (bummer) ... another one was a multi-day thing where we had to find our way in small groups. As described in the article there were adults obse…
I used to be the 'bad guy' kidnapping kids from my sister's girl scout troop who were camping out somewhere in the Ardennes. Early nineties, I think?
We had midnight droppings during the week-long school outings as well. It's been a long time, but I think a teacher would indeed stay back 50m to observe but not intervene.
So much fun. I don't think I ever heard anything about parents having issues with it.
Re: A Peculiarly Dutch Summer Rite: Children Abandoned in the Night Woods
#50The writer calls it peculiarly Dutch, but then describes it taking place in Belgium, as well.
You can find plenty of Dutch scouting troops doing their annual summer camp in the Belgian Ardennes.