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A Peculiarly Dutch Summer Rite: Children Abandoned in the Night Woods

nytimes.com

11–20 of 121 posts

Re: A Peculiarly Dutch Summer Rite: Children Abandoned in the Night Woods

#11
post #3

I 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…

Just to confirm, this still happened in the early 2000s for sure. It didn't stay in the eighties :)

Re: A Peculiarly Dutch Summer Rite: Children Abandoned in the Night Woods

#12
post #9

Yes, I have fond memories of these. These were often seen as the highlight of a week of camping. In my youth we did not have mobile phones, even not everybody had a phone at home. Because the Netherlands is so densely populated, it is very difficult to find a place where there are no lights visible. I remember that usually, we knew within 10 minutes where we were and in which direction we had to walk. Never met any w…

I also remember Austerlitz. Camped there in the woods two or three times. One time in the winter. I also remember that we biked there from our home town, a little more than 20 miles. This was when I was 14-17 years old.

Re: A Peculiarly Dutch Summer Rite: Children Abandoned in the Night Woods

#13
Quite 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

Re: A Peculiarly Dutch Summer Rite: Children Abandoned in the Night Woods

#14
This gives me a little hope, knowing that some societies are still raising their children rationally. While we never had anything formal like this, when I was younger we were allowed to hike into the woods with a chance of getting lost. Of course, even when I was a kid, some parents of children I went to school with were far too protective. -- Late 60s, early 70s

Re: A Peculiarly Dutch Summer Rite: Children Abandoned in the Night Woods

#15
post #3

I 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…

Also from Belgium, but a whole lot younger. This still happens.

Re: A Peculiarly Dutch Summer Rite: Children Abandoned in the Night Woods

#16
post #6

The Dutch woods are not very big and not very far from the cities. You could get lost but you can always hear the highways and there is cell coverage everywhere. And the most scary thing you could come across is a wild boar, there are no dangerous animals. There were 2 or 3 wolf sightings the past 2 years, but they stay away from noise. Anyway I think Dutch kids are balsy enough to scare any wolf away. (Or a human pr…

Of course in a proper dropping you're not allowed to have a cell phone. There's got to be some challenge in it.

Re: A Peculiarly Dutch Summer Rite: Children Abandoned in the Night Woods

#17
A little bit tangential to this: bushwalking at night can be a very beautiful experience. I remember doing a ~15km section of the Abel Tasman track in New Zealand during the night so as to catch the early morning low tide for a tidal river crossing. It was glorious being on the track (and briefly losing it at one point), tramping under the night sky.

Re: A Peculiarly Dutch Summer Rite: Children Abandoned in the Night Woods

#18
U.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.

Re: A Peculiarly Dutch Summer Rite: Children Abandoned in the Night Woods

#19
post #3

I 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…

"Night Infiltration" is one of the coolest activities I've had the pleasure of doing and I'm in my 30s now. I'm not sure how many troops do it. In my area, only our troop did it on our monthly camp out and I'm fairly certain our troop invented it, but that could be false.

https://boyscouttrail.com/content/game/night_infiltration-42...

The above blurb does it poor justice though. Imagine a boy-led troop with around 60 scouts on a camp out and nearly zero adult involvement outside of transportation. We had a leadership group of boys in highschool (usually 16 & 17 year olds) and they performed the roll of sentries (~6 boys) and they had flashlights. These represented sniper rifles. Each sentry got one shot (straight line...they can't wave it around) before having to loudly count to 10 representing reload time. I'm from the American south where hunting is big, so it wasn't uncommon for full on camoflauge from nearly all participants...even those rediculous suits you see snipers wear in movies. There is one hidden individual making a quite noise every 20 seconds or so (you'd have to be pretty close to hear it). There are two teams and each scout (X or O team) tries to sneak their paper message (X or O on it) to the hidden individual if they can find them. At the end of the game, the team with the most messages wins.

This is always at night and very dark in pretty thick woods. Running is absolutely forbidden as so many scouts have twisted ankles or even broken collar bones by running at night. If you get "shot" by a sentry, you have to go back to base to get another message (like respawning) and I think there is a wait period. If someone in your group finds the hidden agent, they'll naturally want to get the word out to all their fellow group without letting the other team notice, but it can sometimes be difficult. A fascinating and super fun game. In all the years I played as a non-sentry, I only found the hidden agent on my own a few times and with help a few more times. There were games when I never even found him and had to ask afterwards and was blown away by the location sometimes (inside a thorn thicket wth). It was always an amazing experience though. We played on a very large area too depending on forest density. The thicker the foliage, the smaller the need for additional area. Keep in mind that this is a pretty dangerous game from an injury frequency perspective. I'd also recommend the buddy system is used to prevent someone from getting injured and lost (think unconscious). I'd also only recommend playing in areas with no predatory animals (I wouldn't play this in New Mexico where bears and cougars exist).

Re: A Peculiarly Dutch Summer Rite: Children Abandoned in the Night Woods

#20
My scouting group was fond of "dot-arrow" droppings. We were dropped blindfolded in the woods and only given a piece of paper with arrow symbols on it indicating the turns to take on the route. Of course we missed turns and got lost, but we had a radio for calling in for hints. In bigger forests, we would get survey maps of the area. Then it was a matter of figuring out where you are on the map at the drop point.

I have fond memories of those nights.

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