51–60 of 121 posts
He thought it was great, but Palo Alto being Palo Alto that was the only week that particular camp operated. Sadly.
Grew 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 sometim…
US scouts are always shepherded around by adults. In Germany you see them moving around autonomously.
Grew 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 sometim…
... That's not terribly inaccurate, actually. Baden-Powell was influenced by his experiences in the Siege of Mafeking, where boys of that age were organized in effectively a military unit, albeit a noncombat unit that was operating closer to a civil defense role. There's a heavy military context to scouting, and it shouldn't be surprising that a lot of scouts go on to join the military or that a lot of military brats end up joining scouting.
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…
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…
Are Euro wild boars not dangerous? So much for that Black Forest Ham premium! Boars definitely attack people in the US, and the wounds can be bad to the lower body and gut. Lots of blood loss isn't uncommon.
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
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…
This is actually an extremely safe thing, nothing much can go wrong. Some supporting facts:
Our entire country (The Netherlands) measures roughly 161mi by 93mi and is densely populated. There's always a dwelling nearby. Consequently it's impossible to get really lost.
We also have no natural dangers to speak of, no deadly animals, no dangerous terrain, no raging rivers (we don't have mountains).
At our yearly JOTA-JOTI event we up the ante by going 'hunting' for the kids by cars or bike so they try to not get spotted by the leaders until they reach the main camp site.
For Dutch scouts here: http://www.hikeandseek.nl/ is super awesome (but typically fully booked).
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.
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 mornin…
Yes, you are not allowed to speak during the labor part. I remember this vividly also as we were assembling large teepees as our given task (~20ft in height) and we were very briefly given a rare exception of being allowed to speak if there was some imminent danger of the teepee falling over and injuring someone.
What they fed me in terms of food was honestly pretty gross. IIRC I didn’t get any lunch and only got basically a nasty green hard boiled egg plus a tiny mandarin orange for breakfast. by the time you’re allowed to talk again when the ordeal is over there is a feast shortly thereafter though.
The “brotherhood” second stage ordeal is actually a whole lot easier, it basically involves a night ceremony with a lot of rituals and a handwritten letter to your local “lodge” if I am remembering things correctly.