Large Fierce Mammal

Group shot taken at the 2010 Essex Area Spring Outdoor Adventure Camp organized and hosted by 2nd Kingsville Scouting. Photo courtesy of Marlene Ross with thanks to Eric Noeldechen.

As related in my 30 May 2010 article titled Scout Leading Revisited, I was once tapped to fill the post of Publicity Chairman for the Lunenburg District Scouting Commission. Among my duties was the writing of a weekly column that appeared in both the Lunenburg Progress Enterprise and the Bridgewater Bulletin in space generously donated as a public service by their common publisher.

My involvement with Scouting in those days overlapped the 75th anniversary of the Movement’s founding. As usual, major events in the history of an organization are often marked with a tagline that sees as much exposure as possible while festivities are being observed, and this was no different. The one chosen in 1982 was “The Spirit Lives On”, and was promptly adopted by me the following year as the byline under which my first column appeared on 23 February 1983.

The Spirit Lives On – the column – covered events involving Scouting at all levels, served as a forum for keeping Scouting groups connected and aware of what each was up to, spread the word on upcoming events requiring support by way of boots on the ground, and provided a soap box for highlighting the skills and mindset inherent in the motto – Be Prepared. While it lasted, The Spirit Lives On gathered a readership far exceeding those directly involved with Scouting. So much so that, when I finally announced I was stepping down, I found myself the target of howls of despair from a previously unsuspected horde of fans. The clamour and calls to reconsider saw little let up for the better part of a year after my farewell column went to print, and ran the gamut from letters to the Editor, to telephone calls, to irate passers by in the street.

In his story The Final Problem, it’s my understanding that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle intended to kill off Sherlock Holmes at the Reichenbach Falls because he had grown tired of the character and wanted to be rid of him. It’s also my understanding that the miraculous return of Holmes was motivated exclusively by the relentless exhortations of Conan Doyle’s Mother who had become a Holmes addict and didn’t appreciate having her supply cut off. Well, in my own small way, I felt his pain, except I didn’t give in. I hadn’t stopped writing the column because I was sick of the subject matter. It was just time.

This all comes up for a variety of reasons, mostly connected with the virtually simultaneous excavation by Mrs. LFM of portions of my personal archives that relate to those days, and regular exposure via Facebook to the exploits of Venture Scouter Eric E. Noeldechen and the gang of intrepid n’er do wells he runs with who, incidentally, are actually doing better than very well. A lot of water has gone under the bridge since 1982 and my subsequent tenure writing The Spirit Lives On, and yet I see and hear from Eric that his group is cognizant of Leadership needs and challenges that were making themselves known back then, and that I was fearful in those days might lead to Scouting becoming something far less than the Founder intended – certainly far less than I found when I first got involved. Asleep for a while, I awoke to find it better than ever. Scouter Eric Noeldechen, this is also at least partially your fault!

There’s an old joke my Mother once told me about a travelling salesman who is walking along a dusty country road on a hot summer day, peddling his wares from farm house to farm house. At his next call he finds a man out front of the house splitting wood with an axe. A woman – the farmer’s wife – sits in a rocking chair on the porch mending overalls by hand. The farmer glances at the salesman for an instant as he places another piece of wood on the chopping block but then continues with his chore.

“Morning!” says the salesman.

“Morning,” says the farmer, without missing a beat.

Tipping his hat to the lady on the porch the salesman says, “Morning Ma’am.”

The farmer’s wife smiles and nods but, like her husband, continues with to her work.

Launching into his sales pitch, the salesman reaches into his vest pocket, pulls out a business card, extends it toward the farmer, and says, “I represent the …” only to be cut off when the farmer speaks again.

“Don’t need nothin’,” says the farmer, ending the sentence with another piece of fire wood splitting under his axe.

Taken aback, the salesman stands for a moment watching the farmer while he plans a different approach, finally saying, “There’s easier ways to split wood these days.”

Still without missing a stroke, the farmer says, “We believe in doing things the hard way.”

“The hard way? What for?”

“Keeps us in mind of what’s important.”

The salesman notices that, while she doesn’t look up, the farmer’s wife smiles slightly and nods in obvious agreement.

Looking beyond the man, the salesman sees a large horse in a pasture and asks, “That your horse?”

Still working the farmer says, “Yup.”

“Doing things the hard way, I expect he pulls your plough for you.”

“Yup,” says the farmer.

Now feeling more than a little unwanted, the salesman says, “I can see y’all are awful busy, but it’s also awful hot. Can I trouble you for something cold to drink before I go?”

For the first time, the farmer stops working, looks at the salesman and yells, “Maggie! Lemonade!”

From inside the house come the words, “Right away Daddy!” spoken in a female voice that seems to the salesman to be what angels must sound like. In a moment, a vision of voluptuous beauty his wildest fantasies couldn’t match emerges from the house bearing a tray with a pitcher of lemonade and several glasses. The salesman is gobsmacked.

The goddess pauses to bestow refreshment upon her mother on the porch, bending as she pours – GODS the BENDING! Next she serves her father and, finally, the speechless salesman, before returning to the house. When the ravishing creature was out of sight, leaving the salesman and the farmer still in discussion over their lemonade, the salesman realized that the farmer had been watching him as his eyes followed the farm daughter’s retreating figure. In fact, the farmer was still looking at him.

At a loss for words, the salesman takes a nervous gulp of lemonade and blurts the first thing that comes into his head – “Your daughter is very beautiful. I expect you got her the hard way too.”

Suddenly, the salesman is aware that the farmer’s wife has stopped rocking, stopped mending, and is now looking at her husband with a slight smile on her lips.

Still looking the salesman in the eye, the farmer nods his head slightly and says, “Standin’ up in a canoe, pitch black night, rained like hell.”

Neither Eric nor I are quite like that farmer, although neither of us minds doing a hard day’s work, and while getting dirty isn’t something that concerns us, I have to admit we actually revel in it. We don’t enjoy doing things the “hard” way just for the sake of it, but we are both what I call “adventure trainers” in that we believe that training needs to be real and it needs to challenge the person. Note here that I said the person, not the person’s wallet which defines how much and what kind of gear he or she can bring to the situation to be held up as “proof” of preparedness and a crutch against reality. The adventure approach challenges the animal called Homo Sapiens to actually walk the walk, and thereby breeds real competence which in turn breeds confidence. Not false bravado. It’s not bragging if you can do it, and I can’t speak for Eric, but I personally never object to cockiness if it’s earned, deserved, and delivered with panache.

Back in the days of the fur trade and the REAL Hudson’s Bay Company, they provided this advice to employees that were being assigned to the bush – “There is little point in living rough just for the sake of living rough.” This is truth, and the military axiom that states “As ye train, so shall ye fight,” is also one of the Great Truths of the Universe. Realistic training must first and foremost truly demand that its participants find and test their state of being – say it with me now – PREPARED.

In one of my early The Spirit Lives On columns I was encouraging my readers to submit photographs for publication, and specifically asked that they lean in the direction of candid action shots. Remembering that those were the days before digital cameras turned everybody into a happy snapper – a phenomenon that is both a blessing and a curse – it comes as no surprise that this took some work. Back then people had to pay for film processing so they wanted every shot to be golden. In making my pitch, I wrote some words that will serve as the parting shot in what I have written here today:

ScOUTing: to spell the word properly, you should emphasize the OUT in it. Have you ever noticed that, when a picture of any of us shows up in the news, it usually depicts smiling Cubs, Scouts, Leaders, posing in crisp, neat uniforms, inside of a nice warm building? Is that reality? I hope not!

The Spirit of ScOUTing hates being under a roof, enclosed by walls. And heated buildings – who needs ’em? As for the neat, crisp uniforms, any Leader knows that as a purely transient phenomenon. It lasts as long as it takes to get through inspection whereupon there is an immediate metamorphosis back to the natural state that one writer for the “Canadian Leader” magazine described as looking like a “… refugee from a dude ranch who escaped by crawling through a hedge backwards.” Amen.

When we show the public what ScOUTing’s all about let’s let them see us in action. Don’t be ashamed to let them see you unkempt and dirty. I’m not advocating slovenly grooming here, but wearing dirt that was well earned in a good cause is no disgrace, and an accurate yardstick for measuring how much fun you just had is how dirty you got having it. I get a kick out of ScOUTing because I’ve got a kid inside me who’s going to resist to the end any attempts to make him grow up. He loves to cross rivers and swamps by wading hip deep through them, and spending a week in the bush marinating in a mixture of bug repellent, sweat, pollen, and trail dust. Am I abnormal? To my mind, no, but I’ll tell you one thing for sure – that kid sure isn’t.