Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Scout Camping at it's Finest

I remember back in the day that camping was all about sleeping on the ground in a tent, cooking beanie weenies, and stargazing at night. Entertaining each other around the campfire and incinerating marshmallow in some strange sacrificial rite.
There's nothing like a marshmallow cooked to a cinder over an open campfire.
Occasionally, if you were lucky, you would event be able to rescue one of those "golden brown puff balls," and gently place it neatly on a bed of a graham cracker with a piece of Hershey's chocolate and another graham cracker on top.
Heaven.
Camping was even fun in rain, sleet, snow, and hail.
There's is nothing like watching your tent mate's gear float out to sea when he's not looking.
Learning to find your way with a map and compass and sometimes without the compass are is a time honored tradition (in spite of GSP systems).
Now that I am much older I find that scouts are making Creme Brule french toast instead of pancakes. Black Forest cake is the new replacement for fruit cobbler.
Compasses have been replaced by Global Positioning Systems.
Signaling a friend was done by semaphore or Morse code and now days performed by cell phone or text messaging.
Cooking over the campfire is replaced by the high tech cookware like the Jet Boils, cookstoves, and God forbid the use of a cardboard box oven.
Watch a movie on a laptop or listen to the latest song on an Mp3.
We had shadow puppets and our Scoutmaster's guitar.
Night vision was improved with the use of a flashlight and now days infrared vision goggles.
35mm. cameras got replaced by digital cameras.
But with all of the changes, camping remains essentially the same.
You get what you put into the program.
So now if you will excuse me, my pack and campgear awaits.
Be good to your self and get out there and go camping.

1 comment:

  1. Are those the days when you still had to hitch up the horse to get to the campsite? LOL...good point of view, as usual, Keith

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