Everyone remembers their first time

A lot of things happened in 1995. The criminal trial of O.J. Simpson, Thunder Gulch wins the Kentucky Derby and Jerry Garcia died. Perhaps not as well known, 1995 is the year I started guiding trips at Camp.

In 1993 and 1994, I worked in the Ecology department. This was a lofty name for what was really a small wooden building and a pit where we kept frogs, snakes and turtles. We offered classes in Environmental Science, reptile study, forestry, insect study etc. The idea is that over the week we could get scouts to a certain level of proficiency and the scout would earn a merit badge. Merit badges were necessary to advance to the next rank.

For the first half of 1995, I was the assistant Scout Master for what was called the “provisional troop” or “provos”. The provos were a group of scouts that came up to camp without their troops. You would have 10-20 scouts from all different locations and there were two “adult” supervisors. I was one of them. The big perk to the job was that you really had nothing to do while the scouts were at different areas of the camp during the day. The downside was that you never really got a night off, because you had to be in the camp.

½ way through the summer, one of the regular guides got sick. They asked me if I was willing to fill in for the rest of the summer. Typically, a new guide goes to a week long course to get some training. I didn’t have a week. I had one day. Fortunately, the load was an experienced voyageur and gave me compressed voyageur training. This training consisted of climbing the aforementioned Mt Stevens, setting up a tent, and learning to use the backpacking stoves. We made dehydrated eggs for breakfast. They were every bit as delicious as you would expect dehydrated eggs to be. We did not eat much. That was it. I was trained.

Unfortunately, I did not fully grasp that I was there to be a friendly guide. Rather, I viewed my role as someone who had to prove himself. So, I got my first group and immediately upon meeting them advised them of all the rules I had. This did not go over well. I made things more difficult than needed. For instance, we were leaving at 6 am on Monday, but I made everyone report at some ridiculous hour like 4:30. Not surprisingly, the dining hall was not ready for us because they expected us to arrive at 6 am. Unfortunately the poor decisions continued from there.

Instead of letting the scouts choose who they would partner up with in a canoe, I decided. A canoe is not particularly big. Learning to canoe is not particularly easy. You can always identify new paddlers by the S-shapes that they weave as they make their way up the lake. Even if you have no idea what you are doing, it is always safe to blame the other paddler. This experience is made even more unpleasant if you are forced to paddle with someone rather than picking your partner. The cherry on top was my view that instead of adopting the reasonable pace that these trips were designed for, we would simply go full out until we reached the campsite. This meant that we typically reached the campsite around 11 am or noon (sometimes earlier since I insisted that we wake up very early each morning). Once at the campsite, there was not much to do. Understandably, I had the beginnings of a mutiny on my hands. Being the hardheaded stubborn guy I was, my solution was to push even harder.

The middle of most of our canoe trips involves a short canoe paddle to a nearby mountain. The bulk of the day is spent climbing the mountain and then returning to camp. It is supposed to be a welcome break because there is no need to break camp that morning or set up a new camp that evening. The paddling is a little bit easier because you are not carrying any gear.

The paddle to the mountain was approximately 60-90 minutes. A group of scouts asked if they could put 4 scouts in one canoe. There was nothing wrong with doing this, they were light and without the gear the canoe could handle it. They would also be faster with 4 people paddling and it would be more fun. Not surprisingly, I said no. They had the last word though. On the way back from the mountain, I noticed that one canoe was sitting very low in the water and that it was attached to a canoe with 4 people in it. These scouts had intentionally swamped one of the canoes, i.e. filled it with water. Even full of water, the Grumman canoe will not sink, another great design feature. It is, however, less of a canoe at this point and more of an anchor. Even with 4 scouts in one canoe, they were hopelessly slower because they were trying to tow the swamped canoe. We emptied the swamped canoe and I let them tow it back empty. That was the happiest I had seen them.

Fortunately, I mellowed after that trip. I realized that I was there mostly as a teacher and as a safety net. All these scouts needed was someone to answer questions from time to time and point them in the right direction. I wish I could have realized this before I took out my first trek though. Still, I wish I could have heard the scouts’ discussion immediately prior to intentionally swamping the canoe.