Combo-Plate

This is a collection of some snippets from camp - not really long enough to stand on their own:

1. The Buckskin Chief: Each of the three camps has a director that runs the entire camp. These directors report to the reservation director. Unlike the Load, who served as Camp Director at Summit Base for an entire summer and somehow was appointed as interim director of Camp Waubeeka, despite having never worked there, I never served as a Camp Director. I did work for one of the best though. He was a Navy Reserve Chief Petty Officer, and a school teacher. He knew how to get things done and ran a tight ship! Because people are spread out over the property, a number of important people are issued 2-way radios. For many people, this is their first time using a radio and there is little to no formal training on how to communicate. However, over time, a sort of semi official policy was developed. If you wanted to get a particular person on the line, the procedure was to say something similar to "Breaker for [whomever you are calling]", the respondent would then say something along the line of "send it" or "go". However, the Chief was a Navy man and knew how to speak on the radio. So he bestowed a moniker on himself, namely the "Buckskin Chief". Additionally, any time you would call him, his response was always "Chief-Aye". He made it very clear that the Chief was related to his Navy service, not any kind of Native American reference. The problem was that his wife, who presumably knew better than most about his Navy Service, decided to call herself the "Buckskin Squaw." This did little to dispel the idea that the Chief moniker was not related to Native Americans. At least nobody referred to themselves as the Redskins!

2. Phil: Phil was the Buckskin Camp Director after the Chief. Like the Chief, he had military experience, but I am not sure how much and what branch. A couple of things about Phil, he was massively overweight and liked to ramble on the radio. The problem was, that he would often get out of breath if he was talking on the radio and walking. I think part of it had to do with enjoying the sound of his own voice so much, but there was always a fear that he was going to pass out during the transmission. Phil also loved using military terminology. I remember when he was discussing two vehicles that were going to take a bunch of junior staff down to Lake George. It was a very simple plan, both vehicles would meet at a certain location and time in order to ensure all staff were transported both ways. To hear Phil describe it, you would think he was planning something on the scale of D-Day. There was talk of "rendevous", "resupplying", vehicles "maneuvering" and so on. Finally, Phil had a single laser like focus that the one thing that we needed to do better as a Scout Camp was to ensure that all vehicles would drive with their headlights on at all times. He talked about this often, as if this would cure all ills. Even better, he had devised a form of sign language to communicate. It was rather simple, if you noticed a vehicle that did not have its headlights on you were to dramatically point to the driver with your index finger and then immediately maneuver your arm so that you were then pointing at your own eyes with your index finger and middle finger. Despite that headlights were to be turned on at all times, Phil developed a similar form of pantomine to indicate that someone's lights were on and you wanted them turned off. This involved again pointing at the driver, then pointing at your eyes, but this time you would finish it all off with a flourish of drawing your index finger across your neck, simulating decapitation. It was hard to judge the success of the program. On one hand, people were driving with their headlights on a lot more often. However, people were still doing crazy things with vehicles, taking them places they shouldn't be and driving too fast, albeit with headlights blasting!

3. Staff Hunt: At Summit Base, once the day was done, you were pretty much free to do whatever you wanted as there were no campers that stayed overnight. Buckskin was a different story, they were a 24 hour operation and most evenings there was an activity planned for the campers. The big one was something called the staff hunt. Really it was just hide and seek on a grand scale, but staff hunt sounded better. The idea is that staff would be given 30-45 minutes to go hide and each one would be given a slip with a number of points on it. The campers would then see how many they could find and whichever troop got the most points was the defacto winner. The other bonus was that if you found the staff member you escorted them to the waterfront and pushed them off the dock. What was interesting is the various levels of enthusiasm and effort that the staff put in. Some were pretty apathetic and would hide in plain sight. Others would simply cheat and go hide in their tents which were off limits. Some people made a pretty good faith effort to hide, but others went totally overboard. Like lying prone in a swamp. Covered with mud up to the eyeballs and getting stung mercilessly by mosquitos and breathing through an improvises snorkel. Others would rig a series of ropes and slings to hide far up in a tree. Those who were good at hiding had to stay in these positions for a couple of hours, until the hunt was over. It also encouraged the Scouts to take some pretty big risks looking for these staff members, climbing dangerously high in trees or traipsing through swamps. Amazingly, no-one got hurt.

4. Gordy: Gordy was an adult leader who accompanied his troop each summer to camp. Unlike most adult leaders, Gordy did not have a child in the scouting program. Gordy was pretty similar to Lenny in "Of Mice and Men" a gentle giant who likely had some learning issues. He was one of the nicest guys you will ever meet though. His build was similar to Andre the Giant, incredibly strong. One feat of strength I witnessed, one I only heard about second hand. We were constantly pulling pranks at camp. While we styled them as pranks, some would definitely not fly in the real world. One such prank involved me, Gordy, perhaps one other person, and a VW Golf hatchback. There was a small grassy area where cars were parked and I managed to convince Gordy that it would be funny to turn one of the directors cars 90 degrees so it was sandwiched in perpendicular between two vehicles and would be very difficult to extricate. A VW Golf is a small car, but it is probably close to 2000 pounds. Nevertheless, we gave it a try. Amazingly, between the three of us, we were able to lift it and turn it. I am fully convinced that Gordy shouldered 90% of the load. Weebs relayed the other story to me. He was leading a trek and Gordy was on the trek with him. The group was paddling from Long Lake to Tupper, profiled in an earlier post. This trek features a 1.25 miles carry around some rapids on the Raquette River. This carry was chronicled here. So according to the Weebs, there was the usual chaos of the carry with scouts fighting each other over the way to properly carry a canoe and lots of yelling and canoes crashing into the ground. Gordy tried something that had never even occured to me. He decided that he was going to carry two canoes at the same time. Moreover, he figured he would just carry them like a pair of suitcases. Apparently he pulled it off for a few hundred yards. I wish I could have seen it, a guy carrying 70 pounds in each hand, walking along uneven ground. This was far more impressive that carrying a 70 pound dumbbell in each hand, these canoes are 17 feet long and do not have a handle or any place that is convenient for carrying. It would have taken a significant toll on the forearms just to keep them from spinning and bumbing into each other as you tried to carry it. When Weebs told me about it, I had to try it for myself. I didn't try it on a trek, just back at camp. I couldn't even get them off the ground for a second. But then again, I wasn't Gordy.