The Entrepreneur

Matches can be subdivided into two broad categories. So called "safety matches" require that the match head be drawn along a special coating of red phosphorus. The coating of red phosphorus is found either on the edge of the matchbox or matchbook. These matches are referred to as safety matches because you need the reactive ingredients found on both the match head and the special coating in order to get ignition. "Strike anywhere" matches can be lit on any surface rough enough to provide the needed friction. Here, the match head contains white phosphorus on the match head. These matches are more dangerous because they could conceivably light accidentally, simply by rubbing the head of one match against the head of another. However, they are very convenient for camping because all you need is the match.

Our camp ran a small trading post. Really it was just a small store. The only trading that went on was trading dollars for goods worth substantially less than those dollars. Most of the business revolved around selling candy, soda and ice cream. However, the store stocked other items. One of these items was matches, both safety and strike anywhere. It quickly became apparent to the business manager that the strike anywhere matches were a run-away hit. Understandably, creating fire is awesome. It is even more awesome when you are a teenage boy. Strike Anywhere matches only added to the entire alchemy aspect of it all. No longer did you need a special striking plate. The world was your striking plate. Scouts absolutely loved striking matches off of rocks, off of other matches, off of other scouts etc. The problem was that a box of strike anywhere matches contained 250 matches and only cost a couple of bucks. 250 matches could last at least a couple of days, perhaps the week. Nevertheless, the business manager quickly saw that he would sell out of these matches as soon as he got another order in. So he came up with a devious plan.

Unlike most of us at camp, the business manager, Ed, was actually very qualified to do the job he was assigned. I believe he was a full time employee of the boy scouts so he had a vested interest in turning as big of a profit as possible from the trading post. He quickly realized that at couple of bucks per box of matches he was selling each match for about a penny. Now, one idea would be to increase the price of the box from $2 to $20. But very few scouts would be willing to pay $20 for a box of matches, at least knowingly. So, the business manager started selling the matches individually, for ten cents a piece. Amazingly, he still couldn't keep up with demand. I think at one point, he was selling them for a quarter a piece. This was equivalent to selling the 2$ box of 250 matches for more than $60! These matches quickly became known as Ed's gold tipped matches. He had the market cornered, the nearest place that sold these strike anywhere matches was all the way around the lake, at least 10 miles.

For whatever reason, it only lasted one summer though. Perhaps the leadership thought it wasn't right to make so much money off of the scouts. Perhaps they realized the absurdity of equipping hundreds of teenage boys with firestarters in a wooded area.

Thunderbolt Mountain is there, No there

At the end of camp one year, KW, BK, BC and I decided to go hike out to Pharoah Mountain and do some of the 5.10 rock climbs out there. Pharoah Mountain was a nice mountain in the Pharoah Lake Wilderness behind camp. There was an old fire road out of camp that eventually turned into a trail and then into a bushwhack that would bring you to Spring Hill ponds. From there an actual trail led to Pharoah Lake which you could then circumnavigate to get to the base of the mountain. A hike up the mountain would take you to the top and then with the help of the guide book we could hopefully locate the 5.10 climbs off the top. There were easier ways to get there, but we wanted to go this one. Okay, let's back up a bit. Nobody in recent memory had hiked out the trail to Spring Hill Ponds. Toph and the Voyageur and Ken Smith had made the hike once but had turned back as far as I recall. And though we had been rock climbing, none of us had ever climbed on Pharoah before, and though we were all in good shape, only KW was what you would call a 5.10 climber. The rest of us could fall up 5.10s on top rope pretty well. In preparation for our hike we first sought out Ranger Bob to get some info on the best route to take to Spring Hill Ponds. We figured a bee line from the end of the fire road would be good but wanted to take advantage of his local knowledge. He kept pointing to the map and mentioned Thunderbolt mountain and how we wanted to keep it on our right. That was strange because Thunderbolt was out by Grizzle Ocean way past Pharoah and nowhere near the trail between Springhill Ponds and Pharoah or the bushwhack from camp to Springhill ponds. Except it was. After about 15 min. of confusion and argument with Bob and spinning the map around and upside down it became clear that Bob was referencing a nameless (according to the USGS) hill to the Northeast of camp. "Thunderbolt" was a local name applied to this hill and not one listed on any map. So there was that. It was late August and about 95 degrees with NY humidity. This humidity did not often reach all the way to the Adirondacks, but this week it had. One of our last stops on the way out was the dining hall. The cook staff was still at camp cleaning things up and we were looking to scrounge whatever we could. We were pretty lucky in that we were given some nice steaks that were leftover from the end of Summer banquet as well as a bunch of fresh veggies and other food. So we loaded up our packs, added climbing ropes and harnesses and top rope gear and shoes and anything else we felt we needed and headed out on a Monday afternoon. It was hot and muggy. And the mosquitoes were everywhere. And we weren't sure where we were going, though we were all in good shape and I (at least) could read a map and use a compass to orient through trail less land. After about 3 hours during which we felt like we were getting more and more lost and during which we passed a lot of bear scat and prints, KW yelled that he had found the trail. We had shot for Springhill Ponds, but actually ended up quite a bit West of there, either way we had found the trail we were looking for. So we hiked about another hour and reached Pharoah Lake and found an empty lean-to. We set up our sleeping bags and refilled our water bottles using a filter and the lake water and settled down to get dinner. At which point I realized we had forgotten the food. We was probably I. Yes, I think it was I who left the food back at camp. Sorry guys. We were hungry and it was very hot out still and we were tired having just hiked for four hours with our regular packs plus climbing gear. KW was pissed. I mean everyone was pissed, but he was the hungriest, so also the most pissed. He took a hot dog (the only food we had) and broke it into pieces and put it on a hook and line he found (the lean-tos were littered with junk like that). He dropped it in the water next to a little rock shelf where we noticed a bunch of small fish gathering. These fish were at least as hungry as us and they bit on everything. So much so that we started dropping the hook without hot dog and just hooked the fish with a yank. We got about a half dozen of these fish, but they were all about 3-4 inches long. There was not much meat on them at all. But we cooked them and ate them and went to sleep. The next day was as hot as the previous and we set off around the lake and up the mountain with our climbing gear. We got to the top after a 3 hour or so hike and were sweating profusely and still hungry but at least we were there. We took out the guidebook (Don Mellor's last edition before Jeremy Haas and his partner wrote the newer one) and tried to follow the directions. The climbs were supposedly a certain number of feet off the top in a specific direction. But they weren't. We walked all over the top and looked all around and could not find any climbs we could rap down to and lead or set up a top-rope on. We looked for hours but could not find anything. I think our bellies admitted defeat before we were ready to and we headed down. On this hike we all got spread out and some of us were really hurting. Tired, hungry, hot, dis-spirited, it was not a fun time. It is the only time I can remember stopping someone on a trail and asking if they had any food. Luckily the couple I stopped had some fruit to spare. And when we got back to one of the lean-tos on the lake we found some cans of chicken and some packs of ramen. This was not uncommon in the Summer to find some food left over in the lean-tos after a busy weekend. We put together the canned chicken and ramen and heated it all up and shared the fruit on the side. It was one of the best meals I had ever eaten. The next morning we hiked out towards Pharoah Lake road and then Beaver Pond road and then back to camp. We immediately hopped in our vehicles, drove to Stewarts and ate ice cream sundaes.

Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Vomit Inducing Item

I have racked my brains trying to figure out how to explain/introduce/do justice to Ranger Robert Newton (aka Newt, Ranger Bob, Bobby Newt, Fidel Castro). I can't. So I won't. I will just start writing stories about the man and hopefully his character will come through. Just know that I am not deifying the man, but believe me when I tell you he was a unique individual who meant a lot to a lot of people. KW and I were up at camp for ranger staff my second summer ('94). Ranger staff had not yet become a big thing the way it was a few years later so it was just the two of us and Ranger Bob getting camp ready for staff week and the rest of the Summer. There were a few other people around (the kitchen staff, old Bill, Big Bird) but camp was mainly empty. After two weeks of physical labor fixing up the camp KW and I were pretty tired and getting ready for camp to start. Bob and Old Bill took us out for dinner to a place in Chestertown. We took Old Bill's cadillac which was not as old as him (WWII vet) but was old enough that it was a two door and the back windows did not roll down. Ranger Bob did not smoke. He chewed cigars. At the time I chewed some chewing tobacco. Most of our staff did something stupid like that. No excuses, we just did. But we also looked up to Bob. Before we got in the car for the trip back to camp from Brant Lake, I asked Bob for a chew of his cigar. He gladly obliged by pulling out one of the ever present cigars from his shirt pocket and ripping off a chunk, which I took and placed in the back of my mouth between my cheek and teeth. I was used to working in the woods and fields of camp with the freedom to spit chew juice and eventually chew out at any time. For this car ride, of course, I had no spit cup. Did I mention the windows didn't roll down? With chewing tobacco, I would chew for a while and then spit out big wads of juice. With a dry cigar sitting in your mouth I didn't chew but your mouth produces saliva anyway. And this saliva mixes with tobacco and starts to build in your mouth. And you have nowhere to spit it. And you start to feel woozy. And then a bit sick. And the windows don't roll down. Chestertown is not far from Brant Lake, about a ten minute ride, but our camp was at the end of Brant Lake, a 7 mile drive around a twisty windy road. About halfway around the lake I was in panic mode. The saliva was building to over-sized proportions and whatever part was being absorbed into my blood stream was making me really sick. I had no exit strategy here. I couldn't open my mouth to ask Old Bill to pull over and no window to wind down. Even if I could speak, I would have been to ashamed to mention to Ranger Bob that I needed to stop to spit. So I did the only thing I could think of and dug around in my cheek to remove the soggy wet cigar piece. This disgusting smelly blob I held gingerly in my hand as I tried not to swallow the tobacco laden spittle sloshing around inside my mouth as the car slowly served around the turns of Brant Lake. As I was about to puke or pass out or both we pulled into camp and I jumped out of the car as soon as the door opened and the seat was pulled forward. Hitting the ground I threw the cigar piece down and spit and spit and spit as much as I could to clear my mouth. A minute or so later Bob came up to me and said, "You might want to spit the cigar out now, it's probably getting a little strong."

The thing about a Stationery Store is that even if you misspell it as Stationary Store, you will usually still be correct

Ken Smith was the reason both the load and I started working at camp.  I'll let the load tell his story. In my case, I went with my troop on a trek when I was 14.  Back then, camp used to hire a lot of international staff.  Our guide was an Englishman named Robin.  What I remember most about him is that he really enjoyed singing the hymn that was sung prior to each meal.  In the dining hall, there were large signs that listed the morning, noon and evening hymn.  Prior to the start of each meal, everyone was required to sing.  It sounded about as good as you would think a random group of mostly male individuals with little musical talent would sound.  If you came in late, after the hymn had been sung, everyone would shout out "GRACE" and you would have to sing it.  I really wish that my name had been Grace.  Then I would have come in late to every meal and when everyone shouted "GRACE" I would shout back "Hello" and pretend I was a celebrity.  But my name wasn't and isn't Grace.

Generally, those who came in late would sing the little hymn, although some would just blow it off.  Robin, loved to sing though.  So, he would deliberately come in late just so he could put on his little performance.  More power to him.  Singing was something Robin loved.  I would come to learn that incessantly correcting people's paddling skills was another thing he loved, perhaps even more than singing.

Why not

The Summer of 1997 was one of my favorite summers.  I had a number of great treks, I think the German was during the summer of 1997.  At some point, M.L. and I decided that we would ride our bikes from camp to our respective houses at the end of the summer.   According to Google Maps, it was just about 200 miles.

That was really the extent of the planning, just that we would ride our bikes home at the end of the summer.  While we had the bikes, that was it.  Neither one of us had come up to camp that summer with the plan that we would do this.  I believe M.L. had panniers on his bike.  I certainly did not.  I had my internal frame backpack though.  It was a great pack, I spent most of my earnings from the previous summer on it.  That was the best part of living at home with a parent who would support you, all of your income was discretionary!  While the pack was excellent for hiking, it was not built for riding.  I would learn this later, when I was fully committed. Eventually we did figure out that we needed to plan a route.  We knew that we couldn't ride on the thruway (amazingly, a fellow staff member had received a ticket for riding his bike on the thruway that summer - the fear of getting a ticket was the only thing that stopped us, not the idea that riding on 4 lane highway with every vehicle doing 70+ mph was insanely stupid).

Apologies

Network traffic was never super high for this site, sometimes we would get about 30 visitors a day, but it has dropped way down since I stopped posting. Understandably. It is not like there are a ton of layers to these stories that merit re-reading. I had a couple of cases go to trial this week, so I was pretty busy preparing for them. But, the blog is still alive.

I hope I don't screw up the history too much, but my understanding is that prior to the Boy Scouts owning the camp it was an expensive summer getaway property for someone pretty rich. There is an old horse racing track on the property. It is generally overgrown and perpetually very muddy. There is never a valid reason to drive a camp vehicle on the race track. It is forbidden. If you did drive on it, you were likely to get stuck in the mud at some point. Prior to getting stuck, you would have a great time spraying up mud and slipping around. Naturally, we often drove on the race track and we often got stuck.

Camp does not have a fleet of high quality vehicles. There are a couple of nice vehicles, but those are reserved for people far more responsible than me. I was allowed to drive the less beautiful vehicles. For awhile, we got a number of our vehicles from an AFB near Plattsburg NY. They were generally pickup trucks, painted blue (Aim High!) and had reached the end of their useful life for the AF. The end of the useful life for the AF was the beginning of the useful life for us though! Since the AF didn't drive them off road, these vehicles were not equipped with 4wd.

Then there was the "Jimmy". The Jimmy, was a pretty good sized truck. About the same size as a UPS delivery truck, perhaps a bit bigger. It was big enough to have a dualie axel and was a proper truck. Camp had apparently owned this truck since it was new. That was in the 70s. At the point we used it, it was relegated to driving on camp only. There was no way it was street legal. The engine still ran like a top, but everything else was falling apart. Doors would eventually no longer latch, so they were welded shut. The bench seat was replaced with plywood. There was an enormous crack in the windshield that was never going to get fixed. But, it was a blast to drive because it way big, heavy and a stick shift. Plus, you really couldn't break it any more than it already was.

Most of the time when you got a vehicle stuck, the solution was to get another vehicle of similar size to pull it out. This worked fine with the pickup trucks. However, one time while illegally off roading on the racetrack I was in the Jimmy. Eventually, I pushed it too far and got it stuck. The issue was that there was no vehicle that  was big enough to get it unstuck, at least none that I was authorized to drive.  I couldn't tell anyone that was authorized to drive the bigger vehicles because they would frown upon this behavior.  Indeed it was probably why they were authorized to drive the vehicle and I was not.

We did have an extremely well stocked "shop".  This was really just a very large garage with all sorts of tools.  I went down to the shop in one of the little pick up trucks and found a "come along" and a large amount of chain.  A come along is a manual winch.  I thought I would be all set, but even when the Jimmy was in neutral I could not get it to budge with the come along.  So, I came up with what I thought was a brilliant plan.  On large vehicles, 1st gear is usually geared incredibly low, like top speed in that gear was 5 mph or so.  I put the truck in first, the wheels predictably spun.  But, I could leave it idling and the wheels would still spin and it would not stall out.  So, I hooked up the come along to the truck and then another end to a stout tree (Rudolph would have been able to tell me exactly what kind of tree it was) and began to crank on the come-along.  Amazingly, it worked like a charm, eventually the truck got free and started to roll towards me.  I had to quickly dump the come along and run towards an unoccupied 5 ton truck that was heading straight for me.  It was easy enough to jump in, stop, pick up the tools and return them with no-one being the wiser.  I don't think I ever drove the Jimmy on the race track again.

Regular Nose - Not a Reindeer

During the summer of 1994, I worked in the Ecology Department. As briefly mentioned in a prior post, it was essentially a small building with a pit that we stocked with local amphibians and reptiles. Frogs were the mainstay of the pit, but we also had some turtles, garter snakes and even the occasional snapping turtle and water snake. The water snakes were nasty fellows. Because I lacked the skills of Steve Irwin, I often got bitten trying to snag these guys. There bite was not venomous, but it did contain an anticoagulant - meaning that the wound would bleed a bit longer than normal. I learned this fact from Mike Rudolph.

Mike was my boss and the sole other employee there. This dude loved Nature. He was the type of guy that listened to bird songs and frog calls on tape and could identify most species both by the common name and the latin name. He was not a nerd, far from it. He just really had a passion for nature. He taught me little tricks of the trade that I still use to this day. He taught me the easiest way to tell the difference between a white pine (pinus strobus) and a red pine (pinus resinosus). A white pine has five needles per bunch, just like the number of letters in "white". Additionally, there is a thin white line that runs along the underside of the white pine needle. Similarly, he taught me the difference between red maple and sugar maple. That was the best part. His enthusiasm was infectious. He would lead the entire staff on a nature walk. No-one had done this before. Even if you didn't actually see any animals, we would all stop and listen and he would identify three or four different bird calls. While the birds were almost certainly singing before he instructed us to listen, we didn't hear them. It wasn't until he made us listen and told us what to listen for, that we actually heard. He would pick up road kill and bring it back to the lodge so we could learn to dissect it.

In addition to being a great teacher, he was also a great friend. He took me under his wing when he didn't have to. He let me drive his car, even though I didn't have a license, and always made me feel included. When his parents came to visit at camp, they brought me a sandwich from the local store as well. I don't think it was a concious decision on his part, it was just his inherent nature. Unfortunately, he only worked at camp that one summer. It was likely for the best, he was too talented and too smart. The scouts that we saw generally came through camp for just one week and were interested in getting a merit badge. Very few actually wanted to learn. It is a shame, because Mike had so much to teach.