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Scout Class Memoir 2004 ©2005 Clint Hollingsworth
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The breakfast call came entirely too early,
rousing me from a dream of hiking along a winding river, and I groggily
made my way out of the cheap bivy tent (which had come with no instructions)
I had brought. After a quick trip to the "Bob's" (Porta Potties
from Bob's Sanitation Service) I cleaned up a little and got in the breakfast
line. I would like to make one unequivocated statement
at this point. There is a fellow working for the Tracker School who I
would like to recommend for sainthood. His name is Jorge, and he is the
new meal planner for the school. He has elevated the menu quality to heights
before undreamt of. I'm not talking fancy chef work, just good tasting
hot meals filling and nourishing. No more student-made mystery stews from
whomever happened to have kitchen duty. Real food. I met a very nice young lady named Melanie,
who had actually read Wandering Ones! My day was already off to a good
start. Later on, we all met at the shelter, and
instructor Ruth Ann told us of her first scout class foray out during
her scout class. How on the way back she and her scout team had walked
headlong into a Shadow ambush and all their carefully learned team dynamic
had shattered under paintballs and fireworks. She had crawled back to
her camp exhausted near dawn and spent the night cradled in the earth
under her scout pit cover. I thought it an interesting story; I wish had
known how prophetic she was. We divided up into teams, (which seemed
odd, since the Scout Way seems so solitary) and people tended to group
to their own age group. You'd think that the Scout Class wouldn't have
that many female students, but I'm sure that this class was at least a
third female. I gravitated to the group that seemed to
consist of males in the early 30's to mid 40's. Group 5 (our designation)
Consisted of myself, Tom from Phoenix, Bill from Denver, Ed from Rhode
Island, Jeff from Jersey, Matt from Florida, Nathan (who I think was in
his late 20's) from Florida, and Melanie from Wisconsin, who kinda threw
off the demographic a little, but I was glad we weren't an all male group.
(more on the members of team 5 later)
We were then introduced to our nemeses, our staves . We spent that morning, learning info about
the scout pit, and then with some modern tools were sent out to our designated
camp areas. We were met at the trail by a fellow who was the caretaker
of this section of the camp, and quite frankly, it was obvious he was
none to pleased to have us there. On the way out to our site, he kept
reminding us not to go near his shelter (like we would) and to NOT USE
HIS TOILET! He reminded us of the latter at least six times, especially
as we passed the unscreened white pit throne he used. Damned inconvenient
students! It almost got funny after a bit. Ed, our resident wisecracker,
asked him if this white one was the toilet we were supposed to use. He
received a glare in return. Some people don't have a sense of humor about
their pooper. We spent the rest of the day excavating
our scout pits (imagine a wood lined grave, covered with camo debris and
you're not far off). Ed, Melanie and I all built solo pits. Matt and Tom
shared one pit on shifts and Nathan and Bill shared another. Needless
to say, us solo folks took a bit longer and I only finished mine before
dinner with Matt's help. (Thanks buddy). That night, we went on our first raid. One thing you have to understand. If you're
going to have a scout class, you're going to need to practice stealthy,
sneaky ways. This first night, we would pit ourselves against fellow students.
Each team left one member at their camp to guard the fire. The rest went
to other teams camps, to see how close they could plant a small flag to
the other team's fire before being seen. At dark, Melanie guarded our
fire, while the rest of us wandered into the brush to seek scout glory! As we wandered through the dark forest,
we found out something a bit appalling about our store-bought camo shirts
and BDU pants. Though we were far from city lights, under a moonless starry
sky, our camo clothes seemed to have a faint... shine. With our dark-adapted
eyes, even in a dark pine forest, we had no real trouble keeping track
of each other. The next night, I would do something about this. We wandered the area for a while, and then
came upon another group's fire. Bold Nathan and Bill went forward to plant
the flag while the rest of us waited in the brush. Nathan got the flag
within 10 feet of the fire with the help of a shadow scout (or maybe he
was an instructor) who engaged the guard in conversation. As we sat there, another team came up behind
us, and we decided to follow them out to the main trail. As we carefully
moved through the brush, our predecessors ran full into a shadow scout
fireworks ambush. We all hit the ground, and spent the next 15 minutes
hugging the ground while instructors and shadows prowled trying to find
us. It was great to finally get back to the campfire. We were to find that courteously letting
other teams go first was not a bad strategy! |
