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Scout Class Memoir 2004 ©2005 Clint Hollingsworth
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Wednesday,
July 21, 2004 The
next day, we met instructor Joe
Lau, who aside from being a well-qualified Tracker School instructor,
is also high ranked in Bushinkan, the Ninjitsu system of Dr. Hatsumi.
Joe is a quiet, stocky fellow with brown eyes, and when he talks about
the way and the responsibility of the warrior, he has a sincerity that
is wonderful. He
spoke about natural law, the phases of learning, and once more we were
confronted with Stalking Wolf's Sacred Question. "What dis mean"? I had my moment of Satori, my epiphany of tracking
(though that was not the context Joe was speaking of). I tend to be fairly
good tracking-wise, at identification, the most basic tracking skill,
and kind of poor at pursuing any deeper than that. The question asked
above says much more than "what is this?" That question just
asks one basic question that can have a basic answer..."This is a
Coyote track" for example. "What
dis mean"? asks
much more. It means that a coyote came this way, that this area may be
rich in hares, that it limped a little on it's left side, that it was
a female with a 24" stride. You can just keep peeling layers off
that "onion" until you exhaust your ability to ask/answer questions.
I felt like Stalking Wolf has whispered in my ear what I needed to hear
to get going on the tracker path again. I
finally managed to find a few moments to get some water from the stream
to take into the shower area and for a few blessed hours I was clean!
(relatively speaking). Of course, this turned out to be the day where
we walked the log across the stream blindfolded, so I spent plenty of
time in the water. That
night, we camo'd up again (so much for being' clean) and went on our first
raid outside of camp. It wasn't an official raid, in that we were "raiding"
Tom and the Tracker staff. Still, we headed out on one of the many fire
trails, avoiding patrolling instructors and by some fortuitous fluke;
we put Tom (from Phoenix) in the point position. Tom's lean form walked
ahead and even though he wears fairly thick glasses and it was a semi-moonless
night, Tom managed to get us past every fishing line and firecracker trap
set for us on the way out. At least twice, on the trail behind us I heard
traps that we had slipped under or around go off in a cacophony of firecrackers. We
emerged from the fire break onto a wide sand road, and on the sand roads,
moving dark shapes stand out nicely. The white sand practically glows.
We hadn't traveled 200 yards when we were ambushed by shadows, firing
fire paint balls over our heads and firecrackers near our feet. We dashed
into the brush and dropped, and a few minutes later a voice called out,...
"You're all dead, move along!". The
instructors and shadows knew the landscape well, and how it would affect
our decisions and played us like gritty violins. We
were under time constraints, having to travel at least 3 miles to arrive
before the "party" ended. We had to book. We slipped past slow-moving
cars, 3 wheelers, and shadow scouts. Finally, at the home stretch, we
went up a side trail that paralleled the main sand road. Though we had
been moving at a brisk pace the whole way, a quick check of my watch (You'd
be amazed how bright a digital watch light is when your pupils are at
full dialation) showed that we were out of time and our prey would be
soon leaving. We decided to run the final distance. I
crossed the main sandroad at a sprint, and was using my momentum to carry
me up the steep bank, just a few hundred feet from the sound of the "party",
when a thunderous voice roared out, "Who is that!? Get the hell down
here." Yup.
Tom Brown Jr. The Tracker. I thought to myself, if you're gonna screw
up, don't do it half-way! He
called in the entire team, and to my surprise, he said, "Yeah, ya
got caught, but I want you to know something. I'm proud of you."
needless to say we were surprised. We found out that out of 8 teams, only
two had made it there. Having Tom say that meant a lot to me. As a man
in his forties, you'd think a certain amount of cynicism would have crept
in to me. I guess I'm not as far gone as I had feared. Oh,
and there was a reward. The reward was pizza! (at this point you should
be hearing a chorus of angels). The trip back was not uneventful. Our team splintered a bit. One member wanted to move back to camp at a brisk pace, one wanted to move back very slowly, to use the lessons of the night. I took point in the hope of setting a compromise pace, but Mr. Slow Pace would have none of it. everytime I would look back, there was only myself and Mr. Fast Pace. the rest, following behind Slow, would take 5 minutes to catch us. I finally grew exasperated and took the tail end position. We went home at a snail's pace.
We
dragged back into camp about 3 am, and I again just flopped down and slept
on the bare ground under my coat.
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