This weekend was our cub scout pack campout. We were back at Castlewood State Park and had a great time. Castlewood is very popular with hikers and bikers (no, not the Hell’s Angels type but people who own $6,000 mountain bikes). We camp near the Meramec river and you feel like you’re in the wilderness despite being 10 minutes from home. I’m a little sore from our help on building a trail and a little tired after sleeping (or rather, mostly not sleeping) al fresco.
Our pack has a great campout organizer, so as Cubmaster I mainly get to wander around and have fun. When our afternoon activities went faster than planned, especially the Raingutter Regatta, I made the decision to ignore the planned times and move the different dens to the different activities based on the times activities were actually taking. I’d rather get done sooner and let the kids play before the hike than to have the kids bored waiting for the next activity to start on time. I was informed that not all the parents were happy because they followed the clock instead of the boy and so missed out on seeing their son do some particular activity.
Cub Scout events are loosely organized chaos, and flexibility is key. At the pack meeting that night, I had a nine page plan; due to circumstances the start time was changed; some elements of the plan were dropped or moved — sometimes I drop something just as it’s about to start based upon the mood of the pack (myself included). This is entirely normal, and for every meeting I have a page of jokes to cover dead time that may pop up. I never know in advance when I’ll use them, but it’s a rare meeting when I don’t use them all.
We had a ball doing skits around the campfire. We got started a little late and the Tigers were all asleep and didn’t get to do their skits. This year I got to be involved in three of the skits. My daughter and I did one together, and the two older Webelos dens asked me to be in one of theirs, Yaputcha, and Ugliest Man in the World — the cub master’s job is to be the butt of the jokes. I had another page of jokes to tell while the dens were coming forward and setting up and I used them all up. It was nice to just sit (boy were my dogs barking after being on my feet all day) around the fire afterward and chat with friends.
Next morning we had crispy cremes for breakfast, and frozen OJ. McDonalds (thanks!) donates the OJ, and even after asking them nicely for thawed OJ the day before, we still got frozen. Sometimes I have a hard time recognizing the ladies without their makeup; I’ve learned to wear a ball cap to both keep warm and hide my bed hair. And then we have the hardest but most important task: organizing the boys to police the campsite. Some of the boys fall right in; others require constant supervision to keep them on task. As Scouts, we do our best to leave no trace, even in an area that sees constant use like where we camped. Then we stress leaving it better than we found it, which means yes, you need to pick up the beer bottle caps.
