I’m feeling a little bit dislocated after my week at Scout Camp, so I’m trying to catch up on what happened and readjust to real life. At scout camp, you sleep in canvas tents that were new during the civil war, you cook over an open flame, and air conditioning is opening the tent flaps. Of course, you bring the latest high tech LED flashlights, hiking boots, and clothing if you’re smart.

Thursday we had a couple of bad storms roll through (I’m from the midwest, so when I say a bad storm, I mean wind that whips 100 year old oaks around like reeds, thunder, lightning, and heavy downpours). Upon my return to camp, I was informed that “we had no electricity”, which made me wonder because I didn’t know we had any all week, but what was meant was that the trading post was without electricity, and they weren’t selling any ice.  One parent went to Farmington, the nearest city of any size (no, I don’t count Knob Lick) came back telling tales of flooding, trees down, and power out there as well. What do you know, our old style encampment fared better than modern civilization, at least in the sense we had less to lose.

One of the great joys is the near total loss of contact with the outside world, since I didn’t get cell reception in camp and had to walk a mile and then find the one spot I could get reception in the camporee field. So when new parents came to stay, we always greeted their news with a sort of open-mouthed astonishment – from Israel went to war with Lebanon to the Cardinals have a five game wining streak going. I’m still trying to catch up, although it took no time at all to understand the point of air conditioning. Relearning this blog thing might take a while.

Tags: storm, summer camp