Boy Scout Weekend
I was not involved with Scouting as a kid... I wish I would have had the chance, but it never worked out.
Even though my son is too young to be a Boy Scout, really like what Scouts offer Urban and Suburban kids so my wife and I volunteer with several Boy Scout Troops. This weekend was our big campout and I just got back in. The campout is held at the Avon Park Bombing Range, Avon Park FL. Most of the volunteers are military guys who want to help kids out.
This year we had some great times. Friday afternoon the kids came out and set up their tents and ate MREs (the kids seem to love them, I would rather go hungry)�
Saturday Morning the SERE (Survival Evasion Resistance Escape) instructor went over orienteering with the kids (the age groups were 12-20 with Boy Scouts and �Adventure� Scouts which is coed, my boy was there and was the youngest, 7). The kids had four points to find and the legs of the points were 1.5 to 4 kilometers apart. The wife and I had a station on the second point where the kids had to respond to two casualties. The casualties were an unconscious victim with a sever laceration to the right upper thigh and a victim with a severely fractured left femur. After treating the casualties they had to improvise a stretcher and evacuate the casualties around 300 meters. The kids did remarkably well keeping a cool head after hiking ~3Ks through pretty rough terrain.
On Saturday night the SERE instructor taught a class on how to capture, clean and prepare small game. I thought this was the absolute best part of the weekend. The SERE instructor showed the kids the best way to humanely dispatch a rabbit, as well as how to skin and cook it. I was surprised on how these �urban� kids reacted to the whole process. I expected either screams of fear/disgust or disrespectful/inappropriate comments. There were none. The rabbit was the first creature that my son saw harvested and he handled it well. I sat him down before the class and explained to him what was going to happen and told him he didn�t have to watch if he didn�t want to� I was proud that he want to see what was going to happen, and he even volunteered to help skin it! I was bursting with pride.
I will post some photos when I get them.
Here are some of the other things that the Scouts do (I am excite that I can introduce my son to kids who are interested in learning and being a good citizen):
Scuba Scouts Scouts and NASA SP Times on SCUBA Scouts
