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The Lost Patrol
As I sat there, a small breeze sprung up and I noticed, among the rhododendron flowers, a chipmunk staring at me, indignant that I was sitting so close to his front porch. A bee came and busily investigated my bright, red Official Boy Scout Activity Shirt for pollen, and I suddenly became aware of the sound of boys tramping through the woods high above me where the trail leveled out and forked left and right. It slowly dawned on me that the noise was from one of my own patrols and that they had taken the wrong fork in the trail! I sat there and mulled that fact for a moment or two, deciding if I really wanted to race up the hillside and set them straight. I thought about the terrain up there, and remembered that I had been lost on just that same trail a few weeks earlier when Pam, Pete and I were checking out this hiking route. That made me smile, and I decided that the patrol deserved the chance to redeem its own error. Cook Forest, after all, is a great place to get lost. The Cooks were one of the great lumbering families of the last century, chopping down the thick forests around Cooksburg and floating the timber down the Clarion and Allegheny rivers to Pittsburgh and points south. In the 1920’s, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania bought some of the remaining stands of virgin white pine from the family, and created Cook Forest State Park. By now, the park has been in operation for nearly eighty years, and a sort of friendly association of man and nature has evolved. Every black bear knows where the campgrounds are; visitors are warned to expect them. The Northern water snake is not unduly surprised by the arrival of a crowd of people to observe its slithering progress; the staring people know to stay back a certain distance and respect that slow progress. A large brown trout is resigned to a constant barrage of bait as it makes its way though the shallows of the children’s fishing pond; the young fisherman is pleased to see so large a fish, and hopes against hope that his worm will be the fish’s next meal. Cook Forest is a great, mostly tame park --- just the place for beginners to the nature game.
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I
sat on a house-sized chunk of glacial rock, my heart pounding
and sweat streaming from my hair. I was most of the way up the
steep bit of Seneca Trail that leads from Cooksburg Bridge to
Seneca Point. As I panted and wheezed, I asked myself why, just
exactly, this was fun. I was dirty and uncomfortable and could
only look forward to hot dogs and beans for dinner. Mosquitoes,
spiders and flies had bitten my arms and legs, and then gone off
to tell their friends and relations all about me. So why,
exactly, was this fun?
After
a time, I got up and made my way up the hill and along its crest
to the fire tower. The troop’s other patrol was already there,
climbing the fire tower and checking out Seneca Point, along
with the people who drive up to these famous landmarks every day
of the year. I sat and listened to the Scouts’ tales of
discovery, and their gleeful speculation on the present
whereabouts of the missing patrol. Forty minute passed, and here
they came. Oh, you should have seen the reception they got. It
was glorious, and will provide raw material for many a joke in
months to come. The Scouts of the Lost Patrol will have to bear
the jokes, but they, more than their tormentors, have really
learned what a map and compass are for, and that may prove
useful when I take them to a wilder place.