Cool Times
May, 1997

All last week, I watched the long range forecast for the weekend weather with more than usual interest. Here it was the middle of May, and the troop was all set for its first weekend campout of the season, but where was spring? The weather people would one day predict glorious weather for the weekend and the next show alarming rivers of cold air pouring in from central Canada.

On Friday morning Pete sat in the orthodontist's office waiting for his appointment and listening to a conversation about some foolhardy people who were planning to camp out on the weekend. He volunteered the fact that he too was going camping. "Oh, you're just going to sleep out in a motel, right?" was the reply. They were properly amazed when he said that he would be sleeping in tents with a Boy Scout troop.

All day long I warned people to bring their winter coats and long underwear. My kind neighbor, Dave VanDyke, also provided us with a load of kindling so that we could at least start the weekend with some dry wood. At 5:30 p.m., 25 Scouts and leaders set out for Camp Coffman for a weekend in the woods that turned out to be oh so cool.

We spent that evening setting up tents, organizing our gear and cooking hot dogs for dinner. The campfire at 9:30 was very pleasant after a winter spent indoors, and, along about 11:30 we retired to our tents for the night. After midnight, it started to rain and the temperature fell, and, as I dropped off to sleep, I wondered how the Scouts would fare during the night. About half of them are old hands at this sort of living, having started their careers as Scouts at this very same campground last spring. The other half of the troop was with us for the first time, and I was more worried about them. Could they get a good night's sleep in the cold and rain and be ready for a big day tomorrow?

At 1:30 a.m., I was awakened by what I thought was my name being called out in the night. I listened hard and also thought I heard crying. Grimly, I crawled out of my warmish sleeping bag, and dragged myself out into the rain in search of the boy that was in distress. All of the younger Scouts were together at the end of the campsite where the other adults and I were sleeping, but a quick survey showed that they were all sound asleep. So, I walked out to the center of the campsite, pulled my hat down over my nose and stood there in the rain, waiting. After about five minutes, I heard it again --- a cry and murmurs in the night. I walked over to the tent where the noise came from, and reached it just as one of the boys inside started laughing. It quickly became apparent that this was not some crisis of homesickness or of being too cold or too wet in the middle of the night. It was just two clowns who didn't know it was long past their bedtime. My mood went from concern to something else in a blink, and after making my feelings very clear, I stumbled back to my tent, and my, now, not-so-warm sleeping bag.

I woke up out-of-sorts, but the troop had weathered the night with only shivers to complain of, the rain was gone and the skies were gradually clearing. My mood gradually improved too, and in the end, Saturday turned out to be a great day.

In the morning, the younger Scouts did exercises and learned skills that they needed to earn the rank of Tenderfoot, while the older Scouts explored the limits of the old Boy Scout camp that was so important to me when I was their age. The floods last summer have left piles of sand in some strange places, but other than that the old place is looking pretty good. This weekend we shared Camp Coffman with about 40 other campers who were sleeping in cabins. The kids with these other groups envied us our tents and robust life style. The adults with them were a little less enthusiastic.

In the afternoon, we took a hike that included scrambling about on Balancing Rock, and admiring the blooming Trillium. Then the Scouts fiddled around the margins of East Sandy Creek, where they found 23 salamanders, all named Bud, and crayfish the size of their fists. Greg was determined to go wading but needed an adult to come along on this aquatic activity. He wandered around, asking each of us in turn if we would go wading in the creek with him, but finally got tired of our emphatic cries of "No Way!" and settled for plunking stones into the stream instead.

Steve Shreffler, our Assistant Scoutmaster, had tied some bottles of Pepsi to a branch and left them dangling in the stream to chill. Two of the younger Scouts found these, rescued them, and brought them back to camp. Steve explained that they were his and returned them to the stream. Half an hour later, two more Scouts rescued the soda from the creek and brought it back to camp. Once again, Steve explained and returned the pop to the creek. An hour later, here came two more Scouts with the bottles of pop held aloft, and a harrowing tale of having rescued them from the creek. Steve gave a snort and drank the soda.

At dark they played Jail Break in the woods with flashlights, and later we sang songs around a big campfire --- our front sides toasty and our backsides chilly. The sky was clear and full of the moon and the stars, and we sat there long enough to see the Big Dipper start its nightly twirl around the North Star. That night was even colder than the first, and I slept in long underwear, a flannel shirt and a sweater and was still a little cold. Still, we all survived and the new guys surprised me with their readiness to work and with their resilience.

We came home on Sunday to a sweltering afternoon and an evening of thunder and rain, so the weather had not been too bad to us after all. Maybe, when we go to the big camporee in New York State in two weeks, my worries will be more seasonal. Which combination do you prefer --- cold and rain, or thunder and mosquitoes?