Nut Time
September, 1999

Long ago, along the north shore of Lake Tionesta, there was a busy Scout camp owned and operated by the Pittsburgh Council of the Boy Scouts of America. Around 1970 the place was closed, who knows why, and the lake ceased to echo to the sounds of reveille, taps and boys enjoying summer camp. Memory of the place faded, until this year, when a few dedicated Scouts and Scouters from Tionesta and Colonel Drake District, who still remember the old days, decided to open it to Scouts again. This past weekend was the dedication Camporee, and a third of our troop headed up that way last Friday to be a part of the fun.

We parked on top of a ridge and made our way down a steep road through a forest of oak and hickory trees to the camp far below. Nothing much seems to remain of Camp Tionesta, except flattened campsite areas perched nicely above the water. We took possession of one and hastened to set up camp as twilight faded to dusk and darkness.

I have not been to the last couple of troop campouts due to the press of business and an extended summer vacation, and so watched closely to see how the troop performed. The ideal Scout troop is not lead by the Scoutmaster, as you might expect, but by one of the Scouts who has been elected Senior Patrol Leader. We are still a young troop, and as this is a job that requires some experience and wisdom to do well, I was pleased to see it done very well indeed by Adam Williams. In little more than half an hour, the tents had been erected, a campfire ring constructed, and a merry blaze was lighting the trees far overhead.

I was sitting there in my camp chair by the fire, awaiting the arrival of the food and the remainder of the troop's gear, when out of the night, like moths to a flame, came two young Scouts from a neighboring group. Andy did most of the talking and Micah seemed content to listen.

Says Andy, "Last time we went camping, I was sleeping away in my tent when I woke up and there was a big black bear. Boy was I surprised! So, I kicked him in the nose and he ran away and I went back to sleep."

While I was still gasping for breath at that tale, he proceeded to tell me about a whopper of a small-mouth bass he caught this past summer. Just as he was finishing, standing there with his hands 15 inches apart, one of our own fisherman joined us, and Andy obligingly retold his tale. I noticed that this time his hands were more like 20 inches apart at the end, and I began to suspect that Andy not only caught whoppers, but told them as well.

An hour later, I was struggling up the steep hill on my way back to my car to give a borrowed cell phone a try, when the shadowy figure of a Scouter named Rick joined me. On hearing where I was headed, he ushered me to his four-wheel drive truck and thrust its keys into my hand. He then explained about the tricky door latch, the need to stay in low range (whatever that is), and how the clutch needed to be depressed when starting the beast. Soon he set me loose to bump and jounce up the mountain road. There was nothing to stop me from roaring off into the night at 10 miles an hour in this borrowed truck, but such is the camaraderie of the adults involved in Scouting that the idea never crossed either of our minds.

At the top, I quickly discovered that cell phones don't even begin to work this deep in the woods, and then more slowly discovered how to get the truck into reverse for the return journey. Eventually, I ground my way back down the mountainside, parked the truck, dug Rick out of one of the neighboring camps and returned his keys. I also gave him some of Pam's homemade chocolate chip cookies as a reward for his kindness.

Back at camp the boys were settling in, and so I turned in as well. The temperature fell into the high 30's that night, but I was snug and warm inside a sleeping bag the boys gave me last Christmas. Just to make sure that I would be snug and warm, I slept in wool socks, long underwear, a pullover sweater, and a knit cap. As I lay there toasty and content, breathing the cold night air, I heard the typical sounds of a night in camp: crickets and frogs, a breeze sighing in the trees, and two men snoring. Also, every once in a while, I heard something else --- an occasional rattle in the branches overhead and then the thump of something hitting the ground. This was a puzzler, but I fell asleep before I could figure it out.

Saturday morning they rededicated the camp with speeches by men from Rep. Peterson's office, the Forest Service, the Army Corps of Engineers, and our French Creek Council of the BSA. These men spoke fondly to the boys about the important things to be gained from Scouting, and the boys were, predictably, bored.

I wasn't though. Especially impressive was one man who, for the first time in 20 years, recited the Scout Law --- and got it right. If the Scouts could only have listened to these men with my ears, they would have seen the true purpose of the organization that they mostly view as an opportunity for fun, games and high adventure. Still, it doesn't matter too much that they are unaware that Scouting is shaping their lives in subtle ways. The important thing is that it is happening, just as it did with their fathers and grandfathers before them.

The Scouts spent the remainder of the morning at demonstrations given by representatives of the Forestry Service. First off, they heard expert advice on how to trap beavers. The stuff about live trapping animals went over OK, but their eyes really opened wide when the discussion turned to the gorier subject of traps, drowning lines and snares.

After 40 minutes of that, we ambled over to another clearing, and heard about the life of a forester. The ranger who gave the talk seemed to be more used to talking to 8 year olds, and that did not go over well, but the subject matter was of interest to many, especially when the ranger stated that over half of the men in the Forestry Service today were Boy Scouts in their youth. I thought back to my old gang of thirty years ago and remembered two buddies who became foresters and a third who now lives in Alaska where he is a wildlife artist of some repute.

After lunch the Scouts boarded a pontoon boat and were given a tour of Lake Tionesta by a man from the Army Corps of Engineers. I missed this voyage, except to see its strange end, when the front of the overloaded boat dipped deep into the water and sent the Scouts sliding toward the water. A couple of them got wet feet, but no harm was done. This little mishap did, however, provide an excellent object lesson in the importance of wearing life preservers. It is just such little adventures and crises that are stored up as experience --- experience that the men these boys will become will draw upon when making important decisions in their adult lives.

Speaking of which, Fred Foster, Steve Shreffler and I wanted to tour the lake too. Seeing that we could not get on the pontoon boat with all those Scouts, another Scouter offered to give us a tour in his boat.

We clambered on board and sat down, ready to enjoy the cruise. Then it was discovered that someone had left the lights on and that the battery was dead. Steve, who had just met the driver five minutes earlier, merrily took the cowl off the motor and went to work with a rope trying to hand start the engine. When that didn't work, a passing craft was called into service and he hooked up jumper cables. Thus began 30 minutes of fiddling to get our expedition under way. The engine would now start and idle, but immediately stalled when the prop was engaged. This happened half a dozen times. Fred gave up and left. I nearly did the same, but I had this interesting sense of foreboding about the whole venture, and was very curious as to how it would turn out. Also, I genuinely enjoy watching Steve do his stuff.

The boat driver was not, we came to learn, the owner of the boat. Just as I had driven a truck not my own the night before, so too, this man was driving a borrowed boat. Eventually he made the right moves with the throttle and clutch, and we plowed off down the lake, headed for the dam. We had made it about half way to our destination when the engine stalled again. Then, as water skiers zoomed by causing the boat to rock wildly, Steve once again attempted to start the engine by hand. That didn't work and so he burrowed about the motor and found the problem --- a disconnected fuel line. With this back in place, he was more successful, and soon we were moving again toward our destination. Then the engine started to miss (dirt in the fuel line?) and we sputtered into a handy marina area for further repairs.

The repairs did not go well, and 20 minutes later Steve and I found ourselves being ferried back to camp by a Scout in a dingy powered by a little four-horse motor. Steve, a big man, was seated in the bow. I sat in the middle, camcorder held high, gazing in wonder at the two inches of freeboard that was all that stood between me and a soaking. The Scout behind me was just as concerned as I. Once we were under way, he explained, with very round eyes, that the dingy was meant for just two people, and that he had never before seen it so low in the water.

They say that a boat owner's two happiest days are the day that he buys his boat, and the day that he sells it. They also say that a boat is a hole in the water that you throw money into. I say, get me out of this thing!

The skiers stormed by setting up huge swells that required the finest of balancing on my part to survive. Steve kept turning to look forward, and in doing so would shift his weight this way and that. I would shift the other way and try to keep him talking so that he would not squirm so. The problems of navigating the globe are nothing as compared to the twenty minutes I spent in that dingy! But at the end of our cruise, I stepped ashore with dry feet, shaky legs and a nice little story to add to my collection.

The Scouts, in the meantime, had donned woodsy colored clothes and were playing games in the forest. Nate and Curt were really dressed for war, with camouflage pants, shirts, bandanas, and faces painted with green, black and tan camo paint. When these two stood still in the woods, they just disappeared.

The games varied, but the last was the best. In this one, they captured Cub Scouts from a neighboring camp and held them as prisoners of war. The Cubs would then escape, running joyously through the woods back to their camp --- where, they would promptly allow themselves to be captured again.

Later I sat at the campfire and watched Curt scrubbing Nate's face with a Brillo pad to get the paint off. The Scouts sat around telling tales of the day's adventures, recounting strange and interesting things that they had heard, and relishing the thought of the stories they would have to tell their families and friends.

Ian, one of the new guys this year, told me the tale of a man who got lost in the woods in his car one snowy night. The man froze to death when he stayed with his stalled car rather than trying to walk to safety. Ian then said that the strange part was that the man had only to get out of his car and walk 100 miles to get to a major highway! I suggested that he perhaps meant 100 feet, not 100 miles.

Then, thinking of the meat we had had for dinner earlier, he proceeded to tell me about these incredibly thick quarter-inch steaks he had recently eaten with his family. Again I smiled and, not to be outdone, said that maybe he should give his measurements in metric in future, and that the steaks would then have been 3 meters thick.

Suddenly I heard that sound again. Something was falling though the branches high above. It hit the ground somewhere behind me with a thump. Then came another rattle and, this time, something bounced off my shoulder. There it was on the ground beside me --- a hickory nut. They were falling like slow hail all though that section of the forest.

I cracked my nut open, gave bits of the meat to the boys, and smiled, as I so often do on these expeditions. It was nut time at Camp Tionesta.