By long tradition, a Boy Scout is expected to be trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous and kind. If that’s not a tall enough order, a Scout is also expected to be obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent.
In little Rosholt, Wisconsin, you might add one more obligation to the list: always be packed.
It might not be what Scouting’s founders meant by the motto “Be prepared,” but for members of Rosholt’s Troop 200, it is sound advice. Since it was founded in 1996, Troop 200 has camped in state parks and Scout camps like Boy Scout troops everywhere. But the troop has logged 56,000 miles from Maine to Montana, from Washington, D.C. to Washington state (plus Canada and Mexico), missing only those states where the troop’s 47-passenger motor coach – an upgrade from the 1975 International Bluebird school bus with which they began their journeys – is challenged by geography. Even so, says Scoutmaster Chris Martin, Alaska and Hawaii remain on the troop’s radar.
Obviously, these are not your father’s Boy Scouts. Nor are other modern Scouts who attain merit badges in computers or who head into the woods armed not with compasses, but with GPS units. Still, as the Boy Scouts of America marks its 100th anniversary in 2010 – the official birthday is February 8 – much remains as traditional as day hikes and night fires, as ghost stories in the dark and the call of “Taps” at twilight. And much has changed in the world since Robert Baden-Powell published his Scouting for Boys in England in 1908, but much also remains the same.
“Obviously, technology has changed dramatically,” says Steve Heck, Scout executive of the Glacier’s Edge Council in Madison, “but our core values are still the same.”
If Scouting had English roots, it didn’t take long to become an international movement. In 1909, an American businessman named William Boyce was lost in London fog when a small boy offered to take him to his hotel, declining a tip because it was his good turn as a Boy Scout. Impressed, Boyce sought out Baden-Powell to learn more and, back in the States, worked to set up the Boy Scouts of America.
Scouting grew like, well, an unwatched campfire, not that any true Scout would permit that. A headquarters was established at a YMCA in New York, Baden-Powell arrived in America to endorse the movement, President William Howard Taft and former President Theodore Roosevelt accepted the titles of honorary president and vice president, respectively, and troops were established across the land. In Wisconsin, so many troops were formed that councils soon followed to direct their activities.
Today, Scouting is still organized at the council level, including at least a dozen that serve Scouts in Wisconsin (some overlap state lines and the number changes with council mergers). Paid staff direct each council, while volunteers – often parents or former Scouts who see merit in sharing their experiences with younger members – serve as troop and pack leaders for their local Scouting groups. The largest council in Wisconsin, Bay-Lakes Council, which is based in Appleton and stretches from Marquette in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to Mequon, has 40 paid staffers and 9,000 volunteers.
“It’s really still a volunteer-run organization,” says Ed McCollin, Bay-Lakes director of support services.
Most councils operate Scout camps or reservations, where traditional camping – both day and overnight – takes place and outdoor skills are taught. One of the oldest in the United States is Indian Mound Scout Reservation, a 300-acre site on Silver Lake near Oconomowoc that was established in 1917. Camp ranger Mike Taft notes that development pressures have forced many camps to close or consolidate through the years. “It’s amazing that we’re still here.”
But, he says, it’s important that they are. Indian Mound serves the Milwaukee County Council, which includes many urban Scouts whose life experience does not include much time in the great outdoors.
“Kids are kids,” says Taft, who has been at Indian Mound for 28 years. “But the first thing you notice is they don’t get outside that much. A lot of these kids who come out from the city, they’re looking for bears, they’re looking for wolves,” says Taft, who has to inform them such exotic wildlife is seldom found in suburban woods. Still, there are deer and wild turkeys, “and at night the lights go out. Stargazing, you take them out … and they’re just amazed that they can see all those stars.”
Other camps have long histories as well. Bear Paw Scout Camp near Mountain in northeastern Wisconsin, the “flagship camp” of the Bay-Lakes Council, hosts from 1,400 to 1,600 summer campers each year, offering Scout staples such as aquatics, archery, shooting, canoeing and other outdoor skills. The camp was founded in 1945 by Scout leader Ed Rowley, who persuaded the Oconto Lumber Company to donate a logged parcel for Scout use. According to a later account by his son, Allyn, Rowley scavenged old Civilian Conservation Corps buildings that were converted to tent floors and privies, arranged for donations of Army surplus materials from Camp McCoy at Sparta (sleeping bags, kitchen equipment, camp stoves, canteens, even skis, boots and poles were available in those post-war days) and even found surplus Army skid-mounted mobile generators to provide the camp’s first electricity. Rowley’s wife served as camp nurse, and one of the first jobs of visiting Scouts was to plant thousands of fir seedlings to rebuild the logged forests.
“Our family never owned a lake cabin,” Allyn Rowley notes. “Bear Paw Camp was always our getaway destination.”
Other camps were less traditional, most notably Camp Ammon, founded at State Fair Park in West Allis in 1933. Today the co-ed Scout camp for Boy and Girl Scouts, Venturers and Explorers operates exclusively during the Wisconsin State Fair, where campers lead children’s events, serve at the lost-and-found booth, and march as the color guard for the daily State Fair parade.
Modern Scouting has issues Baden-Powell never envisioned, from membership challenges from gay youths and atheists to the increased demands on young people’s time, from the lure of computers and electronic diversions to busy and broken families where parents do not, or cannot, become involved on behalf of their children. “You’re competing against more things like sports and school,” says Jim Tobakos, program director for the Milwaukee County Council. “Yes, it’s different … and that’s why we’ve tried to come up with some non-traditional activities” such as geocaching to teach wilderness skills instead of the old-fashioned compass. As for some of the membership challenges, Jeff Hahn, a longtime volunteer and Eagle Scout says, “You look at the basic fundamentals of Scouting and there’s no apology for having a faith-based perspective.”
While some members do drift away to other interests, many Scouts do stay involved through high school and a number ultimately reach the elevated rank of Eagle Scout, an accomplishment the organization says leads to more successful careers down the line. Or, even sooner. Dan Carriveau of Little Chute began as a Cub Scout and worked his way up to earn the rank of Eagle, a distinction also earned by his older brother, Cody.
“We had our Court of Honor together,” Dan says, “so that was kind of cool.” Also cool, he says, was that by continuing in Scouts, he became less quiet, more confident and more of a leader, attributes he expects to help him in college and beyond. “I just feel it has developed me into the person I am today,” he says. “Most of my best friends are involved in Scouting and next year I’ll be in college, but I know I’ll stay involved quite a bit.”
One requirement for the Eagle rank is that each applicant performs a public service project, often something that leads to a lasting contribution for Scouts’ home communities. In western Wisconsin, one 14-year-old Eagle candidate helped develop a playground. In the Fox Valley, Eagle candidates built hiking trails at the Heckrodt Nature Preserve, and in Milwaukee, deputy director of county parks Guy Smith says Eagle candidates have performed “numerous and some high-quality” projects. “They are definitely lasting improvements,” he says.
Which are almost as good as lasting memories. In Rosholt, Scoutmaster Martin acknowledges his itinerant troop could not travel the country in the comfort of a motor coach without strong community support, but notes that “people are very willing to support something they can see turn a kid in the right direction. Without them we’d still be in an old school bus. Nothing against old school buses, but you can’t go to San Diego in a school bus.”
Or to Hawaii. But not for nothing is Troop 200’s motto “Dream no small dreams.”
A former Cub Scout and Boy Scout, Dennis McCann is a freelance writer who divides his time between Bayfield and Madison.