I loved Scouting as a teenager, and it absolutely made me a better human. I still draw on the skills and knowledge I developed in Scouts, and I look back with fondness on the many friends I made and the experiences I had with them during this time when I was endeavoring to find my voice, to become my own man.
In retrospect, I also understand how significant it was at that time in my life to receive encouragement and admiration from the Scout leaders and other adults involved in our troop. Their affirmation bolstered not only my sense of confidence and self-worth, but also my reputation in the community, making me even more committed to staying hidden, protecting my secret.
Our weekly Scouting meetings followed the trajectory of the school calendar, starting in mid-September and ending in early June. The summer was punctuated with our annual week-long trip to Owasippe Scout Reservation in Michigan. My grandfather, father, brother, and I all went there growing up, three generations of the Young men as young men.
I wasn’t a rugged outdoors-loving type of teenager, but I was captivated with the natural beauty surrounding me whenever I escaped the banal scenery of suburban Chicago. Owasippe occupied thousands of acres in east central Michigan, adjacent to the Manistee National Forest. Its breadth encompassed a variety of terrains: Forests and fields, bogs and marshes, streams, and deep, clear blue lakes. Every new day revealed and proclaimed God’s handiwork in every Anatevka sunrise, sunset.
The night sky not to be outdone, it also gave its testimony to God’s handicraft with a midnight blue canvass illuminated by a million twinkles of light, galactic winks to those below its vast moonlit canopy. Staring into the nocturnal Owasippe sky, I learned the summer constellations and the stories of ancient mythical heroes. These were the same stars my father and grandfather gazed upon when they were young men before beginning their heroic journeys and becoming my heroes.
Like Thoreau, living simply, I understood why God would survey all that He had created and pronounce it all very good. As every new summer approached, only church camp would hold greater excitement for me. Our Scout troop spent the entire year preparing for our summer of adventure in pure Michigan.
This included deciding which merit badges we would earn at camp and calculating how much money we needed to fundraise to get there. As spring began its roll into summer, we would finalize head count, chaperones, transportation, and of course, dollars needed for the commissary. Man cannot live on bread alone, and teenagers cannot live on cafeteria camp food alone.
We always arrived on a Sunday afternoon, joining dozens of other Chicagoland Scout troops. Unlike our weekend camping trips, this was glamping before there was a need to invent such an odd word. We had our own campsite furnished with tents set on wood pallet floors, metal cots with institutional foam mattresses, and full bathroom facilities, along with plenty of acreage between us and our neighbors. We were blissfully unaware of any other human life in our neck of the woods.
Even as teenagers, we would be up around seven each morning, gobbling whatever breakfast was prepared at kitchen HQ before heading off to do whatever activities we had scheduled. At Owasippe I learned to swim, canoe, shoot with a bow and arrow and a rifle, identify various flora and fauna, complete conservation projects, weave a basket using marsh reeds, and identify starry constellations.
At night, before the pollution of personal electronics, we would grab our flashlights and walk the dark dirt roads connecting the campsite to HQ to attend the nightly reservation campfire. The audience included the week’s visiting Scouts and was hosted by the staff who called this place home for the summer. This assembly of masculine vitality numbered well over a hundred.
Every evening’s campfire increased in size and production value, culminating with Friday’s final campfire which was ignited by a flaming arrow descending from above onto a five-foot-high stack of kerosene-soaked wood five feet deep. More than chestnuts were roasting by this open fire.
Each evening’s performance included a preview of the following day’s activities, and the weather forecast. Campfire stories told the achievements of the first people to occupy this land, and we sang ridiculous, boisterous campfire songs. We’d end this communal evening with words of gratitude to our Creator without needing to be specific as the vigorously roaring campfire faded to embers.
Leaving in quiet reverence, we would head back to our campsites guided by the battery-powered lights in our hands and the heavenly powered lights above, not yet understanding that the vigorous roar of our youth would eventually give way to our own embers.
Peace. God loves you.
This story is an excerpt from Finding God in Vegas: A Gen X Spiritual Awakening, available on Amazon and across all platforms in print or electronic.