About the Author

Clarke Green became a Scoutmaster in 1984 at the age of 24 and continued in that position for the next thirty years. During that time somewhere north of 120 of his Scouts earned the rank of Eagle.

In 2005 he started a blog as a place to think through what he was learning and share it with other volunteers. He added a podcast, and by the time he stopped blogging and podcasting in 2019 there were nearly a thousand posts and 300+ episodes.

Clarke was never an official of the BSA or any other Scouting organization. Everything here represents one Scoutmaster’s experience and should be confirmed against current official guidance.

He also staffed his council’s summer camp for twelve years, including two seasons as camp director, and is the author of three books: Thoughts on Scouting, The Scouting Journey, and So Far, So Good.

Recognition: Silver Beaver · District Award of Merit · Scoutmaster Award of Merit · Boy Scout Leader’s Training Award · Vigil Honor, Order of the Arrow

Author’s Introduction

Almost all of my writing and speaking here focuses on the idea that Scouting works when the Scouts are in charge and adults know when to get out of the way. I said this in a hundred different ways over fifteen years, and every troop I’ve ever known has struggled with it, including mine.

The patrol method is the engine of all of this. Not as a slogan or a box to check, but as a living thing — patrols that plan their own campouts, patrol leaders who lead by example rather than authority, Scouts who make real decisions with real consequences. The Patrol Leader’s Real Power and Authority gets at what that actually means in practice. So does the A New Scoutmaster series, a twelve-chapter work of fiction I based on the real stories readers and listeners shared with me over the years — a new Scoutmaster named Chuck Grant, trying to restore the patrol method in a troop that has forgotten how. This series became my book So Far, So Good.

There’s also a lot here about what volunteering actually costs. Hitting the Wall is about the moment every dedicated Scouter eventually reaches — when communication breaks down, nothing works, and the get-up-and-go gets up and leaves. How Scouters Deal with Disappointment and Stepping Down and Stepping Back treat the inner life of a Scout leader as something worth taking seriously.

I shared the writings of notable Scouters — Baden-Powell, John Thurman, Ernest Thompson Seton — and returned to them constantly. The long-running B.P.’s Blog series was my attempt to keep Baden-Powell’s original thinking in circulation, because much of it is more useful than anything written since. His writing on the patrol system holds up better than most of what’s been written since.

Along the way I was joined by some generous collaborators — Walter Underwood, Larry Geiger, and Enoch Heise among them.

You’ll also find practical writing on outdoor skills, gear, Eagle Scout and advancement, working with parents, troop administration, and the broader question of what Scouting is actually for. Some of it I’d write differently now. Some of it I stand behind completely.

My greatest satisfaction as a Scoutmaster was figuring out why Scouting works when it works, and why it doesn’t when it doesn’t, and watching a troop full of boys sort themselves out when adults got out of the way. That never got old.

The archive covers 2005 to 2019. When I retired from actively serving as a Scoutmaster I decided I had said and written everything I had to say on the subject.

A number of kind folks have contacted me over the ensuing years wondering about my health and the site content. My health is fine at this writing (spring of 2025) and this archive answers the second question.

I’ve said everything I intend to say on the subject — roughly a thousand times, as it turns out, and it’s all here. Please don’t write asking for more; there isn’t any. Step away from this screen and go outside with some Scouts. That’s my best advice, and it’s free.

Clarke’s current writing is available at cagksq.com.

My retirement coincided with significant changes in the BSA’s membership policies, and some may conclude I left in protest. The opposite is true.

I had advocated for the admission of LGBTQ members and leaders — in posts like Jay’s Story, Confessions of a Straight as an Order of the Arrow Boy Scout, and BSA ends the ban on gay leaders — for many years before those changes came.

The same goes for girls in the BSA; Girls in the BSA? and BSA Separate But Equal Plan for Girls make my position plain.

While I’m on the subject: there is one change I have long advocated still to be made. The BSA continues to exclude non-believers, which I have never been able to reconcile with Scouting’s stated universality. A Scout’s Duty to God, Freedom of and from Religion, and Access and Discrimination explain why.