Scoutmaster Podcast 111

And now to you, Scoutmaster, The incredible, mysterious, unanswered questions of the outdoors. You know what I mean, right?

I mean, have you ever seen a sleeping bag Or a hiking boot Or swimming trunks? I can't remember ever seeing that.

How about a square lashing? Have you ever tried to make a fire lighter?

Or have you ever seen a tent pitch? Have you ever seen a walking trail?

Let me ask you this: do you have any Scout reservations? Oh, I got a million of them, but I'll spare you the rest, okay? Hey, this is podcast number 111.

Music. Welcome back to the Scoutmaster podcast. This is Clarke Green. I really apologize for punishing you just before the theme there And for the pun that I just made.

Hey, you've got to have better jokes, right? So here's the rules. They've got to be Scout related And you need to get them to me. You can email me or you can call up on the Scoutmaster hotline. You'll learn how to do that at the end of the podcast here.

But, yeah, send some better ones, would you please? And let me know if you watch your name associated with the joke that you sent, Because I can't be responsible for what happens after it goes out on the air.

You know people knocking on your door and stuff I don't know. Hey, let's get over to the mailbag and see what's happening. Kevin Montano, via Twitter, said: Just listen to your interview with Bob Mazooka, Nice job. I also love that you use the Jupiter piece as music on that podcast And he's talking about Gustav Holst and his composition, The Planets, and the section that we played was Jupiter, the bringer of Jolody. Yes, Gustav Holst.

Well, there's your culture moment for the Scoutmaster podcast for this week. Kevin, thanks so much for your kind words. Over on iTunes. A couple of new iTunes ratings. Do this for me: If you subscribe through iTunes, go over to iTunes. Leave me a comment or review or rating.

Please, Pretty, please. Yes, Bill did this week.

He says: love this podcast, starting a new troop a year ago And it helped me in so many ways. Without this podcast I'm not sure I would have the motivation to keep at it, Looking forward to all future shows.

Well, you keep at it, Bill, And congratulations to you for starting a new troop And thank you for your kind comment there. DoGuy said: thanks, Clark. Clark does a nice job of passing on pertinent scouting info. Thanks for taking the time to help the rest of us Scouters. Again over on iTunes, DoGuy. Thank you, DoGuy.

Mike Smith is the Scoutmaster of Troop 440 in Silver Spring, Maryland. Mike got in touch by email.

He said: thank you so much for all you do in Scouting at the local, national and international level. Admit it, Yes, the podcast is international and you help many Scouters.

Well, I do know that I have listeners up in Canada. We heard from them a podcast or two ago And I know that I have listeners in South Africa and in New Zealand and in Australia and in England and Ireland.

I believe. Listen, get in touch, Ring in, Let me know where you are in the world. It would be great fun. Kevin goes on to say the podcast and the blog are refreshing and rejuvenating my enthusiasm for Scouting. Incidentally, the production quality of the podcast keeps me coming back.

Hey well, thank you very much, Kevin. I really appreciate your getting in touch and with such nice comments. Jamie Humphries is a Scoutmaster for Troop 4277 in Flugerville, Texas, And he said this: as always, you've been a great resource for all things Boy Scouts. I almost feel like you're my traveling companion, since I take you along with me on my plane flights and road trips. Just a couple of weeks ago, serendipitously, I was listening to your Order the Arrow podcast with TW Cook as a guest speaker, and I was headed to take the Texas Seabed Training class with the same guy, TW Cook. Commodore Cook was hosting a class up on Lake Texoma.

Since this is the Centennial of Sea Scouts, I think it would be great if you would highlight the program on one of your podcasts. I think it would be great too.

So listen folks, get in touch, Okay, ScoutmasterCGcom. Use the contact form there or email me at scoutmastercgathorizonnet. Tell me what I need to know, who I need to talk to about sea scouts. Thanks for that idea, Jamie. Hopefully folks will get in touch and thanks for your kind words. And sea scouting in Texas- Really, Really, Probably not the first place I thought of when I thought of sea scouts.

That's interesting. Anyway, over on Google+, Phil Peck said: Clark, you're my hero. I just spent a day and a half off of work to prepare for teaching Scoutmaster a specific training tomorrow. My scout hour has got to be about 12 hours by rough math for this week. I'll have to run it through your formula to determine the more accurate number. The post you put up about scout hours made me laugh out loud.

So many of us feel an hour a week is just a complete and utter joke. It has been for some time, hasn't it? But you've proven by laws of math and magic that it is just our perception of time that is off. Keep up the great work and I really appreciate your scout hour that you put in each week.

Well, thanks, Phil. Thanks for being in touch. Phil's a longtime listener and he's been in touch several times before, And he is referring to a post I put on the blog at scoutmastercgcom this week about how to calculate your scout hour. That's right, It's amazing, You wouldn't think, but there's been a lot of work by a group of dedicated scouts who are doing research projects out at Fillmont's Large Baden Collider, And they've come up with some amazing things and I posted about it this week.

So you definitely want to get in and check that out. So this week on the podcast, we have somebody I was very excited to get an interview with And I'm going to introduce them to you in just a moment, And then I'm going to issue you a little challenge. That's right, I'm going to issue you a little challenge after the interview And that's going to take up the whole podcast this week.

So let's get started, shall we? Andrew Skurka has won a lot of attention for his solo long distance backpacking trips. For instance, he hiked a 4,700 mile six month expedition in Alaska and the Yukon, which would be like a lifetime achievement for most of us, But that was basically one of the shorter ones. He covered 6,800 and 75 miles in seven months following the Great Western Loop in the United States, But that's still not the longest one.

He walked 7,775 miles- just saying that makes my feet hurt- in an 11 month sea to sea route across the US, And he figures that in the last decade or so he's covered 30,000 plus miles And that's the equivalent of traveling 1.2 times around the Earth's equator. He's been named adventurer of the year by both outside and the National Geographic Adventure Magazine, as well as Person of the Year by Backpacker Magazine. He's also the author of the recently published Ultimate Hiker's Gear Guide from National Geographic, And if you look at your March- April edition of Scouting Magazine, there he is right there on the cover. I'm happy to welcome Andrew to the Scoutmaster Podcast. Good morning, Andrew.

How are you? Good morning, Thanks very much for having me.

Well, no, I really appreciate you spending the time. How in the world.

Did you end up doing this? I think I sort of stumbled into it. I never set out with the intention of making this into a lifestyle, But I did my first long distance trip when I was still in college.

It was 2002, when I did the Appalachian Trail And after graduating I did that sea to sea trip And I think things just sort of escalated from there And I was fortunate that I hadn't developed any extensive habits or taken on any extensive responsibilities And that kind of allowed me to be like a dirtbag hiker, if you will, Kind of like a dirtbag climber, but I was hiking instead And slowly over time I was able to build it into something that was economically sustainable as well. We're talking with volunteer scout leaders and we're all parents.

So you are getting ready to graduate from college. You were at Duke, right, Correct? And you decide that you're going to go and do a through hike of the Appalachian Trail, If I have the timeline right there, Yeah, I did it before I graduated. It was actually between semester- My son's name is Andrew, by the way- And he came to us like in the fall semester of his junior.

He says: you know what I think I'd like to go and spend three or four months on the Appalachian Trail. How did your parents react to that when you told them that you had this great idea?

The Appalachian Trail is part of our larger plan, So the economy at the time was pretty bad. It was just difficult to find anything worth doing for the summer.

So I kind of pitched it as something I could do this summer, that I could sort of knock off my bucket list And that way, when the economy is a little better and my odds of finding something worth doing were better, I would be available for it. And they were thrilled about this.

They weren't thrilled, but they were okay with it. The plan made sense then. They just didn't expect that when I did the Appalachian Trail, that wasn't going to be enough.

So the trip that they really got upset about was that sea-to-sea trip, because instead of doing something with my $150,000 education, I was instead, in their view, sort of pissing it away by taking on this useless, dangerous, Useless, dangerous, crazy. Yeah.

But I think my feeling on it was that I was at the one point in my life where I really could do something like this. I was young, I didn't have any responsibilities, I hadn't committed to a career, to a woman, to a home.

I hadn't done any of that stuff, So I was going to do anything like this and that was the time And I stuck with that decision because I had made the realization that these lifestyle decisions are mind-making And there's a lot of pressure from society, from parents, from peers, to take that very conventional track which is your college degree, job, house or wife, house, kids, retired at 65. And there's a lot of pressure to do that And I had made this realization that if I wanted to make a different decision I could do that And you know.

So the message I see in that for us folks is: listen to your kids carefully, Listen to what their plans are, what they're thinking about and, hey, you know, down the road, look what can happen. The traditional way out is not the only way out, And Andrew's a real good example of that.

I'd also add, if I could, I think I'd also add that I think any experience in which your child is putting themselves out of their comfort zones and is having an opportunity to grow will probably be a good thing in one way or another. Absolutely, I absolutely agree with you And I think scouting- we kind of major in that, putting people outside their comfort zone in a lot of ways.

So you talk about the first real backpacking trip. You went on as being that you left. You set out from Springer Mountain in Georgia on the Appalachian Trail.

How did that go? Oh, it was bad. It was bad.

So it was my first Congressman's trip. It was my first backpacking trip, And now I describe myself as a camper by default, which is a backpacker that takes too much, because they're basically packing their fears. They justify a lot of your decisions on the grounds of what if or just in case, And they just don't know. I also shared a lot of conventional gear, which is because I just didn't know any better.

I thought that what the industry was telling me and what an REI catalog was telling me that that was the right thing, And then finally, I had. No, I wasn't able to use any gear that required any special thought or skill to use. Everything had to be foolproof.

So I wasn't capable of setting up the tarp, so I had to use a double wall pen. I didn't know how to. I didn't know how to select a good campsite. I didn't know how to pack a bag. I didn't know how to pack a bag correctly.

So it was as necessary that I had some big bomb-proof suspension pack where it didn't really matter how I loaded it, It was in there and it all sort of fit at the same. So I didn't have any skills.

So that was kind of my three main problems. Unfortunately, a lot of beginner and, to that matter, I think, still a lot of intermediate backpackers are like that and their experience is just so miserable, their hiking experience is so miserable that they end up just wanting to camp because they just they can't enjoy hiking.

I think that your experience that you had is played out in a slightly smaller scale by scouts, like hundreds and hundreds of times every year They give this a shot Tens of thousands of times, Tens of thousands of times. Yeah, Probably you know there are 20,000 kids who go through film on every summer and probably of those, probably 19,000 of them probably are not doing it right. You go into detail about that experience and kind of the evolution that you went through as far as the selection of gear and everything and your philosophy and your approach to these trips in the Ultimate Hikers Gear Guide- And I have read the book, I've looked at it, Folks you will have seen yesterday, I posted a review of the book in advance of being able to talk to Andrew here on the podcast. It's really a game changer.

I think it's a great piece of work and I think it's going to make things really, really work for people. If they'll go and look at the book and follow your advice, I think we're going to see a whole lot more successful backpackers developed out of it. I certainly hope so. The way I've been presenting it is basically I look at it as a $20 investment. I've traveled, as you said in the introduction. I've gone like 30,000 miles.

I've made a lot of regrettable purchases of gear. I've made a lot of mistakes and have suffered as a result because I chose the wrong stuff or I didn't have the skills to use it properly, And I've also made some really good decisions that I've learned a lot along the way. In the book I share that The focus is on backpackers who want to enjoy hiking.

I think that there's plenty of information about there for backpackers who want to enjoy camping. They can take it like: read a book by Knowles. Knowles specializes in camping.

They're basically car campers that are mobile And there isn't that much information on a mass scale about. If you actually want to enjoy hiking, which is different. You're moving, You have to carry all of your stuff, And that's kind of been what I specialize in is trying to figure out how to enjoy the walking aspect of all these trips I've gone on. That's like this connection that people don't make.

That's why I think the book is a real game changer, because it comes at it from the idea of trying to define, like, where you are And then if you want to get to the point of being able to backpack comfortably, you know here's what you do. If you want to end up being an ultimate hiker, if you want to really challenge some big experiences, you know here's what you end up doing.

And you know I read the part in your introduction that you were kind of aiming at trying to do the complete walk, or Colin Fletcher's the complete walker for this century, And I think you made it. Well, I appreciate that reference. Yeah, that was definitely my objective. Colin's book is the awesome books. They change the way that people backpack. Unfortunately, that we've, as I guess.

Fortunately, we now have our disposal new gear, new supplies, new techniques that allow us to do it differently and to do it better, And that was my idea of writing the book. Yeah, well, I think you were successful in kind of helping to redefine exactly what we're doing out there and how we make it happen.

Well, One of the things that I first saw about you was a YouTube video and it really made me anxious to talk to you, And this video is when you encounter the porcupine caribou herd, Right, And where were you at the time? I was up in the Yukon, Arctic, So basically far north, far northwestern Canada.

So you have, like this moment- I don't know exactly how to describe this moment- a moment of enlightenment or clarity or some kind of transcendent moment. Can you share that with us?

Can you explain what happened? Yeah, I still struggle to explain it, to be honest, But basically I've been so worn down by what I was going through And at the time I was in the middle of a 657-mile 24-day stretch without crossing the road and without seeing a human being, And I was just getting beat up on a regular basis by big floods and bears and mosquitoes, And I was just so worn down by those elements, in addition to just this larger sense of exposure and risk and self-dependence- that I, when I came up on a porcupine migration trail corridor, which is this very visible track across the tundra. I just broke down and realized- or not realized, but felt like I was tapping into their energy- And I knew that this is a species that, for their survival, has this journey plus a year where they migrate back and forth from their wintering grounds to their migrating grounds And when they're on that journey they are just basically eating, sleeping and moving. And for me it was the same thing And I had this sort of connection with the caribou, where I was just one of them. I stopped being some elevated species, I was just another animal, first in this landscape that was going through or was having the same experience that they were looking over my shoulder. I was trying to send myself off from those variables that I listed before.

It was a pretty amazing moment, Definitely not something that had happened before and not something that would have been possible if I hadn't really almost only intentionally worn myself down and just wasn't unable to keep my guard up to have that experience. Yeah, I think adventurers and campers, you know, I mean you can go car camping and you can get a glimpse of this experience.

And I think, if you've been out in the woods enough times. Anybody who's listening has had a little glimpse of this type of thing. That's really really hard to explain. I mean, I imagine you're going to spend the rest of your life trying to figure out exactly what happened to you there. Yeah, probably. I'm actually not sure if they're just someone who backhacks them lower 48.

Well, I don't know, It's hard to say. I mean, I think the key feeling is just feeling like your life is on a string.

I think that's the way to describe it. So if you wander into your backyard in such a security place and you feel like your life is on a string- and, yeah, you kind of get a glimpse- But I would say that a lot of- if you were to just drop yourself down in a helicopter, exactly where this happened to me, you probably wouldn't feel that. You probably wouldn't get that sense because they're just like you hadn't.

I think part of me being able to experience that was having gotten there under my own power and having had all those prerequisite experiences. Yeah, This is what I think is so important about getting outdoors and about camping and pushing yourself and challenging yourself in these situations- is you find things out about yourself that you would not find out otherwise. That's certainly one of them. You confront yourself and nature and whatever your set of the religious way that you look at the world, you confront that on a very basic level And this was something that has been one of the intentions of scouting. That was founded was to get in the outdoors and to be able to learn these things And whatever these things are.

They're really, really hard to define, But I think anybody who's had even a glimpse of that experience. So right now you've written the book, you're on this like crazy long speaking tour.

What's the next big adventure? Of course It tends to be a three-year cycle.

After going on a big trip the first year I take off and just try to get some semblance of a normal life back, Because it's you know, with the Alaska trip it was six months of doing, six months of planning And even before I left my friends were saying, hey, have you left for your trip yet, Because I haven't seen you in two months. So it's important for me to come back and try to get a semblance of a life back and just try to re-achieve some balance. Year two: I usually go out and do some smaller trips and build up some different skills and explore some new areas.

And then year three: after having had that, hopefully like a sort of a light bulb moment and aha moment, in year two, I do a big trip into three This year or this go around. It looks like it's going to be a four-year plan. I basically writing the book was an adventure of its own. It took a thousand and thousands of hours of work And I'm also, as you've mentioned, I'm on this big 50 event speaking tour right now.

So it's, it took me a little longer to go on a big trip, but I'd expect to go on another one- We'll see, Yeah, And I felt like I'm not getting out. I mean, this year I'm guiding. I'm guiding probably about about 75 days worth of trips.

So I'm doing a bunch of three-day trips that are all around the country and then seven-day trips in the west. So that sort of helps inside me over a sort of a different challenge of its own in terms of really understanding people and team dynamics.

And you know, it's also a lot of responsibility: taking a group out in the wilderness and being responsible, Not only their safety but just as importantly their happiness with their experience. And if people are interested in looking into that, andreskerkacom?

Is that where we go? That would yep.

And there's a link to my guided trips And it said you know any. There are some three-day trips in particular would probably be helpful for a lot, of a lot of scout parents and Scoutmasters. They're learning intensive experiences where we we don't hike that many miles, no more than five, and three days we'll probably do like a five and a 10 and a five and that's about it.

But the whole emphasis is on learning about different shelters, different clothing systems, clothing systems out there, And then, once we're out there, we'll do things. Do things like hiking efficiency, but we get us kind of spending a lot of time in camp and learning this stuff, With the idea of being that you can, you can hike on your own time.

Where are they? And ballpark the cost for me, Sure.

So there's seven different locations. There's Northern California, Fiske National Forest, Shenandoah National Park, White Mountain National Park in Hampshire, Olympic National Park in Washington, Quartz, Prime Mountain State Park in in the UP of Michigan, I think, and Lake Mount National Park in Colorado. The cost is $600, which comes out $200 a day, which is actually quite a bit less than a typical nose course, which will run at about $230 a day, And my assistant guides are equally equally qualified. One co-founded backpackinglikecom. Another was the first to hike the triple crown in a single calendar year.

So he did the Pacific Cross Deplation Trail on Pacific Cross or Crossel Provide Trail on a year. And then the other is actually was a mills instructor for 20 years.

So it's a really qualified group And there's also discounts available if you sign up with more than one other person or if you sign up for a three-day trip and a seven-day trip. So well, listen, one of these days I'll get you back to talk again, but I really do appreciate you spending the time today. All right, sounds good. Thanks, Clark, Thank you, Come swing along to a hiking song on the highway winding west. This is Bob Mazzucchi, scout executive of the Boy Scouts, and you're listening to my buddy, Clarke Green, on the Scoutmaster podcast and he is doing a fantastic job. That's right, it's time

For a Scoutmaster's Minute.

I want to appeal to your imagination for a moment. Maybe you've had this experience and maybe you haven't. You are carrying a canoe through the Canadian wilderness on your shoulders, You're being bitten by mosquitoes, It's hot, It just rained.

You know It's a pretty miserable experience. And you get to the end of a portage and you put that canoe down and you wipe off your brow and you wonder: what in the world am I doing here?

And then, all of a sudden, right in front of you is your mom moose with a little baby moose, And you look at that moose and that calf and you have your answer. Or perhaps you've shouldered a backpack and you've started hiking and you're out on the trail. You're 10 miles in on the first day and your feet hurt and your back hurts and you've got too much stuff and it looks like it's going to rain. You've set up your tarp, you've put up your tent, you've done whatever you need to do.

Somehow you managed to cobble together a campfire and you're sitting there and you think: what in the world am I doing? And you look around at a bunch of faces of scouts lit up by that campfire and there you have your answer.

In order to make these experiences happen, you need some vision, and that vision is what I want to try and give you today. I want you to have this experience and, by extension, I want your scouts to have this experience. You need to get out there in the woods, on the water on the mountaintop, wherever, and you need to make that experience available to your scouts and to kick it all off. You need to have that vision. You absolutely can make this happen. It doesn't have to cost hundreds and hundreds of dollars.

It doesn't have to be in some world-class location that is expensive to travel to. It can happen just hours away from where you're hearing me right now. It can work. It can happen. It can be a backpacking trip. It can be a canoe trip.

It can be an extended camp out. It doesn't have to be a trip that will be written and talked about for centuries. It doesn't have to be anything expansively giant and special, but it needs to happen and you're going to make that happen. You're going to make that happen for your scouts. It's something that you've got to do. It's something that you've got to do.

You may think you're too old. You may think you're unfit. You may think that your scouts won't be interested in doing it. You may think that it's dangerous, that it's ill advised, that you don't have the time.

Well, look at the scouts that you're working with. If your son's involved, look at him if he's 12,, 13 years old right now. You need to start working on this right now. If he's 14 or 15 years old, you need to start working on it right now. If he's 16,, 17,, 18 years old, you still need to go, because this door is not going to be open for you forever.

So we're going to make a pact that, if you're listening to this, you are going to be the person who has the vision to make this happen for your scouts. You're going to get them out there on a challenging, wonderful, multi-day wilderness experience of one type or another, and you're just going to figure out how to make it happen. I'm going to point you to some very practical advice that I have used in the past to put together these trips. We'll be taking two crews to Algonquin Provincial Park this summer for a week of canoeing.

I think this will be our 9th trip out there. Last summer we were over to Switzerland, to Kondersteg International Scout Center, in just one of the most beautiful places on the face of the earth. I've got to tell you something: you can do it, you can absolutely do it. And not only can you do it, you really must. You really really must.

So tell your scouts, tell your family. We're going and then make it happen.

And then make it happen.