Scoutmaster Podcast 340

I'm Justin Feld. I'm a Scoutmaster with Troop 89 in Downersgrove, Illinois. This edition of the Scoutmaster podcast is sponsored by backers like me. Thanks for everything you do, Clark.

And now to you, Scoutmaster, Have you heard any good jokes? One of the ones that I heard recently that I really like is: uh, why did the nearly blind man fall down the well? Why He couldn't see that well. Oh, that was pretty bad.

Did you tell the dinosaur one? Oh, no, no, no, tell that one.

What do you call a sleeping dinosaur? I have no idea, Clarke Green and a dinosaur. You guys have been getting like boys' life because all these jokes came straight out of boys' life.

I think What I'm doing is I'm just writing them down and waiting a couple months so I can mail them in and get the two dollars. That's what I'm gonna do.

Hey, this is podcast number 340.. Hello and welcome back to the Scoutmaster podcast. This is Clarke Green.

Tell you what? This week we're gonna skip the mailbag, not skip it.

We're just gonna hold it off for a few minutes And let me get some other business out of the way, because I wanted to tell you that, um, we did have a great live chat session this past week, And Jack Parks, who's a Scoutmaster in Troop 279 in Peachtree City, Georgia, joined us, as did Edward Steele. He's the Scoutmaster of Troop 73 in Bolton, Connecticut. Christopher Moynihan is from Anacosa, Texas, where he is the Scoutmaster for Troop 604..

Arthur Donche joined us from Macarthur Township in New Jersey, where he's the assistant Scoutmaster of Troop 55,, and Ted from Troop 45,, a Scoutmaster in Glen Allen, Illinois, also checked in, as well as many of our frequent fliers. So we had a pretty full slate this past week at the live chat. Keep an eye on our Facebook feed and our Twitter feed and come and join us when you see that a live chat is up. This will usually be Tuesday mornings.

We have a great time on the live chat. We answer all kinds of questions and then sometimes we just talk about the weather or stuff you know.

So come along and join us. It's great fun.

I want to take the time to thank everybody who's become a Scoutmaster cgcom back or since last week. So thanks to Travis Anderson and Preston Sewell, Cole, Maddox, Daniel A Dinkin. All of those folks have become backers since our last podcast. It's easy to become a backer. Give us a little financial support.

We have two ways of doing that. Go to any page at scoutmastercgcom- We're looking at notes for this podcast and you can become a backer or you can become a patron, And I want to say thank you to all of you who are backers and patrons. You're the folks that keep things running for us.

Well, if you've been following along for the past couple of podcasts, a couple of my old Eagle Scouts are out hiking the Appalachian Trail. That's right, they're through hiking the Appalachian Trail. They started a few weeks ago. I've been doing my best to keep up with them. I have another installment, another conversation that I recorded this past week with them to play for you. But before I get to that, I heard from Bruce Kolkbeck- And Bruce is an assistant Scoutmaster, Troop 442 in Salisbury, North Carolina, And Bruce has been a film-on advisor for many years And both he and his son- his son in 2012, and Bruce in 2016,- have completed through hikes of the Appalachian Trail.

Bruce got in touch with me and shared these reflections. He says: I don't judge the success of our troop by how many Eagles we crank out, but by the number of Scouts that continue to enjoy their outdoor experiences and the leadership it builds into their adulthood.

So having two Scouts who are adventurous enough to take on a commitment as long and tough as the Appalachian Trail says a lot about your troop and you as a leader. It's a gift that keeps on giving.

You've done very well, my friend. Well. Thank you, Bruce. I appreciate that. It's been a source of great pride that those guys are out there doing this and all the other guys who've been through the troop.

I know that there are some of my other Scouts who have through hiked the trail and there are certainly many of them who keep up their outdoor adventures. So once again, Bruce, thanks. Bruce goes on to say a fellow assistant Scoutmaster and I finished our AT through hike last year over 2000 miles southbound.

So that means they started up in Maine and they headed to Georgia In the Northeast. We ran into college freshman orientation contingents that were going backpacking as a way to learn to work together.

Universities like Harvard, Princeton, Yale and Trinity, as well as many others, were represented on the trail. We also saw groups from expensive summer camps for teens. We saw outward bound crews with lots of kids whose parents had paid dearly for them to get a little dose of an outdoor experience, And these were all led by paid and trained professionals. This is something that you and I do as volunteers. If you've ever wondered how many academically advanced and ambitious people from Harvard University it takes to hang a bear bag, it takes all of them. I watched chipmunks take apart the food they left on their picnic table while they set up their tarp, And I did shoe the chipmunks away after a while.

Oh, We saw film on training crews getting ready for their summer's trek and we were always impressed by the quality of skills and leadership the scouts showed. The adults who were involved were really already on vacation and the scouts were in full charge and on task. I will say that amongst through hikers, scouts do have a reputation for being loud and overcrowding campsites. It's common to hear through hikers say: run for your lives at scouts.

Yeah Well, I know. Many through hikers told me stories of scouts arguing over cooking.

Well, that sounds like just about any camping trip I go on, And we did see some embarrassing and some, frankly, downright dangerous behavior in some of the scouts we encountered. Their campfires were almost always way too big, They overcrowded campsites, cut corners on the trail and often seemed to have literal no appreciation for leave no trace principles.

I know people notice what we do as scout units and we need to be acutely aware of this. Especially in the wilderness, First impressions are lasting. I know, boy, there can be some really big groups on the trail that are loud and overfilled campsites and that can be unpleasant for other people who are out hiking.

So you should really pay attention to that if you're going on backpacking, especially someplace as well used as the Appalachian Trail. But anyway, Bruce closes with this thought. He says: if top tier universities and expensive outdoor training programs are utilizing the same methods and providing the same experiences we provide in scouting, we must be doing something right.

You know parents need to know about this. A weekend backpacking trip where scouts hike for 10 miles and work together as a patrol or a crew to accomplish a common goal is a lesson that is valuable and that they will carry with them for the rest of their lives. There is value here for young people and it won't cost all that much. Yeah, certainly not as much as being a freshman at Harvard University or going on an outward bound trip. All those things are great if you got the money to do it. But you're getting Bruce's point here right.

Bruce goes on to say every scout is better for the experience of scouting. Thanks for listening to my long winded speech. I rehearsed it for 2,000 miles, Bruce.

Thanks so much Excellent thoughts and a great perspective from somebody who has through hiked the trail and has been as involved and dedicated to scouting as you've been. I really do appreciate you being in touch.

Well, as I promised, I have some bits and pieces of a conversation I had with our through hiking eagle scouts, Bucky Kellogg and Wade Bastion. That's going to take up the remainder of the podcast, so let's get started.

Shall we So gather your hot dogs or your s'mores, if you desire, and come crowd around your own personal campfire.

So here we are again, folks with Wade Bastion and Bucky Kellogg. You would have heard them a podcast or two ago. They are through hiking the Appalachian Trail.

How are you guys doing? Oh, fantastic, Great, Yeah, feeling very good on this very stormy day while we're sitting inside And tell me where you are, We are in Fontana Dam, so just before the Great Smoky Mountains. When the state of North Carolina Bucky, how many miles in, are you 164.7..

You sure about that? Yes, You were hot in February. It's been pretty warm. When we climbed up from the Natahala Outdoors Center I would say it was close to 70. There was no wind, it was real sunny. We had just eaten a very large lunch and we had to do like a seven-mile straight uphill climb.

It was torture. Oh, so bad. It's awful. I ate burgers. Two half-pound patties for a double. There's stuff on it too.

Yeah, I had a whole list of toppings and the waitress came over and I was like just put everything that I can. So that was like carrying a rock, like a big 40-pound rock.

Yeah, Tell me about your knee. The knee has gotten better. This thing it happened a bit this past summer but it really started happening pretty bad on the trail.

I think it's my IT band. So right along the side of my knee it gets inflamed and starts hurting after a while, Mainly on the downhills. We took time off.

See, we ended up spending about, I think, like five nights in Hiawasi just relaxing because of the inflammation. When we got back on the trail we were shelter-hopping, doing five, six miles a day, going real slow, just trying to get some strength back in there, And we bumped up to 12, 13-mile days without a problem. Have you had your knee looked at at all.

I went to the hospital there in Hiawasi and they just said it was inflammation and we stopped again when we were in Franklin. It was a really cool outdoor store called Outdoor 76. It's a cool shop, Yeah. It was really neat.

So we stopped there and talked to them for a while and the guy there that we talked to, who was like the leg expert, really put it into perspective. He essentially compared through hiking and like the beginning of through hiking to like spring training and pitchers in baseball, And sometimes throughout the season they'll get to like 80,, 90, 100 mile an hour pitches, But right now in spring training they're not doing anywhere close to that because of fear of like hurting their muscles and stuff.

So it's all very slow warm-up. He really made it clear that the best thing to do is to slow down.

So we've definitely done that, especially on the downhill sections. It's definitely helping. I really don't feel that much in my knees. I have an ace bandage that'll wrap my knees in just for a little bit of compression, but that's about it.

Do you have hiking sticks? Yes, Oh yeah, I started hiking with the trekking poles while I was a summit steward this past summer I realized like, oh wow, these really help with my knees And I've never gone back. I love my trekking poles. I know First time I was up in the Adirondack. I'm crawling up Mount Marcy just like the way that I do, And everybody going past me is like flying along with these trekking poles. First time I ever saw trekking poles was on some public television show about hiking.

Somebody had these trekking poles and they're like: yeah, these are a big deal in Europe, Everybody loves them and everything. And I said that is the stupidest. Look at the thing. Because it was You use a good, old-fashioned hiking stick, You don't use trekking poles. But if I had had $1,000 going up Mount Marcy and somebody would part with their trekking poles, I would have spent $1,000.. Oh yeah, We actually.

We had that conversation today at breakfast. We were talking about having trekking poles and using them And one of the guys we were eating with was like, oh, I just use sticks I find on the ground. If one breaks, I pick up another.

It's like, oh, okay, great, Yeah, This is the first time I've ever hiked with trekking poles. I'm not 100% sold, but I can tell it makes a difference when I need it to make a difference. I end up carrying them in one hand a lot because I don't want to keep that movement. Just, it starts to annoy me after a while.

It's too much trouble to like collapse them attached to the pack and then take them off when you're on downhill. I don't really want them uphill, I want them downhill.

Yeah Well, that's where I mean. I have a lot of trouble downhill on my knees and stuff. That's where they really help. No, I know what you're saying. They can kind of get in the way.

So you resupplied. How did that happen?

Before the trip started I was doing a lot of dehydrating the individual parts for our meals and then putting them all together and vacuum sealing them. We have those in mail drops that Bucky's mom is sending to us. We picked up our mail drop which had seven dinners in it. We had one leftover dinner from our last stretch and we went to the supermarket to just pick up snacks and some granola and things.

Have you shed any gear? Like our third day?

I mailed back my camera and it was so unwieldy and I couldn't get it that fast, so I just mailed it back. I have a Sunto watch which does a lot of stuff, but I tend to keep most of that off because I want to save the battery. But the one thing it does do- no matter what if the pressure really starts dropping- is it gives me a storm alarm, which is real nice.

Has it been useful yet? Not really.

I mean the one thing that I actually, this past summer I was talking to one of my co-workers and I was just mentioning to her, like you know, this great old man that I knew once. He had this great ability to be able to tell the weather just from the clouds, just looking at the clouds.

He could, you know, be a soothsayer and say exactly what weather was going to be, and I thought that was so cool. And she was like: you know, you can do that too. And we looked at the clouds.

The cloud spotters guide- I think it was some British dude- wrote it. It was really funny and told me all about the clouds, which led to my first trail name, which was Cloud Whisperer. But that is no longer the case.

I just now a guy who stares at the clouds. Oh yeah, we didn't tell the story of Wade's name.

Well, tell me the story of Wade's name. So it started. We're in camp, we're just sitting around. This guy comes in. He asked us if we knew what the weather was going to be and I said I can't remember the last time I looked at the weather forecast, because I'm trying this thing where I look at the clouds and try and predict what the weather is going to be like. From there he goes: oh, you're some kind of cloud whisperer.

Huh, that's your name, Cloud Whisperer. So that was my name for about a day was Cloud Whisperer.

And then the next night we were in a shelter so I heard like mice all night and squirrels or something like there was just rodents making noise in the shelter all night. So we get up, we pack everything up, we're sitting there. Wade finishes stretching and he like goes to put his shoes on and he starts laughing and he comes in and he's like: oh, hey, check this out.

It just jumps his shoe out and there was like a pound and a half of egg corns. So I started calling him nut shoe.

So he's cloud nut shoe. Yeah, a squirrel tried to pay him a dowry and he's a runaway bride. Yeah, cloud nut shoe. Yeah, just, I go by just nut shoe for short, but cloud nut shoe is the the full thing that I'll like sign banners and stuff with.

Oh okay, sounds like a girl in 4-H in in a little town in Indiana and she has a prize winning Angora Rabbit and that's what she calls it: cloud nut shoe. Yeah, I appreciate you spending some time again with me. Guys, a lot of people have been interested in your adventure in the through hike. Hope you enjoy the smoke. Yeah, I'm really excited to get moving. Yeah, it'll be a good time.