Scoutmaster Podcast 83

And now to you, Scoutmaster David. Is there anything that we missed that you'd like to tell people about? Uh, not that I can think of. You're going to get your eagle. You're going to state it publicly. You're going to get your eagle before the HF is.

I am going to get my eagle. I have one more meeting for a merit badge and then I'm done with all the required merit badges and that's the last requirement I have left.

So I'm right there. Alright, let's see how good I am.

Alright, It's an eagle-required merit badge. You have one more meeting left for it, and it is family life. No, it is not.

Alright, wait a minute, I've got another chance. It's got to be a 90-day wonder. Yeah, it's got to be personal management. Nope, Oh man.

Alright, David, what is it? Oh, it's for citizenship in the community. Oh, come on.

So you were a good boy and you did family life and personal management a long time ago. I did actually.

Okay, Alright, well, Did you fill out your Boyce Gear Eagle Scout workbook? I have completed that.

I'm going to let you know when David finishes his Scoutmaster Conference for Eagles. Okay, David, do you have enough people breathing down your neck yet, Or not? I mean, I'm getting to the limit. Yeah, Hey, this is podcast number 83..

Hey, welcome back to the Scoutmaster Podcast. This is Clarke Green. You're going to hear a little bit more from the fellas that we heard from just a moment ago before the theme Later on in the podcast. It was part of an interview that I conducted, but more about that later. Let's take a look and see who's been in touch over the past week. I heard this from Mark Craner.

Mark is a Scoutmaster down in Texas and he wrote a post on the blog this week at scoutmastercgcom that talked about opportunities and he said That post really hit home with me, Clark. As a Scoutmaster, I often find myself concentrating on the few Scouts missing out, as if I failed to bring them into the fold. You're very right.

We need to encourage and then step back and let Scouts make their decisions. It's such a joy to see Scouts who are first reluctant find their way back into Scouting and so on, to do great things. Thanks for this post. It was just what I needed to hear.

Well, thanks for being in touch, Mark. I'm glad that you found that useful. Frank Maynard was in touch about last week's podcast- podcast number 82, in which we talked a little bit about discipline in Scouting and we also talked about Scoutmaster conferences, in response to a couple of emails we had received, and he said this podcast was chock-full of great information for Scoutmasters. I wish this material was covered as thoroughly in Scoutmaster Leader-specific training. I'm recommending it as a must-listen for our troops Scoutmaster and our assistant Scoutmasters.

Well thanks, Frank. Once again, it's always good to hear from folks and that they're finding the information that we're putting out useful. I also heard from Josh Ney.

Now Josh is a Scoutmaster of Troop 44 in Glen Olden, PA, and he said: hello there. I subscribe to your blog and I thoroughly enjoy your posts. I noticed that you are not all that far away in southeastern Pennsylvania. I'm about 40 minutes away and I hope to meet you sometime at an event in our area.

Well, Josh, the feeling's mutual. We're not in the same council, We're not in the same county. No right, You could run into somebody. It's always good to hear from folks, whether you're from across the country or from the next county away. Do be in touch and you can email me, Clarke Green, at ScoutmasterCG at Verizonnet. Now.

This is that time of year when the fall program is getting ready to start. In our packs and troops and crews.

I know that our troop has got a full slate of activities and we've got some- you know- council and district stuff coming up, so we're going to have a very busy and, I'm sure, satisfying fall and spring. But let me ask you this question: What are you going to do next summer?

What are your plans? You know most of us will probably end up going for a week at Scout Camp and everything like that.

But how about an additional adventure, And that's the focus of our podcast this week, Out there in Sunnyvale, California, is a troop- troop number 466, and they have an assistant Scoutmaster named Mike Malone who has put together just some really amazing once in a lifetime adventures for their scouts. I had the opportunity to sit down with Mike and a life scout from their troop, David, and we had an interview and we talked for a while about the adventure that they went on this summer, which was a recreation of part of the Lewis and Clark expedition out in Montana, and talked a little bit about how you make that happen and what the youth role is in making stuff like that happen, and it's meant to inspire you to start thinking big and to start thinking about that once in a lifetime adventure that you're going to create in the coming months and maybe years.

And, as you'll hear Mike say, you just need to have the brass, you have to have the moxie to say, hey, we're going to make this happen, and you get people on board and then, wow, you can do some pretty amazing things. And we're going to talk all about that here in just a moment and that's going to take up the rest of the podcast.

So let's get started, shall we?

I've got a couple of guests joining us on the Scoutmaster podcast today and I think you're going to be very interested in the story they have to tell. Mike Malone has been involved in scouting since he joined as a boy way back in 1965, and he went on to become a 13-year-old Eagle Scout. And, for those of you guys who go way, way back, Mike was a chapter commander in the Knights of Dunamis, which was a precursor to the National Eagle Scout Association.

So if you remember the Knights of Dunamis, you go way, way back. We're almost all dead now.

Well, you're still kicking. You're still doing pretty good, Mike. Mike returned to scouting with his older son in 2001 and since then has served as an assistant scoutmaster for Troop 466 in Sunnyvale, California, And I've got him talking to us today about organizing and leading some once-in-a-lifetime adventures.

How you doing, Mike? I'm good.

How are you? I'm doing okay. We also managed to get David Bauer, who is a life scout in Troop 466..

Still a life scout, David? Yes, I am Almost there.

I actually have one last requirement for Eagle and then I'll be done with that, And you are 17 and 10 months, Yes, 17. And 10 months. Yeah, about that, Right around there. See, I didn't even have to. That's just, That's 25 years of experience talking right there. Folks, I knew that somehow.

So, David, tell me about this once-in-a-lifetime adventure this summer. Well, we flew out to Great Falls, Montana, Went to the Montana State Fair and we did a flag ceremony at the State Fair, Just spent a couple of days in Great Falls and then on Sunday the boat, the replica of the Lewis and Clark Bat-Toe, was delivered to us and we loaded that up on a trailer and on Monday we transported it out to a campsite right on the river where we met up with some Lewis and Clark re-enactors who taught us some basics, like on how to make fires and what they ate when they were out on the trail and things like that, And so we camped that night and then we spent the next couple of days on the river in canoes and on the boat, and we did a total of over 50 miles in three days on the river, and each day we stopped at one place for lunch and would do a little side hike or something like that, And then on the last day when we got out of the river then we drove back to Great Falls and the next day we did a handing-over ceremony for the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center and we donated them the Bat-Toe. Over the next couple of days we worked on my Eagle Project, which was to build a stand and display for the boat, and that ended on Saturday. And that was pretty much it. It was really fun.

So tell me about this Bat-Toe, Describe it to me. It was a 25 foot long keel boat, completely period, accurate material, so it's all wood- and it had a one square sail that we put up and down on the mast, which the mast also went up and down to aid for transporting it, and had room for four people to row and one person on an oar in the back to help steer, and the entire thing weighed over 900 pounds.

So where in the world does a person find a Bat-Toe anymore? We had it made from the Buffalo Maritime Center in New York.

Wow, So once in a lifetime, Definitely. What do you most remember from this trip?

I'll probably remember most detail, but later on will be when the last group in the Bat-Toe missed the takeout on the final day on the river, and, being a couple other scouts, we ended up running down the bank of the river and jumping into the river and dragging it back upstream for a quarter mile and then holding it in the water next to the takeout while we tried to get it loaded up under the trailer for probably half an hour. Yeah, just 900 pounds. Yeah, only 900 pounds. Yeah, no big deal. You got that right, Of course.

And what river were you on? The Missouri River, And so obviously you guys were recreating a piece of the Lewis and Clark expedition.

Yes, Did you acknowledge about it before you went? Prior to the trip, the only things I knew about Lewis and Clark were stuff I'd learned in school and things like that.

But once I learned about what this trip was going to be focused on, I watched a documentary and did some research on what Lewis and Clark did when they were in the area, like that stretch of the river that we were going to be on, just to kind of see how their trip went during that portion. And how did their trip go About?

Like yours? Well, they spent over a month portaging around all the falls and great falls, and we just did a float trip a little north of that.

There was a lot harder than ours was, but we were going downstream too, so it would have been on the way back from their journey, And on the way back they were doing upwards of 60 miles in a day. So that was completely different than what we were doing, because we were doing usually between 10 and 15, and completely different gear and stuff.

But it was just interesting because we were on the same river that they were on and we stayed at some of the same campsites that they stayed at. So it was like in touch with history.

And how many people were on the trip? I believe 27 people, including Dad. That's a pretty good size group.

This is one of a series of four annual adventures that Troop 466 has done and, Mike, you've been involved in planning all of those and putting those together and you put lots of links in the post that contains this podcast so people can learn about them in more detail, because they really are fantastic. What was the first one, Mike?

We traveled to the UK and we did the Wainwright Walk, which was a walk created by a rather eccentric English gentleman, And he sat down one day and said: I wonder if I could walk all the way across this country on existing trails and private paths. And he created the Wainwright Walk. I was up near the Scottish border in the Lake District and ended up on the North Sea at Robinswood Bay, and it's 193 miles. I had a group of overachiever older scouts. I found myself in a position of being an assistant Scoutmaster in charge of the older scouts.

We have something called a bank patrol and these are all scouts that are typically have been patrol leaders. They finish that. They're working towards their eagle. They hold senior positions in the troop and a separate existence for them beyond the troop.

So they're still at the troop meetings, but we have Vanguard patrol meetings at a restaurant. They wear a suit and tie and we're trying to teach them more adult skills and give them more adult experiences to keep them engaged. We do a lot of air badges. We do a lot of other things.

I was kind of driven to create something that would be so compelling that these older kids- and these kids are going off to Berkeley and Trinity and UC San Diego- give them something that would keep them engaged in the troop now that they had their eagle. And so this trip was just five scouts, two dads for half the trip and then just me for the other half, And we hiked at 193 miles across the country. It was kind of elegant camping because we stayed in people's houses every night. We finished that we went down to the World Jamboree and in the midst of all that we also took a train down to the channel and went to Brown Sea Island for the 100th anniversary of the original. That was 2007, then 2007..

Well, that sort of set a precedent. The next year I felt obliged to come up with something equally interesting And, as it happens, I inherited a farm, my great-grandfather's original landrush farm, just outside of Enid, Oklahoma. I surveyed the train tracks along the Chisholm Trail in the 1890s.

I read about Chisholm Trail, cattle drives, reenactments of them- There's only been one big one- And I contacted the woman whose father had been the cowboy on it and I said: can we put something together? She got together a group of cowboys and a Catholic priest was the chuck wagon master, and when they brought along a chuck wagon with mules and gathered up horses for us, rode 50 miles up the Chisholm Trail and towards the end of the trip we drove cattle And most of these boys had never been on a horse before And we camped on, you know, out on the stars every night and we had guest speakers and musicians. It was fairly arduous, but the boys had an amazing experience That compelled us to do another one.

So luckily they went to Fillmont the next year, which brought me a little bit of time. The subsequent year we did a Civil War experience.

So we went to Northern Virginia and we went out to the Balls Bluff Battlefield- and David was along on that one too, And a couple of his buddies were doing their Eagle projects, in fact- and we essentially restored the Balls Bluff Battlefield. We cleaned up the cemetery, planted new grass, scrubbed the gravestones, We finished that.

And then we were immediately taken as involuntary enlistees into a Union unit And one night we were taken out by the Confederates and we were captured and taken out at Skirmish And then we camped with some reenactors from the California Brigade of the Pennsylvania Regiment, And these guys came out from Pennsylvania and we camped on the grounds of an antebellum mansion And we practiced drills and fired rifles and learned all about that. We went up to Gettysburg, had a college professor and authored gave us a long lecture on the California Brigade during the Battle of Gettysburg. We walked to Pickett's Charge, I should mention. We began the trip by marching in the parade on the Capitol Mall. We finished at the National Jamboree where, in our Civil War uniforms, we conducted the flag ceremony on VIP Day and one of our scouts handed the Chief Scout Executive a big photo of the day.

So that was quite the finish too. So, David, you got to do the trip to Leesburg and everything. Yes, I was on that one.

What do you remember from that one? One thing that always stuck out was the heat when we were doing the first parade.

When we first entered It was just the whole Being in full Class A and 90 degree weather and then 90% humidity was not that great. But some guy did do the parade in a bomb suit because they had Eagle Scouts that were supposed to dress as their profession and he was a U of D guy in the military, so he did the parade in a bomb suit and then I kind of felt lame afterwards looking at him.

You know, Mike, where do you even get started with something like this? I think a lot of people have these kind of ideas, maybe that this would be a great thing to be able to do some kind of adventure, but few of them come to reality.

What elements have to be there to make something like this happen? I've turned into a fairly systematic process at this point, but there's always a large element of serendipity and the unexpected.

So I feel like the Scouts have always needed that historic dimension. So I'm very interested in giving the boys some sort of contextual experience of American history or world history, And that is to say, I want them to be 40 years old and sitting in a bar somewhere at home watching TV, and they show on the television cowboys, Red River and they're driving the cattle across the Sinron River and they can say to themselves: I know what that was like, I know what that felt like. I've done it Each time.

I begin with a kernel of a notion of history and then try to build out from there. The Lewis and Clark one came really because I used to run a magazine called 4JFAT. Stephen Ambrose was one of my writers on occasion And he wrote the great Lewis and Clark book and once he invited me he said: come up to me at the Montana, Let's float down the Missouri River through the Missouri Breaks.

Unfortunately I didn't take him up on it and he's gone now, But it always went back in my mind. I thought a Lewis and Clark experience would really be something.

So, beginning with that, you know none of an idea- I began to build outwards. So I began to research Lewis and Clark and what kind of boats they had, And they were using these two, what they described in the journals as bat toes.

So I began looking at bat toes and I discovered that there was a program at the Buffalo Maritime Center of State New York, on the lake there in Lake Erie, and they built a bat toe. So I contacted Roger Allen there, the guy who builds them, And he said: yeah, love to. Actually, an Eagle Scout and some other scouts helped on building the boat there. It was a perfect replica.

Now, simultaneously I had to figure out what service can we do. Creating a historic trail on the river would be one thing And another scout on the troop took that one. David wanted to do something physical, He wanted to build something.

Well, I got a hold of the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center in Great Falls and I said: are you guys interested in receiving a bat toe as your new exhibit? And they were high on the idea.

So I connected David with Roger Allen in Buffalo and with the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center people And I just sort of stepped back from that part of the process And David worked out with them how to build a cradle for the bat toe and all of that. And he also helped with getting the boat, arranging it to get it to Great Falls.

But now we had all of that put together. So the next thing was: could I get people in Great Falls to help us help the bullies learn? And we ended up with a whole group of Lewis and Clark re-enactors who came out on three different occasions and gave extended presentations and showed what kind of food they ate. Trappers came and showed furs. They showed the rifles and the pistols and the weapons. It was really quiet.

It was a Native American re-enactor who came and talked about the history of the tribes there And so the boys got a real full immersion in this before and after. We went on the river, In the river itself. Most of these boys had never been on a canoe on a river And the bat toe. None of us knew how to sail, We didn't have a rudder, It had a stern sweep and great big bore.

So we literally learned as we went along the river And there was no way off that river for those 53 miles. The river was quite spectacular.

I mean, we were staying, as David said, staying in the campgrounds where Lewis and Clark camped, And we were going down a river in a craft just like theirs, And we learned a lot of things. I mean, that boat didn't have much of a key on it, So if you put the sail up and the wind came in sideways, that boat skidded sideways And David was very polite, not to say. But what happened at the very end of the trip was: I'm standing on the bank watching the bat toe come down the river And I suddenly realized they're not going to bake to the bank And the next bout is 50 more miles ahead. But they ended up, as David said, a quarter mile down the river, with David and Brandon Hayes diving into the river and grabbing the bow rope and throwing up on the bank And everybody slowly pulled. Part of my original plan was for them to actually experience what it was like to pull that bat toe up the Missouri River, One of those serendipitous moments where at the very end of the trip they got that experience. I also had everybody wear period clothes.

So, David, what is that like? Well, I fell into the river on the first day- Not actually when we were on the river, I was getting out of my canoe and fell right into mud.

So then I was covered in mud and water for the rest of the trip. But I actually wore a Coonskin hat the entire time, which got pretty hot during the day because it's all leather on the inside, But I didn't have to worry about it blowing away in the wind and then by the end of the week I was pretty used to it and it felt kind of weird not wearing a leather hat. You got a real taste of an authentic historical experience. Yeah, Not necessarily always like something you might choose to do. No, it wouldn't have been something that I probably would have thought of if Mr Malone hadn't suggested it, But it ended up being fun. I mean, it's one of those crazy things where it's a real challenge and it's not real pleasant while you're doing it and it kind of hurts and it's hot, but it turns out to be fun in the end.

Yeah, So the elements for this: first of all, Mike, you have a passion for history That kind of keeps you motivated and lights your fire about doing these things. You also build in an element of service is something that to me, would be uniquely scouting.

I don't think that would be the first thing people would think of in putting a trip like this together, but that is an added dimension to it. That also is a big motivating factor, Hopefully.

I think that's the heart of the trip. It begins sort of like scouting itself. Scouting hooks you with the camping and the knife and the fire and all that, and the ropes and all that and the knots and everything. That's how scouting lures you in. But ultimately scouting is about service And these trips are the same thing.

I mean, we have the high concept, which is Lewis and Clark or Civil War or Cowboys driving cattle, But at the heart of it, what they come away with is they've made a major contribution on it. We restored a number of miles of the Chisholm Trail, repainting the old concrete posts, And that's now playing a crucial role in getting the Chisholm Trail National Historic Trail status in Congress. That's what's going to be in the spring And they're using some of our work and publicity as part of making the case for that- The Civil War one. The results are going to be the reenactors going to go out there and see something really historically correct and beautiful And he was to say the people of Montana just got themselves a beautiful new exhibit at their museum.

They're going to have a historic trail And, David, I think I have a pretty good idea of what attracted you to participate in these types of things. What was the selling point for you? Basically, it's just the great summer adventure. I hit the opportunity to go spend a week with my friends that are in the troop doing some awesome trip that Mr Malone has put together, something that I would never be able to do if someone hadn't proposed it. I never would have thought of traveling to Virginia and reenacting the Civil War or flying out to Montana to do a Lewis and Clark canoe trip, But when the idea was proposed to me, it sounded like something that would be a great way to spend a week or two in the summer and get a really unique experience and not very many other people have gotten the chance to do before.

What was the youth role in preparing and getting everybody on the trip and then conducting the trip itself? On both trips we had a SPL for the trip who would basically run a lot of the things on the trip. But before the trip we would have meetings every other week to figure out how the planning of the trip is going and discuss things. A lot of times it would be scouts that would bring up ideas for what gear would need to be brought or how food would work and things like that.

For my Eagle project I ended up doing a large bulk of the work for figuring out how to actually get the bateau from New York to Montana and coordinating with the Interpretive Center and the Maritime Center and just figuring out how we could get that there so we could actually have the trip. Pretty extensive preparation and pretty extensive work on your part as a youth leader in this.

I'm adding that to my list So far we've got. There's passionate vision that just really lights somebody's fire and they say, wow, this would be a great thing to do. You add to that an element of service.

I'm going to repeat myself in saying that's not the first thing most people would think of. I think that's a huge part of this.

And then you also have the element of involving youth in leading and planning and thinking it through. I mean it just sounds like a wonderful thing to be able to do. Let me add a couple more things to the list. One of them is value-added experiences, And that is once you've got the core trip put together, and once that's happened, I typically hand over the logistics to a mom or a dad. The details are because we're a boy-run troop.

The details go to this SPL and the scouts that are their Eagle projects, And then I go off and start looking for value-added things. So we went to the Charlie Russell Museum. I found out that the State Fair was going on.

Literally, when I got there in Great Falls, I found out the State Fair was going on, So I called the PR director and I said, hey, you know we do a historical flag ceremony. We have seven flags that we tell this whole thing and unfurl the flags. And she said: come on over, let's do it.

So we ended up in front of a big crowd in front of a concert doing a flag ceremony. I locate any historic trail patches, metals that the boys can learn.

So they earned four of them when they were going to Virginia. I keep adding more and more stuff until every second of the trip is completely filled. Some of those things turn out to be busts, Some of them turn out to be the best part of some of the trips.

And the next thing is: you've got to be flexible and adaptable. Something strange will happen, Something will go wrong. There's a lot of improvisation going on in these things. That's the next factor: adaptability.

And then the final one is, and that's publicity. Publicity is not that hard. You just have to know who to call and figure out what your hooks are.

When we did the Chisholm Trail, Every TV station and newspaper in Oklahoma covered this, And then we ended up on a cover of Scouting Magazine And Boy's Life is doing a cover story on the Lewis and Clark trip. So what's the next big once-in-a-lifetime adventure?

Well, I try to keep it secret from the truth as best I can, in part because I want them to be surprised and thrilled and in part because I can't guarantee it's going to happen until right about now. Right, yeah, I'd love to do that, sailing on the coast of the Northwest in a square rig. That would be an amazing experience. The other big one I would love to do- and I'm going to have to figure out how to get one of these Silicon Valley companies to help sponsor it- I'd like to take the boys to Africa. I've spent a lot of time in Africa. My son's Eagle project- my oldest son- he got an Adams Award for it- was working with an orphanage in Zambia.

I'd like to take the boys back to that orphanage And I'd also like, toward the Hornaday I'd like to reintroduce a white rhino, or a mating pair of white rhinos, to Namibia. I have a friend there that said I'd like to bring a couple rhinos in Namibia and have the boys help out doing that, then go work in this AIDS orphanage in Zambia.

I think that's an amazing trip. David does that.

If I put a rope in your hand and there's a white rhino at the other end, you're in right? Oh, of course I mean because a white rhino is only a little bit bigger than a bat-toe. It might weigh a bit more, I would imagine, but that would. That sounds like an amazing trip to me. These are things of like immense scope and real vision.

Does anybody ever come along and just tell you that you're nuts and this is not going to work? I think they've come to believe I can pull off miracles. You just kind of have a moxie to go after it. That's what it comes down to.

I think I'm a Silicon Valley Algae Entrepreneur at heart. I want you to take this the right way, but you're nothing special. I mean, this is not something that would be impossible for other people to do. Not at all, especially if you delegate the responsibilities and the scouts really carry the ball for the core of the trip.

You know the service. I mean, that's their job- to put that together and deal with the adults. That's what an Eagle Project is.

So that takes care of itself. You just got to have the.

You know the guts to go for it And you're not tired of doing this yet. No, I find it very intriguing.

What have the implications been for the trip? The word about these trips gotten out there?

I mean, is it caused some excitement about Troop 466?? I know our Scoutmaster, Dave Holt. He says that one of the things he hears of this is the reason that these parents are bringing their little Webelos to the 466 is because they've heard about these trips and they hope one day to do it.

If I'm going to put something like this together, or if anybody listening begins to catch on and they think that this is a great idea, we need a little creativity, We need to bring it together with a little creativity, We need to brass to be able to say, hey, this is going to actually happen, so let's start moving forward. And then those other elements we talked about. This is the right time of year to start sparking people's ideas about something big for next summer. Mike, you're a reporter and an author and you're completing a book to be published in 2012 about the history of Eagle Scouting. Eagle Scouting turns into a hundred next year.

And is this a BSA book? It's going to be a BSA book.

The museum and archives have opened up all of their photographs, So it should be a major, major book. You probably see it in every Boy Scout to shop next year.

Well, hopefully, as soon as it comes out, we'll get back together. We'll put you on the podcast again and talk about it, Deal? I read the same feeling in your blog, which is: it's a great honor to work with these kids. When you're talking about kids that are on their way to Eagle, you're really dealing with extraordinary young men and it's just an honor to be able to help them have great adventures. I'm sure they appreciate it. It's great work that you're doing.

I really appreciate you guys taking the time and I hope we can talk again sometime. Yeah, thanks, Clark, Take care. Thank you, Music.