Day 3: "On my Honor..."

The Boy Scout oath begins "On my honor, I will do my best..."  If you read the entire oath (including the part about obeying the Scout Law) it's a highly aspirational promise - take a minute to read it and think about your typical day: 

http://www.scouting.org/scoutsource/BoyScouts.aspx. 

Any of us would be hard-pressed to fully live the words of the oath on any given day but falling short is not failure.  Failure is not making an honest effort to do your best.  Our Troop 15 scouts have been making their best effort this week to learn, have fun, support one another and to behave with integrity - they're a good bunch of boys and Gerry and I have appreciated the opportunity to spend the week with them! 

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, a goal of scouting is to develop leadership.  Part of that is encouraging the boys to work together to do much of the work of running the troop.  An example of this at camp is working with their Senior Patrol Leader (for this week, Aldo Eyasman) to schedule what activities they want to participate in at Troop Time every day.  Yesterday's troop meeting was entirely led by Aldo, and the boys discussed their preferences in a spirited but respectful way so Aldo could represent the troop in the Senior Patrol Meeting  and sign up for the next day's activities.

In what appeared to be our last day of hot weather this week, we opted to spend a lot of time in the water yesterday, at swim beach and doing the infamous pier jump!  Several of the boys overcame their fears and made the 15 foot plunge into the cool but refreshing waters of Hood Canal.  They also learned about "tracking" animals through the woods in addition to everyone working on their advancement and merit badges throughout the day.  After dinner last night we finished off the day's troop activities with shooting at the riflery range.

Thanks to my son Thomas' birthday being in this week, we ended the day with birthday cupcakes, some singing and and a few presents.  Then it was time for a few stories around our "campfire" and a quick read of one of my favorite poem's by Robert Service, "The Shooting of Dan McGrew".  Shortly after lights were out, the wind kicked up and our heat wave of the last few days came to an abrupt close.  Last night was great sleeping weather, despite the winds howling through the trees overhead.  Day 3 had come to a close.

Signing off for now, Tom