I've been a leader of Scouts of the both the Cub and Boy varieties for about the last third of my life. I enjoy the avocation very much. I've done quite a bit of camping, a few canoe trips, a little hiking, traveled to some fun places and seen some neat things. Along the way I've met folks whom Carolyn and I count among our dearest friends. I admit it's a lot of responsibility, leading a group of fifteen or twenty adolescent boys into the woods. That's especially true in Scouting, since they're armed with knives, axes and fire. Fortunately the boys I've led are for the most part trustworthy, loyal, helpful, and all the rest of the things that Scouts are. I and my assistants never endured a Lord Of The Flies experience, but along the trail one or two things happened that made me wonder if perhaps I shouldn't seek a less risky hobby. But as a Mr. Sorenson, one of my wise Scouter friends observed, last year's disaster campout is this year's great story.

The first memorable moment happened not long into my tenure as a Den Leader in our son's Cub Scout pack. It happened when Patrick was in second grade. Our pack participated in a project called Scouting For Food. It's a nationwide outreach of the Boy Scouts of America in which Cub packs and Scout troops collect food for local charities. That particular year our local council provided white plastic grocery bags imprinted in green with the Scouting For Food logo and instructions for would-be donors. The bags' instructions requested that they be filled with non-perishible food items and placed on the homeowners' front steps for collection on Saturday morning. On one den-meeting night, we loaded the boys down with armloads of bags and they spent the evening tying bags to the front doorknobs of every house in the neighborhood.

Saturday came and Den 4 gathered at our meeting place, the local Congregational church. Several other Cub Scouts and leaders from the pack's other dens joined us. The leaders split the neighborhood into different sections and each den collected from their section. Pat and I rode with Cubmaster Tim, his son Kevin, and a couple of my other charges. Kevin was in my den so I knew Tim and his wife fairly well. As we made our way along quiet Wyoming streets, the boys fetched bags from porches and steps with the full-on gusto that only eight-year-olds can muster. I hunkered in the back of Tim's Bronco, sorting various kinds of food into separate boxes. Soups went into one box, canned vegetables into another, and boxed goods into a third.

Our system worked well for several blocks. The boys ran from house to house like trick-or-treaters in their blue-and-gold uniforms, neckerchiefs flying behind like Superman's cape. Kevin swung one bag up to me and then he was off again. I reached in it and pulled out a box full of doorknobs!

What the...? I looked down at the bag. It was green and white but it sported the logo of a local home-improvement store! I called for Tim to stop the truck and beckoned Kevin over. I showed him the bag and asked him which house it came from. Kevin then gave me my first answer I really didn't want to hear.

"I don't know."

I stuffed the doorknobs back in their bag and disembarked. Kevin and I retraced his steps until we came to the house where he thought he'd picked them up. I knocked on the door. No one answered. I left the bag on the porch and we hurried back to our duties, hoping that we wouldn't be picked up for doorknob-napping! Maybe I should have just put an ad in the paper and let the owner contact me.

Let us fast-forward a few years to around the turn of the century. I was then the Scoutmaster of Troop 102, and the troop was heading to a fall camporee. We drove our sponsoring church's old, well-used 12-passenger Ford van. (I don't want to say anything against that poor old van...I might be old and slow someday too!) It was the first campout I led as Scoutmaster that I didn't have my predecessor with me in case anything went haywire. The trip started out with a wrong turn. I arrived at the designated campground, but I turned one driveway too early and had to turn the church van around. That would not have been a difficult undertaking under normal circumstances. Unfortunately the two-track road we were on dead-ended in the campground and turning around involved backing down a boat launch. That wouldn't have been any harder than backing down a steep driveway, except that I had the troop's gear trailer hitched to the back of the van. Even that wouldn't have been completely unnerving, but I had nine agitated boys watching my every move. Our vehicle was just short enough that I made the turnaround with only a couple of close calls; everybody slept dry that night.

Saturday's activities erased the Scouts' memories of jockeying around in the boat launch. Before long evening approached and dinnertime advanced on us. I sent two fairly-new boys, whose names were Ryan and Tommy, to fetch water for cooking. They picked up the blue two-gallon water jugs and headed off. The other boys unpacked food and set up the stoves. The evening had turned cool and damp. Ryan and Tommy returned presently, carrying the jugs between them on long sticks they'd found in the woods. The boys proudly delivered their cargo and announced that they'd found two water outlets from which they'd filled up.

As I picked up a jug to fill a pot that would soon hold spaghetti, Ryan looked up at me and innocently said the second thing that I really didn't want to hear:

"Mr. C, what does 'non-potable' mean?"

Contrary to the way this story's been embellished at various scout-leader gatherings and around many campfires, I did not lose it. I merely told Ryan that it was special water for putting out campfires. I also announced that he and Tommy would get special training in sanitizing water jugs at the next Scout meeting.

There are six words that I never want to hear in combination ever again. I heard them one July in the wee hours of the morning at a Scout camp in northern Michigan. Going to summer camp is the pinnacle of the year for everyone involved in Boy Scouts. The boys spend their days earning merit badges, swimming and diving in the lake, shooting .22s on the rifle range, hiking through the woods, making crafts and learning woodlore. Scoutmasters do all of the above except for earning merit badges; sometimes we end up teaching them. Our greatest reward for the week is seeing the boys grow as self-sufficient young men and watching them revel in their accomplishments. The second-greatest reward is a whole week away from work!

It takes a little while to adjust to camp life. At home I'd cuddle up next to my wife in our own comfy bed. At camp I share my tent with a buddy and sleep alone on a squeaky iron cot. It takes a night or two to get used to the new environment, and Tuesday night is usually a Scoutmaster's first night of really good sleep. Such was my case. By Tuesday night I had trained myself to lie still in the cot and relax so that the iron springs didn't squeak at all. I was deep asleep, just reveling in my repose when I heard the sound of footsteps outside my tent. They weren't the footsteps of forest creatures; they were definitely human, and they belonged to a young Scout named Paul. It was Paul who brought me the six words I never want to hear together ever again:

"Mr. C?" Paul spoke soft and low.

"Yeah?" I groaned, trying to shake the cobwebs loose.

"There's a...skunk in our tent!"

Paul said it like he couldn't quite believe it either. Earlier in the week we found a skunk resting in an unused tent, and when he realized that we weren't going to feed him he went on his way. But now, possibly smelling some illicit snacks stashed in someone's gear, he'd returned. I almost told Paul that if the skunk could take it in their tent he could too, and to go back to bed. By that time my tentmate Steve had awakened, and we decided we'd better look at the situation.

Steve and I grabbed our flashlights and followed Paul back to his tent. Sure enough, there was the skunk, a full-sized one, laying under Paul's bunk like a big fuzzy slipper. On our arrival at camp our guide told us that if any skunks came into our campsite we could convince them to leave by shining a flashlight on them. Steve and I stood at opposite ends of the tent and shined the skunk. The skunk, who had missed the meeting, didn't know his part. He held his ground, his beady milky eye staring vacantly at nothing.

There is nothing written at all in the Scoutmaster Handbook about evicting skunks. We owned this problem ourselves. Steve and I consulted as Paul and his tentmates hunkered on their bunks and stared at the intruder. We decided that perhaps the skunk didn't know how to get out, and maybe if I lifted the side of the tent he'd reorient himself and wander away. I went to the side of the tent and, sticking my fingers well past the skunk's last known position, I slowly lifted the canvas. From inside I heard four unusually high-pitched voices hiss "Back off! Back off!"

I dropped the tent and looked in the door. Steve told me that the skunk didn't like the motion of the tent-raising and threatened to blow his cool. He was going to blow something anyway, and Steve and the three boys found themselves looking at the pink of his...well, suffice to say they stared down the barrel of a loaded skunk!

Steve and I went back to shining our flashlights at him until the skunk, who only wanted peace and quiet, ducked under the tent and disappeared...into the Cooper brothers' tent! The Cooper boys were pretty calm as a rule, to the point where occasionally I'd hold a mirror under the younger one's nose to make sure he was still with us. It was a trait that served them well as their leaders flung their tent open at 3 AM and whispered, "Don't move! There's a skunk in your tent!"

The skunk finally tired of the game. He lit out of the Coopers' tent and made an end run around Steve...and then made a beeline for our tent! By that time I'd had enough of the skunk, tents, camping, and everything else connected with them! I threw my flashlight at the interloper and yelled "Scram!" He waddled off into the woods; on our last day at camp he gave us a parting shot. But the experience didn't dissuade the boys from Scouting. Paul, his tentmates, and the Cooper boys all made Eagle Scout.

Obviously, a Scout leader's job is not for the faint of heart. It has its frustrations, and a time or two I declared that anybody who wanted the job could have it that night. But the rewards far outweigh the aggravations. I've seen the sunrise from a campsite on a high bluff and watched as the woods across the river turned bright amber. I've heard the loon's call echoing across a lake after sunset and seen shooting stars fly across the sky above our campsite. I got to camp out on a submarine. Most importantly, I've had the chance to do some good for the boys and young men in my charge. Nothing will ever replace the joy I've seen on a boy's face as I've crunched down the burnt offering that was his first try at cooking breakfast over a campfire. And I've had the privilege of pinning a red, white and blue medal on a brand-new Eagle Scout. I had some trouble getting it pinned, and his mom thought the boy's shirt was falling apart. But his shirt was fine; it was his Scoutmaster that was coming apart.