Camplore

At the end of October 2006, our Boy Scout troop lost one of its dearest assets, a long-time assistant Scoutmaster. Steve H. was the father of four boys, three of whom have completed their Eagle rank, and married to a wonderful woman who supported him and the boys, not from a distance, but from the front trenches. Scarcely an event went by without most if not all of the family there, serving, working, playing, laughing, teaching. Steve worked with the Trail to First Class boys, and he knew every boy in our troop, even while the rest of us were still trying to straighten out which one was Ryan and which one was Sean. At 50, Steve made his second trek to Philmont with my son, who reported he was a maniac, especially for his age. Quiet, behind the scenes, hard working, devoted to teaching boys to become the kinds of men that would make a mom proud. I wish I could’ve told Steve what that meant to me. We all miss him, and I hope my son never forgets the kind of person Steve was.

As a high school student, a couple of friends and I took a long drive down a desolate road late at night in a far corner of west Texas. It was time to find the Marfa lights, and we were not disappointed.
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Stargazing in southeastern New Mexico mountains - it’s a great place to enjoy the night sky. The Sacramento Peak Solar Observatory is in Sunspot, NM, and The Southwest Institute for Space Research, founded by Alan Hale, the co-discoverer of Comet Hale-Bopp, is in Otero County.
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Girl Scout camp is a magical place. The opportunity to try new things, learn self-reliance, build lifelong friendships, and share all these things with a group of other girls was a valuable part of my growing-up years.

One of the things that made camp so special was we were isolated from the rest of the world. The only vehicles on the property were driven by the handyman or camp director. The area that surrounded my camp was national forest, and the drive to the camp property was about four miles up a dirt road to the top of the canyon. With the exception of true family emergencies, phone calls were not allowed. And to top it all off, the adults in positions of responsibility were known by names like Robin, Sailor, Freud and Woody.
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Wild people have always made me more nervous than wild animals, but I am quite a coward about animals. Just ask my friends about me getting trapped in the latrine with a porcupine outside the door.

My favorite camping areas are frequented by black bears when the wild food picking isn’t so good, or they get trained to come down out of the hills for the garbage bait someone left out for them. My closest encounter with a bear problem was in Gunnison Park, Colorado, on a family camping trip when I was in fourth grade.
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I like to read. I know people who like to read even more than I do, and I am usually the beneficiary of their completed “dead tree” books or the occasional gift certificate for an online or MobiPocket read on my Sony Clie. I’ve grown accustomed to the size and scrolling of a book page on my PDA, and I’m always happy that I have a book with me when I’m waiting somewhere.
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Funny how even people who are afraid of most bugs seem to like ladybugs. My youngest, Eric, is a typical rambunctious 6 year old boy, but becomes a quivering mass at the site of a mosquito or fly, and scrambles to get as far away from it as he can. But put a ladybug in front of him, and he is quickly engaged in watching it, with a smile on his face.

In the mid-1970’s, I was on a burro pack trip in July in the Sacramento Mountains of New Mexico. About 5 other girls and I covered 8-10 miles a day on foot for 10 days, with our trusty, if stubborn pack animals hauling our equipment and food. Even in those days, it was a rarity to experience a pack saddle, especially for over a week at a time. It rained reliably each afternoon, usually for 3 or 4 hours.

Some 5 days into our journey, we arrived at our campsite (really a sloping field with only landowner’s permission and a nearby spring to establish it) and unloaded our gear. The ground was soggy, but it had stopped raining. Per our routine, we tossed up the pup tents (canvas, 4ft wooden poles at each end, and no floor) and quickly stowed our personal equipment inside. Then it was off to collect wood for a fire for supper and care for the burros. Probably 2 hours later, we returned to our our tent to unroll our sleeping bags.

What a surprise awaited us.
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