Subversive Scout

Regenerative Culture Social Technology
#1

I know a few of your are scouts, in the tracker sense. I, however, am a scout in the far less cool sense, The Boy Scouts of America sense. I earned my Eagle scout back in 2000.

I just recently gotten involved in my scout troop again, since my little brother has joined. I figure it’s as good an excuse to go camping as any, and I’ll have a whole fistful of impressionable youths to mold into wild humans. Of course, I also have to do this without getting thrown out of the organization, or I won’t have students anymore.

So many possibilities here. What comes to mind first?

#2

Aha! I am too, an Eagle Scout in the Boy Scouts of America, From Troop 22. Earned it when I was 14 years old. I am not a scout in the tracker school sense, except to mock it in a clown-like manner (I was called Urban Scout long before his class was offered, that fucker!).

What comes to mind first?

Wilderness Survival Merit Badge
Indian Lore Merit Badge
Environmental Science Merit Badge
Archery Merit Badge

Though to be honest, I didn’t learn SHIT about the out of doors or primitive living in scouts. Mostly I learned how to camp with comfort and tie a few knots. But the merit badges I mentioned have huuuuuuge potential.

#3

What about bioregionalism? Y’know, what it is, what it means, it’s importance, how it can address real-world problems, etc…

#4

In my head, my most fun scenario would be fufilling some requirements for the good old “citizenship” badges by taking the kids to protests, mostly because I know that parents would freak.

I think though I could probably talk the troop into going to several of the primitive skills camps near here that I can’t go to on my own.

#5

The Bois D’Arc camp is coming up soon (Sept 28-30). It’s a little northwest of Springfield–might be a bit of a ways to travel, though.

#6

Ohh… Too soon, not enough time to work with the troop.

#7

You should check out First Earth Wilderness School, the ones doing the Bois D’Arc camp. I think they do workshops throughout the year, and they’re located near Springfield, themselves.

#8

Boy scouts… I have had so many conversations about this very subject. Boy scouts brought me to the very road that I am on today. There are so many problems with boy scouts and so many good things also. Adults have way to much influence over the children, and so many times I have seen favoritisim among fathers and children. You do have a chance to reverse that I suppose. Now. Boy scouts does not exactly attract green anarchists. I am curently involved with boy scouts, and constantly attempt to pass on the skills involved with sustainable living, and I am constantly realizing
that it is much harder done then said. I have taught at wilderness survival camps to children the same age, and found it a much different setting and much easier. Quite simply, most kids (younger, and some older) do not have the maturity and interest to this path. Is it possible? absoloutly. Will it be hard? Absoloutly. Boy scouts is a great begining to a wilderness, a great intro, but that is all it is. It sounds like that is what it was for many of us, and in my opionion eventually they need a point where they simply need to get up the intrest to actually pursue it.
Whew
Dont even get me into the militarization of it.

#9

I was a cub scout, and loved the trappings of it. My den mother definitely played favorites, though, and I didn’t measure up with my hand-me-down uniform.

I wanted to go into boy scouts, but when I reached that age, my family moved to the middle of butt-fuck Arkansas, and we couldn’t afford to drive to the nearest troop. But I got the field manual and poured over it and tried to do things on my own.

I think you can definitely take advantage of a position of authority to share rewilding views (don’t think mother culture isn’t doing it already).

#10

I feel like I’m already in some sort of neo-Scout troop. We go camping, cook awesome food, and play in the woods.

#11

Awesome!
You sound like my kind of scout!

#12

Bo Brown, the fellow that puts on Bois’D’Arc, is a great guy and very friendly. I haven’t been to the gathering, but it’s worth going just to hang out with Bo.

#13

I think I would try to put a bit more of a magical/mystical spin on things. Boy Scouts tends to be a little anal and left brained. Use the skills to connect them with the earth, thats subversive.

#14

I’m a little anal and left brained, I ain’t no shaman. I’ll leave the mysticism to others.

#15

I wasn’t a Cub Scout, but joined the Boy Scouts. I started collecting skill awards for my belt immediately (they’re like “poor-man’s merit badges”). I never fit in. Our troop went camping one weekend every month, so I stayed in Boy Scouts specifically to camp. When everyone else at summer camp was off at a merit badge class or whatever, I was tromping through the woods, climbing cliff faces, or exploring caves. I finally got one merit badge (first aid), and was one requirement away from First Class rank. I just didn’t give a shit about the rank; I wanted to camp. That was my reason for staying in Boy Scouts: to camp, to get out of town for a couple of days each month and wake up, wrapped in my sleeping bag, with the eastern sun just rising, listening to the birds chirp and the wind in the oaks.

#16

what! You’ll never be anything in life if you don’t get First Class rank!! ::slight_smile:

#17

Well, it proved true. I’m nothing “in life”, but I’m living! And I like it that way. :wink:

#18

I don’t get it, the whole gotta be someone/thing in life, I think it like a quest for immortality, and that if you’re “nothing in life” than basically you’re dead…
but you’re not, you’re living, experiencing, etc. I think the only line comes whether your life is a drain on someone else or not. And if not, than wtf does it matter?

#19

oy, tell me about it, i don’t get it either

but then, judging from the blank looks on the faces of all the managers who i’ve said “i don’t have a career, i have a job” to, the other side is at least equally clueless…

#20

hmm… career vs job, I find interesting. IMO I’d rather have an occasional ‘job’ or something, than a job ‘career’. Interesting word career, I say it over and over and it seems to have no meaning… foreign… lets look it up : )

from m-w.com
3 : a field for or pursuit of consecutive progressive achievement especially in public, professional, or business life
4 : a profession for which one trains and which is undertaken as a permanent calling

so why not have a ‘career’ called life. Watch…
5 : a field for or pursuit of consecutive progressive achievement especially in life
now add our new profession, life, into here,
4 : a profession for which one trains and which is undertaken as a permanent calling

Wow. Cool.

I don’t want my Job to be my career, I want life to be my career, I might have a ‘job’, or jobs thrown in there, but that’s just part of life, and in that way should be embraced.

Job
1 a : a piece of work; especially : a small miscellaneous piece of work undertaken on order at a stated rate b : the object or material on which work is being done c : something produced by or as if by work