Scoutmaster

Identifying Trees

If, when in the forest, we know the names of the trees we are more at home.

My well-worn Golden Guide to Trees is a reliable source of information for tree identification. I have a couple of other guides but reach for the Golden Guide first because I find it easier to identify things from illustrations rather than photographs.

The guide features over 730 species of trees grouped in 76 families. Each species description includes characteristics-tree shape, bark, leaf, flower, fruit and twig-for quick identification. As with any guide one must learn how to use it properly. Become familiar with the family descriptions and nomenclature featured in the front of the book and you will be a tree expert in no time.

The Golden Guides have been around for decades and remain popular for their clarity, simplicity and utility.
Available at  Amazon

Google Books

Reading has been a life-long passion and source of inspiration. It has also been a very practical resource in my role as a Scoutmaster. From the older works of authors like Nessmuk and Ellsworth Jaeger to the most current books by Cliff Jacobson I have learned a great deal of practical information.

Google Books features long excerpts (and in some cases full texts) of books that Scoutmasters will find interesting and valuable. Here are some of my favorites:
Expedition Canoeing - Cliff Jacobson
Wildwood Wisdom - Ellsworth Jaeger
Camping's Top Secrets - Cliff Jacobson
Knots for the Outdoors - Cliff Jacobson
Look at the Sky and Tell The Weather - Eric Sloane

These are just a few, there are many, many more. An hour or two spent perusing Google Books is like walking the aisles at a particularly well-stocked bookstore or library. The site links to several options for buying the book being previewed.

Insignia Guide now Online

The BSA Insignia Guide is now on line:

The Boy Scouts of America has always been a uniformed body. Its uniforms help to create a sense of belonging. They symbolize character development, citizenship training, and personal fitness. Wearing a uniform gives youth and adult members a sense of identification and commitment.

This insignia guide presents detailed information to enable our members to wear the correct complete uniform on all suitable occasions.

10 Year Old Girl Finishes Pacific Crest Trail

Zero Days is the tale of a family adventure that required love, perseverance, and the careful rationing of toilet paper. The trio, who adopted the trail names Captain Bligh (Gary), Nellie Bly (Barbara), and Scrambler (Mary), hiked for 168 days and took a total of nine “zero days”—days off from hiking, so-called because the backpacker travels zero mileage on the trail itself that day. In addition to weaving an engaging narrative, Barbara incorporates actual pages and drawing from 10-year-old Mary’s journal.

Along the way, they weathered the heat of the Mojave, the jagged peaks of the Sierra, the rain of Oregon (and paradoxically the lack of water sources there), and the final long, cold stretch of the Northern Cascades to Canada. They met trail angels like the Dinsmores and their salty-mouthed parrot, Topper. And they discovered which family values, from love and equality to thrift and cleanliness, could withstand shin splints, an abscessed tooth, aching legs, failing knees, bad water—and a long, narrow trail and 137 nights together in a 6-by-8-foot tent.

Zero Days available at Amazon

Eric Sloane's Weather Book

Most natural phenomena are reasonably easy to grasp once explained in plain terms. But alas much is hidden from the average person behind a wall of opaque scientific jargon. Anyone with the skill to penetrate this screen with clarity and simplicity is a wonderful discovery. Eric Sloane was such an author. His books are generously illustrated with his own drawings so the reader can see exactly what the author is writing about.

A couple of hours spent with The Weather Book and you are thoroughly versed in the workings of the atmosphere and well on your way to becoming a reliable forecaster. Knowing the weather is an important skill for Scoutmasters and outdoorsmen in general and The Weather Book is a fine resource for developing your expertise.

Available at Amazon

The Dangerous Book for Boys

This book puts me in mind of following creeks through the woods, baseball cards held to the forks of my bike with clothespins, climbing trees, chemistry sets, purloined firecrackers, strike anywhere matches, building forts and a thousand other common joys of boyhood. Not virtual but visceral, hands-on and sometimes faintly dangerous.
Risk and challenge remain vital to boys. We cannot legislate or litigate this vitality out of their lives. The authors of the Dangerous Book for boys have assembled a vast catalog of information, activities, skills and crafts that may be nostalgic to men of a certain age but are new and fascinating to each successive generation of boys.
Available at Amazon

NOLS Cookery

Each year 3000 students spend two weeks to three months in the backcountry on National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) courses. Thats a lot of backcountry cooking! The folks at NOLS have developed a simple, varied and inexpensive diet that is based on staple foods that can be found at any grocery store. There's also a wealth of information on planning, packing and preparing meals for extended trips or just a weekend.

My particular favorite receipt is Thai Gado-gado Spaghetti featuring a peanut sweet and sour sauce.  Mixing peanut butter in spaghetti raises some eyebrows but I have never had any leftovers.

NOLS Cookery at Amazon

Gado-gado Spaghetti
Ingredients
1/2 pound spaghetti or ramen noodles
4 cups water
3 Tbsp plus 1 tsp oil
2 Tbsp sunflower seeds
1 Tbsp dried onion, rehydrated
1/2 Tbsp or one packet powdered bouillon base (see notes)
3 Tbsp brown sugar
1 tsp garlic
1/2 tsp black pepper (optional)
1/2 tsp hot sauce (optional)
1/2 tsp spike (optional)
3/4 cup water, or more as needed
3 Tbsp vinegar
3 Tbsp soy sauce
3 Tbsp peanut butter
Sliced green or wild onions, if available

Instructions
Notes: A spicy peanut butter sauce makes this a light spaghetti dish that is excellent either hot or cold. This dish can have a fairly salty taste. Cut back or eliminate the base if you are concerned about saltiness. This recipe is designed to be made in a camping or hiking environment, but work just as well at home.

Break pasta in half and put into boiling unsalted water to which 1 tsp of oil has been added. Cook until done; drain immediately. In a fry pan, heat 3 Tbsp oil and add the sunflower seeds and rehydrated onions. Cook and stir over medium heat for 2 minutes. Add the base with the brown sugar, garlic, other spices if desires, and 3/4 cup water. Add the vinegar and soy sauce. Add peanut butter and stir. Do not burn! To eat this hot, heat the sauce thoroughly and pour over hot spaghetti.

This recipe is best cold, and it loses some of its saltiness as it sits. Mix sauce and spaghetti, cool quickly, and serve chilled. If available, sliced green or wild onions as a garnish add to the flavor.

Yield: 2 to 3 servings

Two Little Savages

A recent post on Boing Boing revealed that the entire text and illustrations of Earnest Thompson Seton's Two Little Savages is available at Project Gutenberg.

Seton's story of "the adventures of two boys who lived as Indians and what they learned" contains illustrated deceptions of tipi building, starting a fire by friction, archery, hunting and much more.
(note that the title and descriptions of Native Americans in this book is a product of its time and would now be considered racist)

Link to Two Little Savages at Project Gutenberg
Link to Two Little Savages at Amazon

Link to Ernest Thompson Seton at Wikipedia

For those of you unfamiliar with Seton's role in the Founding of the BSA I offer this excerpt from an Outside Magazine article

Since its beginning, Scouting has had something of a divided soul. Nothing illustrates that more clearly than the vastly different personalities of the two equally strange men who inspired it.

AMC Guide to Outdoor Leadership

" Fundamentally, a leader must have ability. Ability has two components: knowledge and skill. Knowledge is understanding a task. Skill is proficiency at performing a task. The key to developing knowledge and skill is repeated exposure...  In order to generalize learning to a variety of complex situations, you as leader need to have a varied and extensive base of exposure to related situations. It is this experience that allows you to develop ability." - Alex Kosseff on the AMC Guide to Outdoor Leadership

Scout leaders may not routinely lead expeditions to Nepal or outings requiring extensive specialized skills but the information in the AMC Guide to Outdoor Leadership remains a vital resource. Competent leaders should have a grasp of group dynamics, risk assessment, effective decision making and planning. Mastering these elements leads to a better quality of experience for everyone, less stress on the leader and a broader scope of activities.

Kosseff has produced a solidly well-written and thorough guide that merits close study by anyone leading groups in the outdoors (or anywhere for that matter).

Available at the Scoutmaster Essentials Amazon store.

How to Sh-- in the Woods

Kathleen Meyer realized that there was no completely frank discussion of how (and how not) to sh-- in the woods. She put pen to paper and came up with this pithy, humorous yet informative tome. Well worth reading as pulling it off properly does require some lost skills.

It was unlikely that I would find my one of my favorite outdoor stories in this book, but I did:

For the better part of a nippy fall morning, Edwin had been slinking through whole mountain ranges of gnarly underbrush in pursuit of an elusive six-pointer. Relentlessly trudging along with no luck, he finally became discouraged, a cold drizzle adding to his gloom. Then a lovely meadow opened out before him — its beauty causing him to pause. His attention, now averted from the deer, relaxed into a gaze of pleasure, and he next became increasingly aware of his physical discomforts; every weary muscle, every labored joint, every minuscule bramble scratch — and then another pressing matter.

Coming upon a log beneath a spreading tree, Edwin propped up his rifle and quickly slipped off his poncho, sliding the suspenders from his shoulders. Whistling now, he sat and shat. But when he turned to bury it, not a thing was there. In total disbelief, poor Edwin peered over the log once more hut still found nothing. It began to rain, and the pleasant vision of camp beckoned. Preparing to leave, he yanked up his poncho and hefted his gun. To warm his ears, he pulled up his hood. And there it was on top of his head, melting in the rain like so much ice cream left in the sun.

How to Sh-- in the Woods at Amazon