Scouting

The Scouting profession is a challenging one; at the basic level, the “Associate District Executive” (ADE as it was known back then) enters as the official Scouting representative in the field and works with a wide range of people, including the “District Executive” (DE), the direct super. The Executive’s duty is to manage the Scouting program within a given geographic area (District) by working with adult volunteers and occasionally, the young Scouts. He/she also works through a committee of volunteer business and civic leaders to ensure that Scouting is viable and successful in their community.

I was stoked!...my Scouting experience as a youth left such an impression on me; camping and hiking around the Big Island, attending the World Jamboree in Japan (the highlight being evacuated from camp due to a typhoon), adapting and improvising with the barest essentials at survival camps, summer camp, learning to lead while working with others, gaining confidence in myself…that working for the movement sounded like a dream…what I didn’t realize, is that it would also take me places; Arlington, TX (twice, for initial training and final certification) Santa Barbara, CA for a conference, Monterrey, CA for training and conferences, and the most memorable…Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands.

1967, our troop was one of the first to experience the newly established Kilauea Council’s Camp Honokaia, a eucalyptus forest between of the town of Honoka’a and Kamuela. The tall forest trees served to catch moisture from the clouds for the sugar cane crops below. The camp was a 180-deg. turnaround from the previous coastline site used for years in Keei, Kona…from a warm, sea-level, sunny beach, to a damp, 2200 alt. chilly forest; from scorpions, wasps/bees, kiawe thorns, sandy food, and salty equipment, to 8-inch centipedes, persistently voracious mosquitoes, devious mongoose (mongooses? mongeese? mongai?) soggy bread, and muddy equipment.

BUT, camping in a forest was already in our blood; our troop usually hiked from home, up past the cane fields, past the pastures, into the ohia/guava/eucalyptus forest to our favorite site. I have fond memories of a warm campfire and hot cocoa after a chilly night of “Capture the Flag” or star gazing, listening to the crickets early in the evening and the deafening silence at night (after the mosquitoes decided it was too cold), food that we cooked (sometimes burned and/or under cooked) with our own hands over an OPEN FLAME (unlike today’s high tech “propane stoves”), being lulled to sleep from the torrential pounding on our CANVAS tent on a stormy night , and best of all…playing with, I mean building and starting a fire for cooking and warmth (finely honing my pyromaniacal tendencies).

I was in my element being outdoors…give me a blade, a fire-starter, and a 3 lb coffee can…I’ll find a way to get and keep comfortable…