Dr. Bob makes some really valid points. I can't imagine myself taking a cell
phone along on a trek. Heck, my reception is spotty enough just riding
around the city of Houston!
Since John LeBlanc is absent I'll lend some philosophical thought to this
issue!
Funny thing about cell phones and phones in general. It's comforting to get
a phone call (one leader has mentioned the boys called home from their
highest part of the trek on Father's Day) but it isn't always very long
lasting comfort. I'm in the process of putting all my mother's war
correspondence into some type of book that I may someday market. She served
in the OSS in WWII and was one of a handful of women in the China Theater of
the war working in intelligence (the OSS became the CIA under Truman). She
wrote home to her family on a farm in Minnesota once or twice a week, every
week, during the war. She typed single spaced 2-3 page letters and being a
good secretary made carbon copies (remember those?). The letters are a
fascinating glimpse of her life and full of news of what she was doing in
Ceylon and later in Chunking (lots of parties with Generals) and where she
was on VJ day and how they partied when they found out it was finally over.
This part doesn't really have anything to do with cell phones at Philmont,
but it has made me think about the value of the pen (or keyboard) over the
phone. Means more and is longer lasting. My mom could have never know I
would be reading her letters almost 50 some years after she wrote them.
When I lead treks I really encourage all the crewmembers to write home
regularly while on the trail. I remind them that this is how it was when
folks were settling those mountains, just an occasional bit of news by pony
express no less. I had one kid who insisted on sending post cards he made
out of cracker box panels from our trail meals. To my knowledge they were
all delivered to his parents. On my last trek I took Coop's advice and asked
the parents to write us before we hit the road and several boys were
pleasantly surprised to receive mail the day we got into base camp, and
there was more mail when we returned.
As I recall, one of the recent past bear attacks was reported to base camp
via cell phone (I may be wrong on this one) but I think that is a rare case.
So many thousand have trekked at Philmont over the years before the advent
of Cell phones and they survived. They may have worn cotton as well:).
YOF
Chris in Houston
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As you gather around this virtual campfire with fellow
Scouts and Scouters, do your best to be trustworthy,
loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient,
cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent.
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Received on Tue Apr 29 07:59:43 2003
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.8 : Wed Jul 26 2006 - 11:59:29 CDT