[philmont] A Summer Essay from a Philmont Scout

Greetings to All. The following is an English assignment by one of the
Scouts I took to Philmont this past summer. If you have no interest in
such things, please delete this email. The Scout is just 16 years old,
entering his Junior year, and imminently Life rank. He is of rather
slight stature. This was his first Philmont.

- Dr. Bob

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Over the summer, my Scout Troop and I went on a backpacking trip to
Philmont Scout Ranch, in New Mexico. The air is hot and dry, and clear,
clear enough that we could see the thirty-five miles all the way from
the road leading to Base Camp up to Baldy Mountain. Even from our
trek’s actual start point, where we were bused the day after our
arrival, the Mountain seemed distant and ephemeral, like a striven-for
ideal. We had four days to get there, and a fifth to climb it.

We were dropped off by bus at our "starting point" quite a bit closer to
our objective, feeling the New Mexico heat. The sun was powerful,
making temperatures soar above ninety, though with the region’s dry air
it felt like about eighty degrees back home. We ate freeze-dried
backpacking meals whose taste was described as akin to "hot paper". Its
saving graces were the spices brought by one of our crew members. And
during mealtimes was the first time I used the skills taught us in the
preparation hikes – bear safety. Spilled food was eaten, sometimes from
off the ground. Food residue on the hands was licked off, or rubbed
into your skin, where accumulated sweat and grit would mask the scent.
There were no napkins to use, as they were extra weight, and if wiped on
your clothing, a bear could catch the scent and eat it, no matter what.
  Even where we pitched our tents was carefully chosen to minimize the
chance of contact. This was real, primal danger.

Never had the natural world been so close. We saw deer, on average of
at least once a day during our hikes, despite the cacophony my crew
likely. We even saw fawns. And one day, there were a pack of them -
five deer, pale, and with antlers as large as what we’d usually seen in
movies. They grazed right through the campsite area shared by us and
five other crews, paying no heed to the people gathered nearby, taking
photographs. The deer walked right through, maneuvering around our
tents, and us, as if they were nothing but fallen logs. Despite the
small crowd, and even the repeated flash photography, they continued
grazing, paying no more attention to me or any of the other Scouts as
they would to a rabbit. The deer passed within three yards of me.

That night was like most nights – I fell asleep faster and deeper than
I’d previously thought possible. Then, I woke up, and jolted myself
with whatever energy I had to pack up the tent and my gear fast enough
so we could miss as much of the late-morning heat as possible. Our
nearly-mindless morning hike was soon interrupted, however. The crew’s
Adult Advisor pulled us aside at a clearing and said, pointing, "Look,
down there. Do you see that big meadow? You see that white dot at the
end of it? That’s the camp. That’s where we’re going.” I stared down
at the speck in the distance – wondering how it was possible for us to
walk all the way down there, even downhill. It seemed almost like
another dimension, something you can see but cannot touch, like the
cities and towns that pass under you in an airplane flight. It was
unthinkable.

But it took just as long as any of our other hikes. When we finally
arrived at the location of the speck – it was a tipi – I turn around and
gazed up at the mountain we had just walked off of, vainly looking for
the clearing from which I’d looked at the exact spot where I was
standing now. I felt amazed that I’d walked that distance, and even
more amazed at how the hike was such an easy one. It was a feeling
that, so far, has only ever been surpassed by what would come the next
day. Behind me, dominating the skyline, was the denuded bulk of Mt. Baldy.

The wake-up was the worst of the entire trip. The storm clouds that had
broiled threateningly over the ridge in the late afternoon soon broke
over us as a full-on deluge, punctuated by frequent blasts of lightning
and what one camper said was the growls of a bear. By the time it was
dark, our shoes were caked in mud – the campsite we had chosen seemed to
make up for its lack of grass by being full of small- sharp rocks. We
started hiking at first light, bundled up in whatever cold-gear we had.
  It seemed surreal that temperatures could change this much, this
quickly, but the hiking warmed me up quick enough. Yesterday the
mountain had still seemed a bit hazy and faraway, but after that day’s
hike, all the doubts I had about my ability to climb Baldy were swept away.

The sun warmed us up, though much of that was diminished by the
altitude’s cold. We broke the tree line, but that wasn’t the
morale-booster I had expected it to be – as soon as we did, the trail
quickly banked up to a fifty degree grade, though the view was
spectacular – especially looking what seemed like straight down at the
tiny buildings that were the camp we set out on. Then we were there. I
could look up and down at a sixty-mile stretch of the Rockies, and even
at the road where we had all first glimpsed Baldy. Clouds passed
overhead, close enough to jump up and touch, and some passed far under
us. At the end of that day, we had climbed to the top of a twelve
thousand foot mountain, with a round trip of fourteen miles. Philmont
felt over after that, even though we had so much more to do. Nothing
could surpass that.

The six-day hike back was even more strenuous as the first six days. We
had two more fourteen-mile hikes, the second of which was to a campsite
where the nearest source of water was one mile away and only a trickle.
  On our last day, a storm broke that unleashed lightning bolts at
targets barely a half-mile away. The joy of finally returning to Base
Camp was lessened by the almost infinite switchbacks we had to take,
including one that, to our horror, turned and went exactly the wrong way
for 500 yards. And before we all knew it, we were driving to the airport.

It was a different, almost magical experience. For the first time I
truly felt nature – to be treated like any other animal in the woods by
a deer, or any other meal by a bear. I thought about how it felt to
have abandoned almost completely the manmade barriers between us and the
natural world. To look at the haze-covered mountains in the distance
and think, "I was there". And I thought about the rest of us, utterly
separated from anywhere our species didn’t have complete control over.
Then, finally, I thought of the old Philmont legend – if you look back
at the Scout Ranch's signature rock formation, you are fated to return.

I looked back.

-END-

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As you gather around this virtual campfire with fellow
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Received on Tue Sep 4 05:41:23 2007