All The Wealth of Earth and Heaven
That's how the song starts. From the time I was ten and a half years old until the summer after my eighteenth birthday I spent at least one week and often as many as seven or eight weeks of my summer at Owasippe Scout Reservation. Out of respect for scouting and what I got out of scouting I have refrained from talking about the later summers when I was 17 and 18 and again when I was 23 and 24. During My teenage years we got into a lot of trouble here and there. It was the cusp of an era where adults had more of a laissez faire attitude with teens and the harsh realities of child protection laws that was soon ushered in with the new times. People had a slightly more lax attitude about teen drinking. Parents didn't get litigious if they found out there teenagers had their first cigarette. The males and females were separated and watched almost hawkishly to make sure no teenage pregnancies occurred but a lot of wild teenage antics went overlooked. Not that the older staff didn't have an idea of what was going on as they had been teens themselves once before, but they made sure that they never had any really knowledge of anything that might leave them criminally liable.
When I returned as an adult it was a different world. Everyone between the ages of 15 and eighteen was watched like a hawk at all times. Periodically there were bed checks to make sure no one had snuck off into the woods to try to meet up with girls or get at a secret stash of smokes or beer. (and if drugs were even mentioned there would be cabin searches and threats of police involvement). I learned about liability and what it meant to be put in charge of an aquatics program I no longer felt physically capable of running. ( I gained a bit of weight after high school and took up smoking. I went from a very capable lifeguard trainer to a guy who had a hard time passing a basic swimming test) I learned what it was like to be nominally in charge of a program but to have no input as to the hiring and firing of the people who worked for me. I had an incredible amount of stress around not being able to supervise both a boating water front and the swimming pool at the same time and having to trust an eighteen year old assistant to supervise one of the areas for me. (Yet it was my hind end in the sling if anything went wrong).
As an adult the experience wasn't all I wanted it to be and when I was passed over as a candidate to be an assistant camp director I decided I would spend my summers working in the bar in the small town I was going to school in. (not the wisest decision of my life but that is another story). I had many fond memories from my youth and I truly loved the land and teaching scouts leadership skills, but I didn't much care for the way things were being run and a nice bar option was available so I have not been back in many years.
So the Chicago Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America has decide to sell off the property. The first scout camp in the nation is now going to be condos and lake homes. Here is an ABC story. Here is a Muskegon Chronicle story. I'm almost in shock over this. Part of my youth, my identity is being sold off for a fraction of its worth. There are memorials to friends now lost. The ashes of friends are in the lakes. And its being done in a back handed sort of way that I have come to expect from professional scouting executives. A meeting was held to vote on the sale and three votes were allowed to be phoned in on a conference call while other board members who would have opposed the sale were not able to vote or give their proxy. It stinks like Chicago politics and I can't help but be saddened by the loss of a place I haven't been to in years and hand no plans of returning to any time soon. It is still the place I return to at night. It is still a great part of what shapped me. It is still an ideal place for getting children off the couch and into life. And we sang:
All the wealth of earth and heaven
bless they woods and dales
over all they lakes and forests
happy youth prevails.
Well maybe if mommy and daddy buy one of the condos. I think mostly youth looses out here.
More Laters (silly fun time will return)
When I returned as an adult it was a different world. Everyone between the ages of 15 and eighteen was watched like a hawk at all times. Periodically there were bed checks to make sure no one had snuck off into the woods to try to meet up with girls or get at a secret stash of smokes or beer. (and if drugs were even mentioned there would be cabin searches and threats of police involvement). I learned about liability and what it meant to be put in charge of an aquatics program I no longer felt physically capable of running. ( I gained a bit of weight after high school and took up smoking. I went from a very capable lifeguard trainer to a guy who had a hard time passing a basic swimming test) I learned what it was like to be nominally in charge of a program but to have no input as to the hiring and firing of the people who worked for me. I had an incredible amount of stress around not being able to supervise both a boating water front and the swimming pool at the same time and having to trust an eighteen year old assistant to supervise one of the areas for me. (Yet it was my hind end in the sling if anything went wrong).
As an adult the experience wasn't all I wanted it to be and when I was passed over as a candidate to be an assistant camp director I decided I would spend my summers working in the bar in the small town I was going to school in. (not the wisest decision of my life but that is another story). I had many fond memories from my youth and I truly loved the land and teaching scouts leadership skills, but I didn't much care for the way things were being run and a nice bar option was available so I have not been back in many years.
So the Chicago Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America has decide to sell off the property. The first scout camp in the nation is now going to be condos and lake homes. Here is an ABC story. Here is a Muskegon Chronicle story. I'm almost in shock over this. Part of my youth, my identity is being sold off for a fraction of its worth. There are memorials to friends now lost. The ashes of friends are in the lakes. And its being done in a back handed sort of way that I have come to expect from professional scouting executives. A meeting was held to vote on the sale and three votes were allowed to be phoned in on a conference call while other board members who would have opposed the sale were not able to vote or give their proxy. It stinks like Chicago politics and I can't help but be saddened by the loss of a place I haven't been to in years and hand no plans of returning to any time soon. It is still the place I return to at night. It is still a great part of what shapped me. It is still an ideal place for getting children off the couch and into life. And we sang:
All the wealth of earth and heaven
bless they woods and dales
over all they lakes and forests
happy youth prevails.
Well maybe if mommy and daddy buy one of the condos. I think mostly youth looses out here.
More Laters (silly fun time will return)
posted by Rich Rosenthal II at 3:33 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home