Scout Stories

The Tent Debacle of 2K15 - October 2015

It was hard to chose a story to start this book off, but I figured choosing one of both the most unexpected and, looking back, fun stories would be as good a place as any. Perhaps some day I will put these parts in chronological order, but as for now, enjoy what has now gone down in my Troop's history as the Tent Debacle of 2K15.

Once a month our Troop goes on a camping trip or urban adventure (hotel/cabin). The month of October was designated for Mackinac Island (for those of you who do not know where this is, it is in northern Michigan, kind of between the North and South Peninsulas). The plan was to bring several trailers of bicycles, camp in a local campground, and then take our bicycles across on the ferry to spend the day on Mackinac. It sounded like a great trip, everyone was excited for the area's renown fudge, and the weather was perfect for camping - upper sixties with a light wind and partially cloudy.

I will take a brief moment to describe the protocols for packing our gear, just so you can understand the magnitude of our failure. :) Our troop tows a sizable Troop Trailer that contains all of our important gear, smellables (items that raccoons, bears, etc. might think is tasty), our tents, and that sort of thing. There is a division of the leaders in our troop called the Quartermasters that are responsible of packing the trailer efficiently and with all the necessary gear. The Patrol Leaders are in turn in charge of their patrol (a group of 6-10 boys that are the basic unit of a troop) gear, which includes food for the outing and tents, and finally the Senior Patrol Leader is in charge of supervising everyone.

So there you have it. Three layers, at least, of leadership to make sure that all of our gear is ready and working.

Well, we pack into our cars and move out for our outing. The drive was long (whether it be hours, days, or weeks I'll leave to your imagination), but regardless we eventually made it after some time to the campsite we had reserved.

As we pulled into the campsite night was just settling, and it had begun to get dark. It is a tradition in our troop that on the first night of our campouts each patrol brings a veritable feast of junk food to pig out on before going to bed, but only after all the tents are set up. These canvas tents are old, archaic really, from the sixties or something, but they work well and are only a little bit of a trick to put up in the dark.

The only problem was that it appeared we didn't have as many as we were supposed to. To put it bluntly, we had barely half of the tents we were supposed to.

There we were, a thirty-something teenage boys with the motto "Be Prepared" standing around, cold, with eight tents that could, at max, hold three people each. The truly entertaining part was trying to hear the explanations as to how it happened.

The Scout Master (head adult leader) of course blamed the Quartermaster, who shifted the blame to the Patrol Leaders for not taking care of their gear, who blamed the Patrol members that had been assigned to preparing gear, who blamed the Quartermaster for not helping them get the gear. Then there was the poor Senior Patrol Leader that was just bewildered how he missed it and how nobody around him caught it either.

Thankfully for us, there were many adults also on the outing who had each brought their own tent, one of which had brought an eight-person tent for some reason. By doubling up the adults, maxing out their tents, and tripling up on the canvas tents we managed to all sleep under a cover of some kind.

At the time it was very stressful, not in the least part because I got stuck tripling with two people I didn't like very much, but looking back it has got to be one of my favorite Scout stories to date. The chaos, but resourcefulness despite our shortcomings is a kind of staple with my Boy Scout troop and it manifested itself wonderfully in what is now known as the Tent Debacle of 2K15. :D