Oh yeah. I'm on fire!

One of America's great wilderness parks is the Adirondack Park in upstate New York. We were canoeing in the Fulton Chain of Lakes. Started at Sixth Lake, canoed through Seventh and Eighth Lake where we spent a night each, then had a portage into what I think was called Browns River. When we hit the shore at the end of Eighth Lake, the boys were looking for the signs leading to the portage trail. "Look up, guys." HAHAHAHA! The signs were 12 feet off the ground! Got to put them above snow levels, in sight of the snow machine drivers which are a lot more prevalent than canoers. In the winter at least, when the snow is 9 feet deep. But summer here is wonderful, too.

Click it to see it big enough!

We carried everything we had the mile+ to the river. On the water again. Whew. Paddling is so much easier than carrying all your crap. We wind our way up the river - watching for moose, they're a damn unpredictable animal when surprised or mothering a calf, so you steer clear and try not to make any funny noises that they might interpret as love songs. And now we have to drag our boats over a fricking beaver dam that is right at a bridge. Duck and tug. Trying to stay dry. The road overhead is the only way into and out of Raquette Lake, New York.

Finally we get to the village at Raquette Lake. The general store is a welcome site. We've been out for 3 days, so we need fresh food, ice, and BEER!!! All available. After restocking, we head across the lake to our favorite spot, but it's taken so we head around the island to another nice, secluded spot. When you are as rowdy as we are, it's nice to not have too many neighbors. We find three shelters by the cove, away from the main lake traffic. Ahhhhh, relaxation. The plan is to spend at least two days here. Good swimming, no motorboats, lots of woods.

We know how to cook. Almost everyone has cooking talent. When this group of guys goes camping, we eat well. Gourmet cooking in the wild. No freeze dried crap.

One night while we're camping here (the night after someone ran into a tree playing "Kill the Witch" in the woods and wound up with a shiner and a bloody nose), someone says "Hey J,G., how about fixing us a cobbler for dessert tonight?" Cobblers are  my specialty. Fruit, dough, combined and cooked just right. I fix cobblers in cast iron dutch ovens with covers.

Mix

Recipe for dutch oven Dusty Roads Peach Cobbler:

1 box Pineapple Supreme Cake  Mix

1 #10 can Sliced Peaches

2 sticks butter

Cinnamon Spice

Pour peaches into 10 or 12 quart dutch oven.

Set oven on hot coals. Watch peaches until juice is hot.

Pour Cake mix over the peaches. Do not stir.

Cut butter pats over the top of the dry mix on top of the peaches.

Sprinkle cinnamon over the top.

Cover. Cook about 15-20 minutes on hot coals until juice has bubbled through the cake mix.

Add coals on top of the dutch oven. Cook another 30-50 minutes. 

Check occasionally for the butter melting and the top browning. Cake mix should be well moistened with the juice boiling up from the bottom. When it looks done, it is.

Serve with a large spoon! YUM YUM YUM!!!!!!!

So back to the story. HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!

"Yeah sure. Somebody go start me some charcoal." And I go back to drinking beer. A few minutes later I decide it's time to make the cobbler. I drag my ass off my sleeping pad and wander over to the pile of charcoal beside the shelter I've been calling home. The charcoal looks dead. Out. Piled up, never started.

Fuck me. Dinner is close. Dessert is going to be COLD. Uncooked!!! What the f? I'm waving my hand over this beautiful pile of charcoal and it's cold. Unlit.Damn it, do I have to do EVERYTHING?!?!?!?

I grab a can of Coleman fuel. Time to speed things up and get this shit lit. I open it. Pour it on the pile. And flames shoot up to the can!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What the f, again??????? (Apparently, there were lit coals in the pile that just weren't putting out enough heat to feel with a hand.)

I drop the can, and being so very smart I know that if I get the top covered, it will go out. So I stick a foot out to clamp over the 1" diameter opening. 

Just as one of the clowns near me decides to try to pick the can up with a stick. So I wind up KICKING THE CAN right in the side!!!! This results in burning Coleman being spewed up my leg and now I'M ON FIRE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! GAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Let me tell you. I've heard STOP DROP AND ROLL since I was in elementary school. At that time, many, many years it made sense. Let me tell you something else. STOP DROP AND ROLL does not necessarily apply when YOU ARE THE BLOODY IDIOT ON FIRE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I headed for the lake, only a few yards away. But one of the guys saw me and reacted. He sprang. And put me on the ground, rolling me over and over. The fire went out. OMG, how awesome is that?!

OK, who knows first aid? What is the most important factor when a person suffers a significant trauma injury? I'll wait while you look it up ............................. BRAAAAPPPPP. Sorry, time's up. Shock. Well let me tell you, shock sucks. Couple that with pain and you have a serious combination. My system was rotating betwen a racing heart and panting for breath to feeling like I couldn't breathe at all. That coincided with the cycle of pain in the ankle and leg as I was helped back to the shelter and laid out on my pad. The decision that the others had to make was "do we evacuate him (meaning an hour of paddling, to a closed down town where we do not have reliable communications or a vehicle, and once help is called, a four or five hour trip to help - response time + travel to a hospital)  or do we treat this here?" Here was the only real choice. 

Benadryl and beer. What a great combination. Turns out it takes six each to kill the pain of a blister that is 3 inches long and an inch wide, and a half inch thick right on top of the ankle where the sock had held the fuel while it cooked my foot, coupled with 20 other blisters over my leg that were no more than about 1/8th inch in diameter. This prescription kept them from hurting because without them, I wanted to throw up or just shriek in pain. But I actually got some sleep, and the next day, felt a little better. Second degree burns aren't as painful as first degree (think serious sunburn and its aftermath). The real danger is that the blisters will pop and get infected. A blister with skin over it remains sterile underneath.

Two days later we had to make another portage. That is another post (next). We popped the huge blister wrapped around my ankle because draining it and bandaging it with the skin in place was better than the possibility of rubbing it off while uncovered and getting it infected. I practically drank Betadine for the next few days ( topical disinfectant that we poured over the skin covered blister to avoid infection from the nasty water we were in). But nothing bad resulted. Everything healed up. It was painful. And I learned a powerful lesson. Let some other clown relight the charcoal. Oh, and some fool had the audacity to ask if I was still going to fix a cobbler. I think he still has the imprint of a Vibram boot sole on the side of his head.

Let them roam!

Several years ago, the scout troop was camping in a beautiful spot in Virginia: Sherando Recreation Area (look it up, it's beautiful). The only problem was that the recent rain would prevent us from rappelling, so we needed an activity to keep about 12 boys ranging in age from 11 to 16 busy for an entire day! Or, at least get through the morning; we could worry about the afternoon later. Included in this group were several younger boys who had joined the troop only a month or so earlier, and several of the youth leaders in the troop. Some of the younger boys' fathers had accompanied us to provide transportation and watch the fun on the rocks (and I'm positive they were certain I was about to kill off all the boys from either falling kids or falling rocks). But that was out - allowing kids to have adventures does not include deliberately endangering their lives.

I had a brainstorm. Scouting requires hiking for advancement, and these new Tenderfoot Scouts needed at least a 5 mile hike using a map and compass. I grabbed the trip leader (an older youth) and gave him a map of the park. There was a nice trail up on the ridgeline that circled the huge bowl that Sherando sits in. I pointed it out, noted that they should not cross any asphalt once they left the campground (paved roads also ringed the area), and turned them loose with their compasses and the maps. A couple of the dads got up to go, too, but I stopped them. They looked shocked. In a rather loud voice, I said "I trust the leaders, they'll be fine." The boys all heard me.

And off they went. We adults sat around and talked and played cards. I noticed a few glances at watches a couple of hours in. At three hours, more glances at the watches. At nearly four hours, I thought they were going to go nuts wanting to go searching for the kids. Four hours and about 15 minutes into the morning, here they came. The younger boys were practically strutting with confidence. The older boys were seething! What could have gone wrong?! "You told us it was a five mile hike! It was closer to TEN!!!" I reminded them that my comment was the boys needed "at least" a 5 mile hike. And that they had fulfilled the challenge of taking a group of newbies on a 10 miler with no adults, and gotten back. The attitude instantly changed as that dawned on them.

The afternoon was spent playing Ultimate and football, with the older boys completely including the younger ones. They had bonded during that four hours on the trail that morning. The fathers were astounded, and after that, knew we trained our youth leaders to handle things.

Three different groups learned some very important things that day. The youth leaders gained a huge measure of confidence, and learned that their scoutmaster trusted them to get the job done. The younger boys learned that their scoutmaster trusted the older boys to be able to take care of them, and that they were capable of doing a lot more than they thought. The new fathers in the troop learned that the older boys were capable young leaders, and that although the scoutmaster was a bit crazy, he knew what he was talking about when it came to letting the boys run the show.

The older boys moved on to run trips to the Albemarle Sound sailing catamarans they rebuilt themselves, trips to the Allagash Wilderness Waterway in Maine, and many other adventures. The younger boys are now the leaders taking the newest scouts out on adventures they can grow from.

Rules, rules, and more rules, Part I

We live in a society governed by rules. Laws, statutes, ordinances, regulations, whatever you choose to call them, they're rules. They are necessary for an orderly and civilized society, and to deal with those who can't seem to just get along. But when it comes to kids and play, there should be a lot fewer rules. People make rules for youth to protect them from harm. So let me explain why I am qualified to talk about this subject.

My adventuring started at 14 years old. I started caving. I didn't know there were "rules" about how to do it safely, I just brought along a friend, a couple of flashlights, and crawled through the caves of Carters Caves State Park in eastern Kentucky, about an hour from my home in Huntington, WV. We crawled through body-sized tubes, running streams, some of the stickiest mud this side of the Mississippi, and huge walking passages. For hours on end. No one knew where we were. My dad, who'd driven us there, knew we were "out there crawling though the caves somewhere", but no idea exactly where we might be, because we didn't know ourselves. We wandered the woods and headed underground at every available opening, with no idea what lay ahead, and of course, no safety gear, no backup of any sort, but a keen sense of "where we were" while underground, so we had confidence we would find our way back out. One day, crawling out of what I'm sure is the absolute muddiest yuck hole I'd ever been in, clad in a cotton sweatshirt and jeans, a $5 hardhat, and carrying one flashlight each, the two of us were greeted by several pairs of worn, muddy boots. They were worn by real CAVERS! Thus began my association with "organized caving". I learned that carrying basic safety gear helped (but in no way guaranteed) your survival in these alien worlds. With caving comes vertical caving - using ropes and climbing hardware and "software" to enter and navigate caves - drops of hundreds of feet in pitch darkness. But again, basic rules in safety, taught by experts, kept your survival chances extremely high. I was safer "on rope" than driving to and from the cave.  Then really long rappels (875 feet is my longest), and rock climbing...I carried this spirit of adventure over into scouting, and for nearly 30 years spent a huge amount of time teaching scouts to be adventuresome.

What's it all about anyhow?

If you want more of a hint about what this blog will be all about, check out the blogs I follow. Notice a theme? I spent a lot of my life trying to encourage young people to "be all they could be" (to swipe a rather excellent advertising slogan from the US Army). I've been on a few adventures - though not of the scope of Zac, Mike, Johnny, et al. My adventures started way back as a kid, where I spent afternoons after school, and all day during holidays and summers playing in the woods behind our house. Acres of woods, completely out of sight and sound of the house. But dinner was at 6, so you were expected to be home by then, even when I was in the third grade. My parents asked me to let them know if I went somewhere else (like a friend's house) so I'd call as soon as we got there. I walked to school - it seemed like LONG walk, especially in the rain. Typically I would meet up with several friends on the way, but only a few intersections near the school were guarded. I've lived through it so far!

So why aren't more kids out there playing in the woods? And what can we do to encourage adventures again? I have a tremendous amount of respect for the parents of the teenage adventurers I've been following and am happy to see that there are those out there who believe in their kids. There are also others who feel the way I do. Sir Evan's Dispatch is a good example. Probably my favorite, Free-Range Kids while not directly related to adventuring, certainly helps make the case for raising kids like the ones I mentioned above. 


Let's see what we collectively can do to help raise a new generation of kids! Ones who CRAVE adventure that isn't being presented video LCD screens!


Tray