2009/04/17 Camp Lewis COPE Weekend

A note from your Scoutmaster

Hope you all enjoyed the opportunity for "lean" lean-to camping.  Lean-to's are a great way to get the full "outdoor experience" in scouting.  What better way to have nature as your wide-open front door?!  Did you know that in Finland, lean-to's are called "Laavu's", which is a traditional Finnish forest shelter?

The word Laavu refers to the first simple lean-to shelters ever built by man.  So if you took advantage of a lean-to this weekend, consider yourself sleeping in a part of history.  I'm hoping for more of this type of camping in the future, perhaps a minimalist backpack trip next fall.

Hope you all enjoyed your COPE experience.  All of the scouts I talked to said they had a lot of fun while being challenged at the same time. I was very proud of they way the troop was able to work with the COPE instructors on your own. I was also proud when I heard the stories of scouts helping others through the course either by physical means or by words of encouragement.

Thanks to all of the parents for their hard work on Saturday fixing up the Major Roy camp site as well as the Chapel area. For those of you who were not on this weekend's trip, we spent all day fixing and constructing benches around the fire ring, fixing the roof on the pavilion, removing rocks that were tripping hazards, cutting leftover wood and "burning everything in sight" to clean up the area for Cub Scout resident camp this summer. A few of us ventured to the Chapel to cut and remove a large tree that fell right in front of it, and to clean out the leaves from the inside the chapel - just in time for our troop's "Scout's own" service on Saturday night.

I really liked the participation in the skits and songs as we wound down at the campfire Saturday night. All of the scouts did a great job in showing their enthusiasm and scout spirit to the adjacent leader training campfire. Special thanks to our SPL, Andrew, for doing a great job as Emcee for the ceremony.