Summer Camp Memories – Rowing

Jackson’s at summer camp this week, and in recent days I’ve been recalling my summer camp memories.

I was in Boy Scout Troop 120, and every year from 1982 to 1988 I went with my troop to Lefeber Northwoods Camps in Northern Wisconsin. My mom tells a story about me not wanting to go the night before departing for the first time. She’ll also tell you about how I came back and loved it.

There are many reasons why I loved it. First of all, I learned a lot there. Tim Dornemann taught me how to throw a curve ball, Counselor Dean had us empty and board a swamped canoe, and “Bear” taught us that one had to convert coal into coke before it would burn. However, those pale in comparison to the intangibles I picked up along the way: leadership, maturity, confidence, not being afraid to try something new, dealing with difficult people, care for the environment, and many others. By now you begin to see the special spot LNC has in my heart. My goal this week is to share one part of my camp experience each day. We’ll see how that goes.

I’ll begin with my first year of camping. For some reason, I decided to take six merit badges. I’ve never met a scout who earned more in one week of camp, although I am sure I don’t hold the all-time scout record. Each merit badge class is 55 minutes, and so I had three in the morning (Rowing, Canoeing, and Swimming), and three in the afternoon (Cooking Pioneering, Mammals). It’s not like I tried to beat everyone by taking six; I think I was excited to try as many new things as I could.

But before that Rowing class at 9 AM, there were chores. The scouts in our patrol (The Cobra Patrol) had one of three duties each day: fuel and water, cooking, or cleanup. By far the hardest was fuel and water. Those 5-gallon jugs were over 40 pounds, and I’ll be I weighed 80 back then. Sawing wood was no picnic either. Lest you think I’m complaining, I’m glad to have done it now. I’m sure Mr. Ashworth had to persuade ma a few times to get my stuff done, but it was all for my own good. So I’ve done of the three chores, and off to rowing I go.

My Rowing instructor was Russ Klotz. I misunderstood his name and called him Russ Klutz, prompting a good chuckle from the older scouts in my troop. This badge was a nice mixture of class and active work. We discussed the basics, and practiced them. I thought this was all a piece of cake, until we got to swamping.

The idea of this requirement is to prepare you in the event your boat takes on too much water and sinks below the surface. The only problem is one of these boats weighed over 100 pounds and had a very flat bottom. It was hard enough to tip and fill with water, and that was supposed to be the easy part. My classmate and I couldn’t seem to get it back over. Now had I been 17 instead of 11, I am sure it would have been fine. I think we tried to get that boat up for fifteen minutes. We were freezing (Northern Wisconsin Lakes can be cold in the morning) and I was about to throw in the towel. This sucks, I thought – I sit through this all week and I get to go home with nothing.

Then out of nowhere Russ appeared. Klotz was coming to help the klutzes. We were under the boat, so he had to lift it up a bit to address us.

“Is there a problem?” he asked. He knew something was wrong; everyone was back in their boat while we were recreating one of those scenes in a sub movie where heads are sandwiched between water and metal. I remember giving up as I explained the situation. Convincing me to try again (my partner was up for another go), he asked me to give it my all. We tried, and what do you know, the boat came out of the water as he helped us in tipping it back up. He knew we were pretty much incapable of emptying that boat as it was heavy and flat. Had we been in a rounded hull like his, the task would have been much easier. Of course it didn’t help that we were in six feet of water, either.

For years, I always wondered why Russ chose to give us credit for that requirement. Then while writing this post, I discovered that we could have done this in much shallower water. He was simply exercising his good judgment. And in encouraging me, he was setting me up to tackle challenges for years to come…