Scoutmaster's Minute

Embracing Change

November 1st, 1999 (4:40 pm) by Will

As the Camp Director of Bear Paw Scout Camp, and therefore the unofficial “Scoutmaster” of the extended

BPSC family, I’ll be using this space to share some news and thoughts about Camp from time to time,

hopefully on a monthly basis. Here, then, is the first installment (after months of nagging me, our

Webmasters finally got out the thumbscrews and leeches…).

I was doing some reading the other day (what else am I gonna do? I’m studying English Literature, for cryin’

out loud!) and I ran across a phrase that stuck in my mind. It’s from The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibran:

“Work is Love made visible.”

It struck me, as soon as I read this passage, how beautifully it applies to Scouting and, more specifically, to

camp. Whether you’re an Adult Leader getting a Troop ready for camp, a Scout hauling a heavy Patrol Box all

the way out to Winnebago Site, an OA member putting up the umpteenth heavy canvas tent, or a couple of

Webmasters slugging it out with HTML, you know how much work the camp experience can be (I won’t even

mention what it’s like for a Camp Ranger — just take a look at Andy’s page:-)

Yet despite all the work, the long hours, the frustrations, we keep coming back again and again. We stay

involved in Scouting, we stay involved with camp, and we do it all without batting an eye. Why? Because on

some level, we realize that all of this work is an expression of our feelings for camp, for Scouting, for the

youth whose future is in our hands. Our work in Scouting is indeed love made visible.

Keep that in mind this summer. If you’re joining us at BPSC, take a look around and realize how much effort

went into making summer camp possible, and realize how many people (including you) are involved in that

effort. Realize how much of it is in the little things — a fresh coat of paint here, a new window pane there — and

realize just how important those things are in the overall life of camp. Finally, realize how important — and how

easy — it is for you to add your own effort to the sum total of what already exists. You’ve already done far more

than you know — what will you do next?

See you at camp!

-Will Curl, Scoutmaster

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A few other things while I’m at it…

THANK YOU:

– To our Webmasters, for giving me this space and for turning a long-dormant idea into reality…

–To everyone who has put so much effort into getting Camp ready for the ‘99 summer season — too many to

thank individually, but Camp would be impossible without you!

–To Mike and everyone at GDC for their friendship and support (check out their page! it’s cool!)

Other notes:

–For Adult Leaders: please take a look at the updated Summer Program info — no drastic changes, just some

new options!

–Congratulations to all the Staffers (a half-dozen at last count) who completed their Eagle Scout this past

year. (Some of them juuuuust made it — but I’m not naming names:-)

–And congratulations to Brenda (Head Cook ‘96-’98) who recently gave birth to a bouncing baby girl! Now

she’s “Mama G” for real!!! Webmaster’s Note: Ditto!!!

I was once again wandering through my stacks of books when I came across this passage in Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations:

We shrink from change; yet is there anything that can come into being without it?

Marcus Aurelius (one of my personal heroes) tells us that all of life is change: everything you cherish today is the result of the changes you made yesterday. Everything you will cherish tomorrow will be the result of the changes you make today.

In November of 1945, the leadership of the Nicolet Area Council made a breathtaking change. They purchased 320 acres of land in northern Wisconsin for the purpose of establishing and maintaining a Boy Scout Camp on the shores of Bear Paw Lake. Everything we currently know, love and cherish about camp, everything that is celebrated in these pages, came into being because a group of people had the courage to make a fundamental change.

We are poised once again on the edge of a period of fundamental change. Great physical changes will be taking place at camp in the next couple of years. Expansion of the Waterfront and the Ranges will begin in the spring of 2000. Construction of a new Dining Hall is set to begin next September. New campsites and other new facilities are visible on the horizon. All of this is being done with both eyes on the future. Scouting is growing, and the bottom line is that we have to expand our facilities in order to offer larger numbers of Scouts the same quality they’ve had in the past.

But a lot of this is unsettling to think about, for reasons I understand very very well. We worry that all the little things we’ve gotten used to, everything we know and love, will fade into the past. Will the new dining hall have the same wonderful wooden smell? I doubt it. Will the waterfront look the same? Nope. Will the ranges have that same feeling they always have in late afternoon, when everything’s quieting down and the sun’s coming from a different angle and the open ground has absorbed all the heat its going to? I don’t know.

We’ll be saying goodbye to some of the things we love about Camp. But what is it that made us love those things? The memories and the experiences we all shared. The fellowship and the learning that took place. Above all, the spirit that inhabited (and still inhabits) every square inch of camp. Where does that spirit come from? Does it come from blueprints? Layouts? Buildings? No…

It comes from us.

So all of us — everyone involved in the BPSC community — have our work cut out. When the Scouts of 2000, 2001, and beyond see these brand-spanking-new facilities, it will be up to us to make sure that they’re filled with all of the intangible things that made the old facilities so special: the fellowship, the spirit, and, yes, the love. It will be up to us to make sure that Scouts in the new facilities learn the same lessons of values, ethics, leadership and confidence that the Scouts in the old facilities learned.

If we succeed — if we can honor the past, embrace the present, and work for the future –

then, in the year 2050, when another new Dining Hall is built at Bear Paw, there’ll be an old Scouter who will lean over to a wide-eyed 11-year-old and say “If you think this is cool, let me tell you about when they built the old place, way back in 2001… now *that* was a Dining Hall!”

In Scouting, our only real measure of success is the future.

-Will Curl, Scoutmaster

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OTHER STUFF:

–Please remember to make your campsite reservations for 2000 with the Menasha office — space is filling up quickly!

–We’re still accepting applications for the 2000 Bear Paw Staff. Note interview dates and locations!

–The Bear Paw Leader’s Guidebook will be going to press in Nov/Dec, and details and updates on our 2000 program will be coming soon…

CONGRATULATIONS:

–to Matt , for getting his cast off (finally)

–to Derek and Chip, who look to be as close as you can get to Eagle without actually having the thing on your shirt (finish it up, guys!)

–to Leslie, (asst. cook ‘96-97), who joins the proud ranks of former Cooks entering motherhood (hear that, Leah?)

–to Keegan (waterfront ‘95-99), for successfully graduating USMC Boot Camp

–and to Neil, who is entering the initial preliminary stages of thinking about looking into the possibility of maybe sometime in the future considering buying a computer

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