For want of a knot the boat was lost

What I have to say will shock you and I apologize for the jolt.

I was never a Boy Scout.

You heard me. As dead-on as "physically strong, mentally sound and morally straight" sounds as a description of me, I never took that particular oath. When I was a lad of impressionable age, I played hockey and baseball. I rode dirt bikes and chased girls. I pitched pennies against greasy brick walls and occasionally hung out at a billiards joint.

That's right. I was a badass. Sort of like Fonzie's younger cousin who only made it onto that one episode.
There was that year I spent part of a summer at Camp Tracey (camp motto: "Your parents are tired of you") but it didn't amount to much. I made a key chain, or possibly a lanyard, out of wire or perhaps sticks, but I don't think it was any good.

I remember swimming in a big lake, listening to a camp counselor babble about start a fire this way or resuscitate a dying person that way. Yack, yack and yack, is all I ever got from that guy.

Then it dawned on me one afternoon that I will never forget. The sun was moving west all fat and orange and the shadows were falling across the camp. Tired kids were coming out of the woods all sweaty and covered in grime. I stood at the top of a hill, looking over the wilderness around me and I had a revelation as all young boys must: Hey! I thought all at once. There are no girls at this camp!

And so that was my last day at Camp Tracey and the last opportunity I had to try to learn how to tie a decent knot.

I've been thinking about that precious week and a half of outdoor adventure lately as a group of area Boy Scouts gets about the business of trying to save their beloved camp. I met with some of them recently to cover the story and I was more than a little impressed.

Here is a tribe of young boys who already know how to start fires using only twigs and bird beaks; who know how to build a shelter out of only those things nature provides; who know how to tie intricate and secure knots that won't — oh, let's just say those knots won't cause your girlfriend's father's boat to slip from the dock and drift far out onto China Lake, resulting in high embarrassment and dashing your hopes to grow up and marry that girl.

It happened to a friend of mine.

These Scouts, including cubs as young as 7, are already on their way to learning fundamental skills that most no longer bother with in this age where, if they don't make an application for it for your cell phone, it can't be that important.

The Scouts are learning how to save lives, how to survive in the extremes, how to wear their uniforms in public places without getting beaten. By the time these kids become teenagers, they're already developing the kind of fortitude and skills (it was a really nice boat, too) many of us will never have.

At the same age that Scouts are climbing, rappelling, sailing and learning to breathe under water, I was also learning the skills that would guide my future: namely jumping over things on a skateboard and balancing on a tree limb to spy on the hot new girl in the neighborhood.

As Scouts went on wilderness canoe treks to learn how to thrive in the wild, my friends and I were streaking or knocking on doors and running away. We never learned to start a fire with twigs and bird beaks because it was so much easier to siphon gasoline from some old man's mower and strike a match to it.

I wonder now what might have become of me if I'd immersed myself in things that were practical and disciplined rather than whimsical and reckless. My life, no doubt, would have followed a less errant course. Today, I might have a more useful set of skills and an attention span long enough to follow through with a ...

I misconceived everything about the Boy Scouts, I see that now. Back then, we only thought of them at all when deriding friends who exhibited responsible or virtuous behavior, which we regarded as loathsome. "Skipping the keg party because you need to study for a quiz?" we would ask, incredulous. "What are you, a Boy Scout?"

Now many of us are dunces who can tap a keg like nobody's business, but if you leave us alone in the woods, we will be eaten by angry, beakless birds the very first night.

The Scouts we scorned turned out to be the coolest among us: Steven Spielberg, Neil Armstrong, Hank Aaron and yes, the guy who played MacGyver.

My friend Don was a soldier in Vietnam. He survived that hell with shrapnel in parts of him and made it home to become a border agent and then an FBI agent. Pretty damn cool. And of course, Don was a Scout before any of that.

"I learned how to hunt there," he said, "how to cook in the outdoors, and I lost my fear of the woods in that wonderful place."

Which makes me suspect he can also swim like a fish and tie a knot that will never slip. And that might come in handy to me because one of these days, I really need to go to China Lake and get that boat back.

And speaking of being prepared, please visit www.sunjournal.com/survey/thanksgiving to take a poll on your Thanksgiving preparation habits and other matters of great importance.

Mark LaFlamme is a Sun Journal staff writer who wishes to be an honorary Boy Scout. You can e-mail him at mlaflamme@sunjournal.com.