Word: scouted
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Nationally, scouting faces an equally rugged journey. Like the 17,500 hikers who passed through Philmont this past summer, the highly traditional movement has been forced in recent years to shed some flab and check its compass. Static enrollments five years ago persuaded the national office in Irving, Texas, to commission a marketing study, which concluded that the Boy Scouts were dangerously out of step with post-1960s America; the public still imagined uniformed do-gooders who tie knots and help old folks across the street. One solution: the Scout Handbook was revised to show more minority scouts in action...
...Philmont trek provides a deceptively casual scenario for such transition. Changing history is evident in the area's visitors. Spanish conquistadores and American pioneers passed through. Trekkers carrying side arms have included Kit Carson and, more recently, eagle scout and FBI Director William Sessions, who brought along pistol-packing bodyguards. In recent years women have become active in the formerly all-male backcountry. Two of 501's adult leaders are female, as are 20 of Philmont's 185 rangers who hike for two days with each group to help launch the trip successfully. Environmental pressures are being felt as well...
Squabbling occurs during 501's damp, disorganized first nights. Ranger Brad Wolgast, 21, an eagle scout and psychology student from Kansas, observes privately that the troop's adults and boys communicate poorly. "Things get left unsaid," he explains. Staff members at base camp tell of a stressed-out troop that tied one of its hikers to a tree earlier this year. Philmont chaplain Rusty Cowden, 38, remembers his own trek in 1967: "We got lost. A bear ate our food, and it rained 11 out of 12 days." But Cowden recalls the trip joyously. Coping with blisters, bears and soggy...
...Since scouting is bound to such traditions, the movement faces the challenge of joining the fast-paced '90s without losing values that should endure. Quaint slogans like "Be prepared" and "Do a good turn daily" may in fact be useful in an age of Middle East crises and crack cocaine. Inner-city scout troops now meet in welfare hotels, in juvenile halls, even on ghetto street corners, where mobile homes serve as assembly halls. "We're not using the Norman Rockwell image anymore," says chief scout executive Ben Love, 60, who has initiated campaigns to combat five "unacceptables": hunger, illicit...
...19th century mining camp, Troop 501 is eating dehydrated lasagna softened by boiling water and the evening's drizzle. It is oddly tasty. Bearded "miners" like Jedediah Ezekial Springfield (eagle scout Trey Berlin, 21, of Richmond, Ky.) offer to teach gold panning and to provide tours of the abandoned mine shaft; they speak in twangy "interpretive accents." After dinner, the miners put on a "stomp" with guitar music and surprisingly pungent jokes. Another day's hike leads to a cattle ranch set in a lush green valley. At that campfire, a talented cowboy-guitarist nicknamed Fluffy performs the Oreo Cookie...