Scouts

Another weekend spent with scouts, this time working to get the resident camp set up for the summer. Each June, there is a work party that hangs the canvas tents on the tent frames, spreads the mats out and puts the docks in the water at the waterfront, hacks back the vigorous growth encroaching on the many trails, and spreads bark, gravel, or sand wherever it's needed.

There are additional projects also going on. Last year I helped Mike build a three-stall changing room at the waterfront and the year before that, I helped a crew cut boards to length to replace about ten tent platforms. This year, the extra projects were splitting up about five years' worth of firewood in the form of trees that came down last winter (those trees had a diameter of 3 -4 feet), and placing a number of benches along the main trail all the way to the end of the peninsula (about 1/2 mile).

So which did I do? Neither. Mike did some finish work on the changing room and I helped "make" feathers. The feathers are a special award made of a turkey feather dyed to look like an eagle feather. They had to have a leather loop, some colored fluffy feathers, and red felt attached to the quill end. The trick was wrapping the leather loop in such a way that is doesn't slide off. Another woman and I worked on that.

And in spite of my lack of physical exertion, I was pretty tired Saturday night. Maybe that was because one of the six women in our cabin did as fine a job of snoring Friday night as I've heard in a long time. I thought I had successfully ignored it but I guess not. One poor woman took her sleeping bag and finished the night in her truck. I can peel the shingles from the roof myself but I've figured out a way that I don't snore while camping. I still breathe pretty heavily, I'm told, but I don't snore.