Matthew Dickerson, Reprinted from the Addison Independent, February 24, 2000.
For those who are concerned about the growing disinterest in the Great Outdoors among today's youth--if you fear to see a new generation of Vermonters who would rather spend their days watching television, playing Nintendo, and trading Pokemon cards than fishing, hiking, hunting, or cross-country skiing--take heart.
On February 5, I spent the day at rather remarkable annual event known as the "Klondike Derby". The event was hosted by the Colchester troop of the Boy Scouts of America and was held at Shelburne Farms. "Troops" of Boy Scouts from all over northwestern Vermont, as well as "dens" of "Webelos" scouts (the oldest of the Cub Scouts), converged at Shelburne Farms for a day of outdoor winter activities and contests. These contests were held at a dozen different stations scattered around the grounds of Shelburne Farms. Each troop or den brought a "dog sled" which was the basic mode of transportation between stations. In most cases these sleds were constructed by the participating dens out of whatever odds and ends they could find--usually involving at least one old pair of skis. They weren't pulled by dogs though. The kids themselves provided the canine power, with the sled holding all of their possessions for the day: trail food, water, extra coats and mittens, lunches, etc.
The stations included standard Scout activities such as knot tying and fire starting as well as winter contests like snow-ball throwing and an old Native American game involving the sliding of a straight stick across packed snow. Most of the activities stressed group participlation and team work. There was a simulated rescue of a person (and sled) trapped out on thin ice, a two-man log-cutting contest, and a challenging obstacle course for the sleds pulled by the teams of scouts.
The day started at 9:00am with a mass-start sled race and ended just shy of dinner time with a big award ceremony. In the middle, of course, was lunch--but not your typical peanut-butter-and-jelly-sandwich fare. Each kid prepared a "foil dinner" (meat, potatoes, carrots, and whatever else they wanted to add) that was cooked over a pair of large fire pits. Learning how to prepare such a meal so that it wouldn't burn was a big part of the planning.
The scouts also received some training in cold-weather survival and first aid, but probably the most important part of survival that day was guarding their foil lunches as they cooked in a pit with 500 other identical-looking meals. Among the dozens of troops and dens participating in the Derby were two Webelos dens from Bristol which merged to form a single team. It was composed of Rob Stetson, Adam Shackett, Towner Norton, Tyler Steady, Matt Dingler, Greg Butler, and Thomas Dickerson. The team did quite well in several events. Their time through the obstacle course was among the best of all the Cub Scout dens, and even beat some of the older Boy Scouts. They did even better in rescue-simulation with the best time of all the groups that had gone so far. Good scores were also obtained on the memory test and rope-tying, as throughout the day their ability to work together steadily improved. They might have been in the running for a grand prize except that their snowball-throwing accuracy left something to be desired (a fact which I'm sure many of their siblings are happy about.)
By the time we piled into cars to head home, the scouts were pretty tired. Between the cold and wind there was plenty of potential for misery. But not one of the youth were complaining. (For the record, none of the seven adults were complaining either, though there was a brief expedition late in the morning to aquire some coffee at a nearby convenience store.) Nor was the point of the event winning any prizes. The skills they practiced, the opportunity for teamwork, and the appreciation of being outside were themselves the rewards. I'm already looking forward to next year's event.