We got a text that our grandson Trendin was “crossing over’’ on the following Sunday.
Turns out there was nothing to be alarmed about. Cub Scouts transitioning to the Boy Scouts do a “crossing over ceremony.”
I told him I was glad he was doing it, and that I wasn’t ready to cross over just yet. He wasn’t sure what I meant but just smiled, thinking the old man was babbling again.
He’s following his older brother Daultin on a path of years of Cub and Scouting. The more I’ve seen of their experiences, the more I’m convinced it’s a program that is needed now more than ever.
Yes, most anything we’ve heard about Scouting in recent years has been anything but positive. But by all appearances, it seems the organization has dealt with past mistakes and has emerged a better institution, albeit financially poorer due to legal settlements.
There are dueling ideas about the Scouts — those who think it’s too conservative/religious or those who think it’s caved into political correctness by doing things such as allowing girls into the mainline troops.
When it was introduced more than a century ago, Scouting was a fairly radical and progressive idea. The idea of the organization was that as Americans moved away from farms and into cities, boys needed a way to learn the lessons that had made prior generations great.
Now very few people are on farms and there are fewer farms all the time, making Scouting one of the few ways kids can learn to start a fire with flint and steel or bind a broken leg in the middle of the woods.
I don’t remember Scouting being too prevalent growing up on a farm by Nicollet. But we at least got to build some outdoor skills on our own, carrying a hatchet into the woods and building a tree-branch fort, or starting a campfire to do a cookout. (I still have a recipe card I filled out when I was a kid, laying out the process for cooking a hot dog over a fire: Heat water in pan, put in hot dog, put on bun.”)
Our grandsons’ troops have some dedicated volunteer parents, something that’s key to any good organization. They do a lot of projects and outings with the kids. There are weeklong camps at Cuyuna Camp in northern Minnesota and weekend outings to the Norseland Scout Camp.
They still have the Scouts make their own soap-box derby cars to race, with medals and trophies handed out.
They can earn a slew of merit badges after learning everything from archaeology and digital technology to citizenship and fly-fishing.
The kids also get to be members of various levels of Scouting as they move up, from Bobcat and Wolf to Tenderfoot and Eagle.
Best of all, when they are at camps, all the cellphones are locked in a box on the bus for the duration of the camp.
While the skills and learning are something they can use all their lives, the main benefit is Scouting builds self-reliance and self-worth. Just like organized sports at schools, the troop members support each other and help the younger kids move up.
With a mountain of problems facing society, from addiction and violence to social divides and bullying, Scouting provides a low-cost benefit that any kid can get involved in.
Tim Krohn can be contacted at tkrohn@mankatofreepress.com or 507-720-1300.
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