CAMPING

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 51, 23 November 1937, Page 11

CAMPING

Here is a bit more about camping. I meant to put it in last week, but there was no space for it so I had to leave it over. Some of you may think that it is a pet tbpic of mine; it isn't, but it is certainly a very important part of a Scout 's lif e. Up to about six years ngo, whenever a troop had a camp, the Scouter could always rely on getting about three-quarters of the iroop there, then it began to drop to about half only, now it is often even f'ar less than that proportion. Whether we are becoming ' 'parlour Scouts" nowadays I do not know, but we certainly do not get the numbers ttat we should when we go to camp. At one time the only ones who missed the annual camg were those boys who were at work, or those who were laid up. They planned their jther holidays so that they could get to camp as well. Now it seems as if the only ones who go are those who have nothing else to do with themselves. If they get a chance of going away somewhere else they go without trying to get to camp as . well. There are plenty of other excuses as well for not attending the scout camp; and yet they never make "the excuse that they do not enjoy Scout camps, so it isn't that that is the trouble.

I do want you to realise that to be a really up-to-date Scout you simply must get to as many camps as possible. There are many things that you can do in your club-room, but there are many more that you cannot possibly do there. Signalling isn'v half the fun when done from one end of a xoom to the other, or across from one sido of a lawn to the other, as it is whon done across" a river, or from hill-top to hilltop. You can do tracking of a kind round the roads or empty paddocks at home, but you soon find out that that sort of tracking is vastly different to the sort that you will do ' in camp where you have.far more natural cover. There are plenty of stalking and other similar Scout games that can't be done with any fun or suceess in town; you can do them all in the scrub that \ye have in a place like Rissington where we have our own Scout. ' camping ground.

Then, again, you get to know each other far better living in a camp together for a week or a fortnight. Some chaps turn out far beter»boys than you thought they were, some show that they would Tather leave the work to the others than do it themselves, and so on. Also a> camp gives the scoutmaster a chance to get to know his chaps and to realise what each one is worth, and I can tell you he gets plenty of surprises as to the character and capabilities of the boys he has in his troop. I hope that this year we shall have more, bigger and better camps than ever before, especially so as we have to rnake np for last year when we could not get our nsual ones at all.