From: CHUCK BRAMLET (chuckb@AZTEC.ASU.EDU)
Date: Mon Aug 14 2000 - 16:56:28 CDT
Are you sure that's a rock?
We are constantly telling our Scouts, "Watch where you put your
feet." In shooting, we tell them "Be sure of your target." The
point of all this is to teach them to be observant enough
to know what they are doing.
The following amusing but _true_ story may help illustrate this a
bit.
My wife is definitely _not_ a "woodsman". She was raised in the
wilds of Brooklyn, and to her, "camping" is putting the trailer on a
space in the RV park, and doing without cable and the microwave.
The RV park is adjacent to the national forest, and she loves to
"walk in the forest". We have actually walked several miles on
occasion. But _don't_ call it hiking. She doesn't hike.
This last weekend, we were up there again, and this time brought the
dog. We were at the trailer early enough in the evening that she
wanted to "walk in the woods" again. This time, she wanted to "go up
on top", i.e., hike up to the meadow above the campground. What I
heard was up to the top of the hill, but that's another story.
It had rained earlier in the afternoon, and we all got mud on our
feet. After the first time, though, I managed to walk out of the
mud. She, OTOH, nonchalantly walked right thru it. With the dog.
We had been gone for about an hour and a half, altogether, and when
we got back to the animal gate, I offered to scrape the mud off my
wife's sneakers. She told me that she was OK, and began to scrape
them on a rock.
The first couple of rocks did OK, but still left a lot of mud on her
shoes. So she looked around there in the twilight, and saw this
large rock.
Did I mention that there were cattle roaming freely in the forest?
Well, she planted her foot down firmly on this large rock, only to
have her shoe sink into a cowpie about 2 inches. Before I could
stop her.
My wife has now gained another bit of woods wisdom - always be sure
that its a rock you're scraping your shoes on. Me? I laughed for
the next 2 hours!
If any of you know my wife, don't tell her that I posted this.
She'll kill me.
YiS,
Chuck Bramlet -- I "used to be" an Antelope! WEM-10-95 Member DNRC
ASM Troop 323, Firebird District, Grand Canyon Council, Phoenix, Az.
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"When we lose the right to be different, we lose the privilege to
be free." -- Charles Evans Hughes
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