Trail Talk – 10/6/25

Happy Monday and new week! I hope you all had a great weekend! I hope you enjoyed these “summer” temperatures in Fall and are ready for the real Fall temperatures to start hitting soon! This last weekend, Rachel and I went to a corn maze that we go to every year. It was crazy going out to a farm, doing a corn maze, eating donuts, etc. when it was 80 some degrees in October! Usually, we get hot cider or chocolate, but we opted for Gatorade and water this time around! Crazy weather here in Michigan!

Just so everyone knows, I will not be at this week’s meeting or next week’s meeting. My daughters have swimming meets and volleyball matches respectively. I apologize for this! I hope to be back soon! If you have any questions about anything, please talk to Christy and Sherry! You can also feel free to text or email me!

A Quick Reminder for Everyone: Please remember that to earn a Merit Badge or Rank advancement, you can’t just “tell us” this happened. We need to have the hard copy proof of this. For Merit Badges, that means we must have blue cards that are turned into Jeff Crawford IN A TIMELY MANNER! Last week we missed some merit badges at the court of honor because we didn’t have blue cards turned in. We even had a blue card turned in that had all the important information filled out EXCEPT FOR THE NAME OF THE MERIT BADGE! Please make sure that blue cards are filled out completely and turned in ON TIME! Do not expect to receive awards magically, we need to have that documentation from the merit badge counselor to put that information into Troopmaster!

 

IMPORTANT NOTES AND ANNOUNCEMENTS FOR THIS WEEK:

Patrol Leader’s Coucil(PLC) Meeting – Our PLC, which consists of our Senior Patrol Leaders, Assistant Senior Patrol Leaders, Troop Scribes, Troop Quartermaster, and our Patrol Leaders meet on the first Tuesday of every month BEFORE the troop meeting, usually around 6:15 pm. It is the job of the PLC to run the troop. I asked our SPLs to let the PLC know this. THIS TUESDAY NIGHT IS THE FIRST TUESDAY OF OCTOBER AND THEREFORE A PLC NIGHT. If you are in one of those leadership positions, please plan to be at the church for a PLC meeting at 6:15 p.m. on Tuesday night and then every first Tuesday night of the month for the rest of the year!

October Campout – October 17 – 19th and we will be camping at Fort Custer Recreation Area in one of their group sites. This campout is coming up quickly in just under two weeks!  During the day on Saturday, we will venture out and go to Gull Meadow Farms for a “Fall Excursion”. We will do what you do at Cider mills and Apple farms in the fall…Corn Mazes, Games, Apple Canons, Apples, Cider and Donuts and much more! Because we are planning to go to Gull Meadow Farms, the cost for this campout will be a little bit higher than normal.  I am not a huge fan of that, but I think it might be worth the cost this time! The cost will be $60 per person. This cost will include the cost of the campout itself(food, campsite, transportation) as well as entry to Gull Meadow Farms. However, if you plan to buy cider, donuts, apples or anything at their store, YOU NEED TO BRING YOUR OWN MONEY!  SIGN UP THIS TUESDAY FOR THE CAMPOUT. TURN IN THE ATTACHED PERMISSION  SLIP AND PAY THE $60 TO SHERRY! THANK YOU!

SwampBase Participants – Please keep making those monthly payments so that we can make sure to pay SwampBase in a timely manner!  Mike King, the adult leader in charge of SwampBase, would also like to start meeting with all the participants. He is looking to have a SwampBase meeting on Tuesday, October 21st either at 6:00 before the meeting or during the meeting at 7:00. Please check your email for an email from Mike and let him know what works best for you! From this point on, payments will be made in increments of $160 per month through February.

SERVICE OPPORTUNITY! At Pathfinder Church! In October we will be filling Blessing Bags for Midwest Mission. The bags have rice, soy, dehydrated vegetables and a vitamin packet. One bag will feed hungry people and they are sent all over the world. We will be setting up assembly lines with 10 people per line to fill the bags, weigh them and seal.  We will be running 4 lines for probably 3 hours. We wondered if perhaps the Scouts might be interested in helping to set up, tear down or fill the bags. Set up will be on Friday, October 24 around 6:15.  Saturday, October 25 will be filling the bags, sometime during the day. No set times currently. Probably that afternoon we will be tearing down.

 Philmont 2027 – I put our troop name in for a reservation for Philmont 2027 last Wednesday! I was able to sign us up for 3 crews. I registered 28 participants at the current time, however with 3 crews, that will allow me to have up to 36 participants. That means there is still time to sign up for Philmont 2027! We have to pay Philmont a fee of $150/person by December 1st. If you are still interested in going, I can fill up spots until I get to 36 participants! Please sign up with Sherry and pay the $150 deposit! Registration(putting our troop in for crews, not individual signup) for crews goes until Oct. 16th, after that there will be a lottery for “dates”. I will know more about our Philmont dates later this month!

Tuesday, November 4 – no troop meeting due to election day at church. All church activities are cancelled, and the building is closed except for the election.

Scoutmaster Minute – I had a chance to chat with one of our adult leaders last week and then ironically this same topic came up again with my daughters this weekend. I am so glad it did because it is something I wanted to remind the whole troop about! As a scout, you learn many, many things! As a T21, you learn a bunch of knots, first aid, cooking stuff, swimming and boating safety, BUT, if I asked you to tie a Tautline hitch right now, could you do it? Many of you probably could not even though technically you learned it and had it signed off as a T21. When I worked at Philmont as a ranger during college and I would take crews out in the backcountry, I would show them how to setup the dining fly. We always had to tie tautlines for the dining fly. I would ask the crew “ok, who here knows how to tie a tautline hitch” and almost ALL OF THE TIME, not a single scout in the crew would be able to do it. Why is that? We learn it, why can’t we do it? There is a single answer to that, and it is very simple; If you don’t practice something, you won’t retain it! Think about that for a minute. In school, if you don’t practice your math skills, you don’t remember how to do the math you are learning. In sports, if you don’t practice the skills of your sport, you can’t execute those skills come game time. If you don’t practice something over and over and over again, you won’t remember it. We learn things and put them into our short-term memory but only when we actually use them do they become a part of our long-term memory. There is no difference when it comes to scouting.

Typically scouts shift things they learn; first aid, knots, etc. to long term memory when they put those items into practice. Scouts that I have taken on high adventure trips, like Philmont or Boundary Waters, often CAN tie a tautline hitch or light a backpacking stove and cook from it after they have actually USED those skills. It is one thing to learn something in a classroom, but it is quite a bit something else to use it in practice.

Baden Powell said that “a week of camp life is worth 6 months of theoretical teaching in the meeting room” and I think this is exactly what he was referring to. We can learn these skills all we want at troop meetings, but if we don’t go home and put them into practice or use them, they are not going to be any good to us. It is no different with anything in our life whether it be scouts, school, sports, drama/theater or whatever.

I challenge all of you – pick up a piece of rope and while you are sitting at home watching tv, tie some of those knots that you learn at scouts over and over a few times! Cook a meal at home on a backpacking or similar stove. Practice First Aid on your little brother or sister or mom or dad! Don’t just leave it at scouts! Take it home with you too!

“What Troop Does More!!” – 244