Trail Talk – 6/30/25

IMPORTANT NOTES AND ANNOUNCEMENTS FOR THIS WEEK:

Patrol Leader’s Council (PLC) MEETING: Tomorrow is not only the first day of July it is also the first TUESDAY of July. Please remember this means that our Patrol Leader’s Council meets at 6:15 p.m.! We meet the first Tuesday of every month! The PLC consists of all Senior Patrol Leaders, Assistant Senior Patro Leaders, Patrol Leaders, Troop Scribes and Troop Quartermasters, as well as Troop Guides! We still hold these meetings in the summertime. It is especially important that our current PLC begins to reflect on the past year of scouting and to look forward to the next year of scouting! We want to make sure we can improve and learn from the past so that we can do better for the future!

Troop Leadership Training – Please join us TOMORROW NIGHT for Round 2 of our ILST course! This is a Troop Leadership training course that we want to have as many scouts go through as possible! We did round 1 last week! This week we will do round 2 which will be led by Christy!! Remember, if you come to all three sessions, you can earn your “Trained” patch! If you are in town and can come to the troop meeting on Tuesday night, be prepared to learn about leadership and to play games while doing so! It looks to be a lot of fun! We will NOT BE DOING MERIT BADGES OR RANK ADVANCEMENT FOR THE NEXT THREE WEEKS! Merit badge counselors, if you can come to help supervise, that would be great!

Boundary Waters – Please make sure you are getting yourself prepared! Boundary Waters is now less than 2 weeks away!! I spent some time at the church this weekend rounding up crew equipment for the trip and sorting it out. I have a few things left to get before we go but we will be ready!! I will be sending out reminders and “check-ins” in the days to come! Please make sure you are preparing diligently for this trip. Start getting your gear together NOW! Don’t wait until the last minute when you suddenly might need something but do not have the time to get it!

Mini-High Adventure – Gettysburg! If you haven’t signed up for this yet, make sure you do so this Tuesday night. Abby needs to get a sense of the number of people going on this trip so that she can plan accordingly. She needs to know how much food to buy and so forth! If you haven’t paid for this trip yet and you are going, please get your payments in NOW! This is the time of year where we make a lot of big payments out of the troop bank account because of the bigger activities, which means depleting the bank account a lot quicker! We need everyone to stay on top of their payments!

EAGLE SCOUT COURT OF HONOR – Sunday, August 17th at 2:00 p.m .at Pathfinder Church. Please put this on your Calendars now! We will be celebrating 5 of our scouts earning the rank of Eagle Scout! These include Ivan Kwigzile, Ethan Wadsworth, Elliott Anderson, Ryan Greene and Ash Cowne!! That’s right, Ash is going to come all the way back here from North Carolina to participate in an Eagle Court of Honor with his old troop, the best troop around! Troop 244!! Let’s make sure as many of you come out to celebrate these scouts as possible! Let’s make it an afternoon to remember. I will need scouts to help participate and set up for the ceremony to arrive by 12:30 p.m. Thank you!

Scoutmaster Minute – REFLECTION – Is this something that you do? I don’t mean looking at your reflection in a mirror or a body of water but truly reflecting on things you have done or been through. I have grown much more reflective over the years and have found it something to be very useful. Years ago, when something happened, rather than being reflective of it, I would be reactive towards it. Do you understand what I mean by that? Something happens and then boom, right away, I would react to it. I would not give it much thought or look at it from all sides, I would just do the first thing that came to mind. This was something in all areas of my life. However, as time has gone by, I have been trying to be more reflective about things before I react. I do this in all areas of my life. At school/work, I will teach a lesson to students one day and there are times where I will come out of that lesson thinking “Oh, that was just terrible, I totally screwed that up”. However, when I give myself time to reflect on the lessons(usually later in the day) I will find that it wasn’t as bad as I thought. Could there have been things that I could have done better in my teaching? ABSOLUTELY! Does that mean that what I did was terrible? Most of the time it does not. Sometimes, reflecting can be hard, especially when you reflect on the life of a loved one. Reflecting in that manner can often cause feelings of loss, worry, and regret. However, if you change your reflection to thinking about the positive things, those feelings can quickly turn around into ones of joy. I think, often, the same goes for our lives. Too often, we look to reflect on the negative things. Yes, we do need to recognize and improve those things, but what if we put as much effort into reflecting on the positive as we do on the negative? Would our feelings about events be different? I don’t know, but it is worth a shot. Either way, we need to take time to reflect on events, actions, things we say. It is the only way to improve, if we can recognize the areas we need to improve. As we are coming to the end of this scouting year with only a few events left, I challenge all of us to reflect on our scouting for the past year. What was great about it? What could we improve upon? I don’t just mean, as a troop, but as individuals as well. Did we miss a lot of meetings, and we could do better at being more regular in our attendance? Did we make it to a lot of meetings and push forward in our advancement? Did we attend campouts or not? Did we participate in high adventures or other activities or not? WHAT CAN YOU DO TO MAKE YOURSELF THE VERY BEST SCOUT POSSIBLE! What can Troop 244 do to help you get there? Reflect on that and let me know if you want to!

 “What Troop Does More!!” – 244