Trail Talk – 8/11/25

Happy Monday!! I hope everyone had a great weekend and enjoyed a great start to this new week! My family and I went camping last week up through yesterday. We went to none other than Hill and Hollow Campground in Pentwater! It was weird to stay at the campground without the troop around. I kept expecting to see scouts in the pool or in the arcade. It was a good time though and we thoroughly enjoyed it! I was exhausted coming home yesterday!

Please note below in the announcement for the troop planning meeting tomorrow night: Bring a chair in case we run out of room at the tables AND it would be great to have some scouts show up early to help us get setup!

Our group of scouts from 244 who are helping to serve in the Mackinac contingent this week took off last Saturday to start their week of serving on Mackinac Island. They are up there helping with things like flag raising and lowering, guest services, answering questions and much more! The group is made up of scouts from several troops in Southwest Michigan. Troop 244 was able to send 8 of our own scouts, plus Haydn Carr from 161 and Mr. Carr from our troop! Please see the group pictured below before they left. Please note that Riley Reinhart is not pictured as he went up separately.

IMPORTANT NOTES AND ANNOUNCEMENTS FOR THIS WEEK:

Troop Meeting Tomorrow Night – No REGULAR troop meeting tomorrow night, August 12th. In place of our regular troop meeting, we will be having our annual planning meeting. Please see the next announcement.

ANNUAL PLANNING MEETING – Tomorrow night, Tuesday August 12th starting at 6:00 p.m. we will have our annual planning meeting for the new scout year!  IT WOULD BE GREAT IF WE COULD HAVE SOME SCOUTS SHOW UP EARLY(5:30ish or so) to help setup! We will start as close to 6:00 p.m. as we can with introduction and dinner! THE TROOP WILL PROVIDE HAMBURGERS, AND HOT DOGS! We ask everyone else to bring a side dish to pass! The goal of this meeting will be to look ahead at the next scout year, plan out troop meetings, merit badges, and activities including campouts and such. I severely need the input of the YOUTH. I need Senior Patrol Leaders, Assistant Senior Patrol Leaders, Patrol Leaders, Assistant Patrol Leaders, Troop Scribes, Quartermasters and so on. All adult leaders are invited to help with ideas and plan activities for the next year! Your input is so important to making this troop one of the best! IT MIGHT BE A GOOD IDEA FOR YOU TO BRING A LAWN CHAIR IN CASE WE RUN OUT OF ROOM AT THE TABLES!

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 Kwigizile, 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!

Saturday, August 23 – We need help!! On Saturday, August 23rd, there will be a gathering of Global Methodist Church leaders at Pathfinder Church to talk about a variety of topics, including scouting! These leaders from other churches want to learn about the troop that Pathfinder supports and why it is such an awesome troop! We want to provide this group of leaders with a meal! So far Jeremy Custer has volunteered to lead the cooking and preparation of the meal, and I have two other volunteers willing to assist him so far. However, we could use more help!! Please let me know if you could come to the church on this date to assist with cooking a meal and maybe also get a chance to tell these church leaders a little bit about Troop 244! I don’t have a specific time yet but will email out when I do! It would be great to really show them what troop does more! Let me know at tomorrow’s meeting or by email!

Summer Merit Badges – Please remember, for the rest of the summer meetings, you are either working on T21, if you are a T21 scout, or a merit badge. You have the option to either work on partial Eagle required merit badges if you have a partial on one AND your counselor is present at the meeting. Counselors will not always be at meetings throughout the summer! The other option is to work on a non-required merit badge being offered by Mr. King, Christy and Mr. Clapp. Please note that Mr. Clapp will not be at the meeting tomorrow night so if you are working on a merit badge with him, we will find you another adult leader as a guide. Be prepared to work on whatever you need to for the merit badge you were doing.

SwampBase Participants – It is now August and according to the payment plan I emailed all of you earlier this summer, the first payments for SwampBase are due this month! Payment of $125 per participant for August is due this month. You will make another payment of $125 per participant for September. We need to send a payment to SwampBase by October 1st, so we need the August and September payments paid no later than September 15th! After these first two payments are made, the payment plan goes up to $160 per month per participant. Because this is a trip we have never done before, if the current price tag of $1,100 per participant doesn’t seem to work out, we may have to adjust that price. We will know more later this year. Please remember that the price tag doesn’t just include SwampBase but transportation and lodging to and from. Thank you for paying these fees in a timely manner!

Scoutmaster Minute – As I was thinking about this planning meeting coming up tomorrow night as well as the new scout year starting soon, I found myself looking backwards at this last year. What a TOUGH year this was! We had a great plan in place for the year and then the year was thrown into chaos with the passing of my dad. This was hard for so many reasons, the biggest of which was losing my dad, our scoutmaster and one of the greatest scouters and fathers ever. It was also hard because it meant change for many reasons. We had to be flexible and change our plans. We had to work around our grief and sorrow. We had to be willing to do something different. The change also centered around not having my dad around anymore. He had been the central figure for Troop 244 for a long time. So, to come to a scout meeting or go on a campout and not have him there was difficult, not just for me but for all of us. Summer Camp this year was weird without him around as was Boundary Waters. Change also involved change in our troop leadership to a degree. I had always been around and had always assisted my dad with running the troop but now it was me who stepped into his shoes. Not only did I have to get used to that but so did YOU! Christy quite graciously volunteered to essentially step into my old shoes as I stepped into a new pair! I am so thankful for her and her willingness to do this. A lot of adult leaders really stepped up their game. We couldn’t have made this transition without Sherry. Keep in mind that we were making this transition while the loss of my dad was hard on all of us. I hope that I have put this into perspective for all of you for what I am about to say next.

WE DID IT! We pulled off the rest of the scout year in a fashion that I think would make my dad very proud. We pulled off the campouts. We went to summer camp. We did Boundary Waters and the Mini-High to Gettysburg. We continued to have meetings. We had scouts who advanced in rank. We had 5 new scouts reach the rank of Eagle! We only did this for 2 reasons: 1. Because my dad prepared us all to be able to do it and 2. Because we did it TOGETHER! This troop is the way it is because of the wonderful way we all work together to make it the best troop in Michigan! As long as we continue to do this, we will continue to make the troop that my dad built into what it is today the best! We will continue to honor his legacy and make him proud. We will continue to be the troop that DOES MORE!!

 “What Troop Does More!!” – 244