Trail Talk – 8/4/25

Happy August! Wow, the summer is just flying by! Before you know it, we will be back in school and starting a new scout year as well! It is amazing how much time flies when you are having fun! Right now, we have a group from our troop that is on the Mini-High Adventure to Gettysburg. From the pictures that I have seen it sounds like they are having a ton of fun down there! What an amazing opportunity! I am so thankful for the leaders in our troop who made this happen! Thank you especially to Abby Withers who put all of this together!!

 

IMPORTANT NOTES AND ANNOUNCEMENTS FOR THIS WEEK:

Troop Meeting Tomorrow Night – Don’t forget, even though we have a group on the mini-high, we ARE still having a troop meeting tomorrow night, August 5th!! We will continue to work on summer merit badges and rank advancement! See you tomorrow night!!

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.

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!

ANNUAL PLANNING MEETING – On Tuesday, August 12th,(please note the date change from August 19th) we will NOT have a regular troop meeting. Instead, we will be having our Annual Planning Meeting for the year. Adult leaders and Youth Leaders(any member of the PLC), put this on your calendar now! We will start as close to 6:00 p.m. as we can! 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!

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 – THINKING AHEAD! I want to put something out there right now to get everybody to realize that we need you all to think ahead! One of the things about scout trip planning is that we often must start planning trips way in advance. As you are aware, we started planning Boundary Waters and Gettysburg, last August. We started planning for SwampBase for 2026 in January of 2025. We do this because reservations and payments must be made and rather than having everyone pay a crap ton of money all at once, we try to spread those payments out. Well, the next adventure that we are going to plan is for Philmont of 2027 and registration to make reservations for Philmont of 2027 opens on October 1 of this year! That’s right, THIS year! In the next several weeks we are going to be asking for people interested in going to Philmont in 2027 to sign up but not only to sign up but to make a commitment as well! Part of that will be financial. We will be asking for a down payment of some sort. The other part of making a commitment is to make a commitment to the planning AND preparation process. Starting next summer and for sure Fall of 2026, we will be holding preparation meetings and hikes and signing up for Philmont will also mean making a commitment to those meetings and hikes. No, they are not on the schedule yet and I will try to schedule things the best I can but if you plan to do the ultimate adventure of Philmont, you need to also plan on the preparation that goes with it. Again, you might say “but Brian, that is a year away or two years away, how could I possibly even know what I am doing in a year or two?”. That is where the commitment part comes in. You make a commitment, and you stick with your commitment. Of course, emergency situations arise and those are understandable but for the most part, if you really want to do this, you will commit to it, stick with it and plan on it.

I will be putting together an information message on Philmont in the next few weeks to send out to the troop. This will include cost and other information. Unfortunately, I will not know dates for Philmont until registration comes around. I can give you a general time frame but nothing specific yet. Most likely July of 2027.

It is possible to plan a year or two in advance if you understand what it means to make a commitment to something. In scouts, as part of the Scout Oath and Law, making a commitment is implied. Following through on your commitments is also implied. I look forward to these adventures with our scouts and leaders! I hope you are all ready for them! I know I am!

 “What Troop Does More!!” – 244