Scouting, Volume 63, Number 1, January-February 1975 Page: 63
68 p. : ill. ; 28 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Now the crew is all ready. Within an-
other five minutes 11 pairs of wet feet
— one canoe has three men — are in-
board and the five canoes are strung
out neatly, heading downstream.
Gene Hensler picks up the rubber
boats, and although he has seen a
crew start out almost every morning
for two summers, he stands on the
beach watching downstream until the
last A1 canoe turns the bend.
Riding back to the base with Gene
you see much evidence of man's pres-
ence, past and current, and you begin
to understand why the staff rejects the
term "wilderness." But just the same
we ask why the objection.
The grins tell you even before the
words that there is not any real objec-
tion. But Bud Jeffrey says quietly —
everything Bud says is said quietly —
"A more valid term, although it sounds
stuffy, is 'multiple land use of back-
woods areas'. Consider that for more
than a hundred years most of these
five million acres have been worked
by men and horses. They are still do-
ing a iot of logging hereabouts." Bud
interrupts himself as he points his pipe
out to the Penobscot River where an
outboard cruiser is moving swiftly up-
stream. "Fishermen. Multiple use." He
turns back and continues, "They kept
a lot of horses here back when they
began large-scale logging. And they
raised tons of hay to feed those
horses. On this one (Seboomook base
is at Pittston Farm) they also raised
potatoes and other vegetables for the
lumber camps in the vicinity."
The commissary building is an old
potato barn, with trap doors in the floor
for cellar storage of potatoes and oth-
er root crops. The base with its sev-
eral buildings is actually the property
of Great Northern Paper Company, one
of the 14 sponsors of the high adven-
ture acres in Maine.
There are also many signs left by
man out on the water trails. In the map
room a little informal museum is grow-
ing as returning crews add rusted me-
mentos of one-horsepower logging.
Among the mementos is a two-man
saw, once known as a "misery whip."
The wood handles have long since
rotted away. There are also a peavy —
a long metal-tipped pole with a barbed
hook for man-handling logs in the
water — and many small fragments of
tools, chains and spikes.
Also out on the water, usually where
a shallow pond forms around a log
bridge, are great clusters of "dry ki."
Shaped and smoothed and bleached
by the elements, dry ki is what the
beachcombers of ocean shorelines
call driftwood.
Crew A1 will see much dry ki before
returning to the base. Then, all too
soon, nine days in the backwoods are
over for the high adventurers from Vir-
ginia. As they paddle close to the
beach at Caucomgomoc Dam and wet
foot their canoes the iast few yards,
Gene Hensier is waiting for them with
the carryall and trailer.
Returning to the base they will pitch
camp at a homesite, take turns at hot
and cold showers and turn in their trail
gear. That day the crew will meet with
the camp director and chief guide for a
bull session about their trip. They will
also fill in evaluation sheets that deal
mostly with their impressions of how
skillful their guide was in getting them
the most satisfaction out of their trip.
The official objective of the BSA's
high adventure program is recorded
specifically, but no crew member has
yet been quoted as saying his adven-
ture "contributed to my physical, men-
tal, emotional, social and spiritual
growth." More typical are such words
as "I thought I'd be scared when my
canoe flopped over, but once you got
the hang of what to do it was fun. Or,
"Only God can make a tree, and
wasn't He ever busy out there!" Or,
"Boy, I got real tough muscles where I
never thought I had muscles before,
and they aren't hurting any more." Or,
simply, "We just gotta come back here
next year." Somehow you get the feel-
ing the objectives are measuring up the
way you feel they should.
Whether a crew hopes to return to
the Maine National High Adventure
Area, or is planning its first trip, it is
never too soon to make reservations.
Ken Slade, no longer base director at
Seboomook, now a district Scout ex-
ecutive in New Jersey said, "You know,
I never did have to go out and pull in
teenagers off the street. I just don't
think my successor will, either." ■
Are you a teacher whose summers are
free? Do you have some experience
with conservation work? Would you
like to spend about 12 weeks of the
summer working the north Maine
woods? Are you interested in working
hard and being part of our constantly
growing and improved high adventure
program? If so, write or call Wallace H.
Jeffrey, NE Coordinator, Maine Nation-
al High Adventure Area, P.O. Box 150,
Orrington, Maine 044 74, phone 207-
825-4062.
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63
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Boy Scouts of America. Scouting, Volume 63, Number 1, January-February 1975, periodical, January 1975; New Brunswick, New Jersey. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth353656/m1/65/: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Boy Scouts of America National Scouting Museum.