Wow! This last week I've been at a scout camp called Timberline. It was the best week of my life I've ever had. Timberline is a camp that teaches leadership skills to people my age.
I arrived there last Monday. There were about 35 boys, and each was assigned to their own patrol, six different in all. I was put in the Yellow Patrol, separated from all of those in my home troop. We got to make our own patrol name, flag, cheer, and all that great stuff. Josh Williams and I came up with the name "Egyptian American Samurai Ninja Association of Camel Exchange Students of Doom", or "EASNACESD" (Ea-snase-ist). So everyone called us easnacesd. Some other names were "The Flaming Falcons", "Citric Acid", and the "Purple Cobras", not nearly as bizarre as ours.
Tuesday was really great. We had a couple of lessons, about our Visions, The Leading Edge, Forming Storming Norming and Performing, Communication, and stuff like that. But we also had a whole lot of fun! We played a lot of games during the lessons, but every evening was always the best part ever! First in the evening, we played Capture the Flag. It was the Kung Fu Panda patrol, (the staff,) against the all of the boys. The pandas won, because even though they had less people, they were a lot faster and were impossible to outrun. We played in such huge boundaries, probably at least two miles wide, with a river being the center boundary, making it even more challenging. After, we then watched a really good movie called October Sky with brownies and popcorn to finish off the day! It rained a lot, about half of the time it was raining.
But Wednesday was the rain day. The rain never stopped, except for about thirty minutes. Almost everyone, (excluding me), wanted to go home. But I enjoyed it a whole lot. I got to be the patrol leader in our Easnacesd patrol. I think I did a great job keeping our patrol together, but again, the best (and most scary) part was in the evening. We were having a Lego Night, which was really fun, when we heard screaming. Our Senior Patrol Leader, (Jordan Simmons, probably a junior in high school), comes running in freaked out. He yells for the six patrol leaders, which included me, to run and get something absorbable. When I come back, we all follow him and find one of our quartermasters laying on the ground, with a sprained ankle. He says he was running back to get us to help for two others that were hurt, tells us to go on and help them ahead, that they were hurt worse than him. I go on and find Skyler, who we figured out tripped in a trench and landed on a shovel he was carrying. He was having difficulty breathing, so I was in charge of keeping him conscious and talking to him while they examined him. Everyone was freaked out and scared to death, including me. It turned out to be fake, realistic first aid. I found out that the other guy, Hunter had a stick stuck in his guts and had fake blood all over him. But it really made us remember to always be prepared.
Thursday was pretty cool. We did some fun geo-cashing stuff, and learned how to work a GPS. We played Ultimate Frisbee, which was really fun. My friend, Brickman, and I kept talking about it like it was a quidditch match. "Go Hermione!" "Look at that Nimbus 2,000!" "Jolly good, Ron!" It was really funny. We also had a really fun campfire at night where we all did skits. The most funny ones were done by the Kung Fu Pandas, they did things like The Worlds Fastest Robbery and Quick Draw MgGraw skits.
Friday was our last full day up at Timberline. We played a lot of games in the morning. In the afternoon, we went around to all of the Troop Guides who asked us questions about how our Timberline experience was, including our own troop guide Riley (who is so awesome!). At about 8:00 PM, we all gathered as patrols. We all had to take on an oath of silence, as we all slowly marched across an "Honor Trail". One by one, each patrol was separated until each patrol was walking alone. We then came to Brett, the Assistant Senior Patrol Leader. He told us we were now continuing on without our troop guides, (which bummed me out to see Riley leave), as the five of us went on. We came to up to a staff member. They would each discuss with us one point of the scout law, (A scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent,) and then we'd continue to the next guy.
After each of them talked to us, it was late and we came to a campfire. We were each told to write a name down of someone that meant a lot to us, that was a leader in our eyes. Then we went up and told why we chose that person. I chose my Grandma and Grandpa Mansfield, because of when they went on their mission and missed all the things they wished they could have been here for. Some people had really sad stories, everyone including me says they cried on at least one. It was a great experience.
On Saturday, the final day, we had our final troop assembly in front of all the parents. It was really fun to show them all of our stuff, like our EASNACESD stuff. When we left the troop assembly for the last time, we threw our hats in the air like we graduated school. It was so fun!
All in all, it was a really awesome camp! Probably the best camp I've ever been on.
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