Boy Scouts of America -Big Horn Leadership Camp

As you work your way through Boy Scouts more and more cool oportunities become available to you. Ethan has been in Scouts since he was five years old. One fun opportunity that he got this year was to attend the Big Horn Leadership Camp that takes place for a week at the Tahosa Camp near Ward, Colorado. Each year only 2 boys from our troop get selected and invited to go.

We dropped him off after the race last Sunday and picked him up yesterday. He had an absolute blast. They were put into patrols. He was in the green patrol. They set up camp, did duties (such as meal prep. and clean up) and activities together. They had lessons about group behavior, leadership, personality management, conflict management, and so on. They got to go GeoCaching, go on Outpost (camping on their own without the adults hanging around), they got to build a ballistrate ( like a catapult) and many other things. Ethan says that he is glad that he learned so much. He is sure that it will help him be a better leader. When we arrived they were not yet ready so we waited in the wings while they cleaned up. Then we got to go through elements of their days. We had a flag ceremony complete with patrol yells and fob awards (these are like little, often silly, awards that they give each other.) Then we went up to the campfire site. Along the hike there were twelve posts, each one with an element of the Scout Law on it, "brave, trustworthy..." and the like. A boy was at each post doing a Scout salute. It was pretty neat. Then we got a small show. We saw silly skits and sang many songs. They they did a graduation ceremony. They said that some of them might receive an invitation to be on staff in the future. Ethan hopes that he gets to be part of that. His favorite staff member was a Matt. Matt will be on staff during the second week next year so that is the week Ethan would hope to be part of. He was not as tired or dirty as I expected him to be. We missed him but knew that he was having a grand time. It is really something to see my boy growing up.