Blog 2863 – 09.01.2023

Chapter Two – Sam and Jane Go Camping

I have all of my adult life, over fifty years, been an outgoing and gregarious fellow. I enjoy and look forward to meeting new people and discovering new places. My family moved a lot when I was a boy. Till junior high (middle school) I never spent more that two years in any one school. I was a timid, shy, and introverted little boy. For that reason my mother encouraged me to join a Boy Scout troop that held their weekly meetings in an old Methodist church that she had attended as a girl. My best buddy Butch (who now goes by Ric and has been a long time resident of Portland, Oregon, was in that Scout troop and he and his older brother Mike taught me all the wood craft skills I would need for camping. Our first camping trip my first month as a Boy Scout was but the first of several adventures in the woods for me. I was only a Boy Scout for one year (Butch and Mike went on to become Eagle Scouts) but that experience opened up the world for me and made junior high, high school, and three years on active duty as an enlisted man in the Army far easier and much more fun than they would have been other wise.

Ghost stories and jokes around a campfire are a big part of camping. Today’s children’s story about Sam and Jane going camping brings back a lot of fond memories of the first band of brothers that I was a part of and the subsequent ones as well. That timid, shy, and introverted little boy became a self-confident, brave, even daring young man thanks to those camping trips in the woods with my fellow campers.

In the woods hunting, on a bank or in a boat fishing were my dad’s favorite “resting place.” Me too, and I guess there is a little of the spirit Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett in most of us that is fanned to flame around a campfire sharing tall tales, ghost stories, and silly jokes.

Your friend, fellow traveler, and happy camper,

David White

https://drive.google.com/file/d/15bdJ6O41tUUuJ1OoOqjRq9QQAtqNb6jm/view?usp=drivesdk

Sam and Jane Go Camping