I used to think the Darwin Awards were funny, until someone I knew collected one a few years back.

He wasn't a close friend, but he was a good guy - highly intelligent, with a well-paid job, did a lot of volunteer work, didn't make trouble. It's just that one night he had a bit too much to drink and bet his friends he could climb down the inside of the garbage disposal chute in his high-rise apartment building. He died on the way to hospital in the wee hours of the morning.

When I saw my female boss break down and sob openly on the telephone, and then have to break the news to the rest of us, I decided the Darwin Awards weren't that funny after all.

There seem to be two lines of thought in this discussion. On the one hand, the kid is an idiot for not knowing any better. On the other hand, the parents were idiots for assuming he would know better. The danger is that those who assume the first explanation are in danger of assuming that *their* kids would, of course, react more intelligently, regardless of their level of training.

Hiding from rescuers is a very common reaction among lost children of a certain age group. Unfortunately, most parents - including, I suspect, those on this forum who are laying blame on either young master Hawkins or his parents - tend to assume that *their* children would react much more intelligently than other folks' in such a situation. Fortunately, most of those parents will never find out how wrong they are.

I studied up on SAR techniques last year when we prepared a 3-day familiarization course for a local youth group (sort of a merit badge thing.) There's a lot of scientific research that goes into organizing a search.

SAR personnel have to make certain assumptions. If a lost child walks less than a mile from where he/she was last seen, the searchers have an area of 3.14 sq. mi. to cover. With 100 trained searchers, this will take approximatley 10 hours to search properly. If he walks less than 2 miles, they now have an area of 12 sq. mi. to cover. If he walks up to three miles, the searchers have an area of over 28 sq.mi. to cover. Regardless of how many volunteers they have, it's impossible to cover every square inch where the kid might have gotten to, so they bring in a lot of statistical analysis and applied psychology to a search.

Most people who get lost, given a choice between going uphill or downhill, will go downhill. Therefore, those areas will be given priority. If that search turns up empty, the co-ordinators have to make a decision - did we miss him, in which case we should search the area again? Or did he do something unexpected, like travel uphill, in which case we should search in a new area.

It takes 100 trained searchers approximately 3 hours to search a single square mile. To search 28 sq. mi. in a day, you would need close to 1000 volunteers. And sending 1000 untrained volunteers out into the wilderness would be courting disaster - not only would they be likely to miss vital clues, they might inadvertantly destroy evidence that a trained searcher might be able to use, they would destroy the scent (making it impossible to use search dogs), and they might very well end up getting lost themselves.

My understanding is that the very last thing a professional or trained volunteer SAR team will do is to send a bunch of volunteers out into the woods to see what they can find, simply because the vast majority of those volunteers would be in danger themselves, and wouldn't know what to look for. (In some cases, well-meaning volunteers schooled in "leave no trace" backpacking have picked up candy wrappers thinking they were being ecologically friendly, not realizing that the "garbage" they were "cleaning up" was a vital clue to the lost person's whereabouts.)

I am not going to comment on the boy, since he appears to have been someone with abnormally limited capabilities. Similarly, his family may been doing their utmost.

The buddy rule is normally in force at most scout activities. A rigorous application of it might have prevented the boy from getting lost. Also, if the boy did indeed have unusually reduced capabilities, he really would have been helped by close supervision.

An 11 yo boy might have easily had anywhere from 0 to 1 1/2 yrs as a Boy Scout. A brand new scout is not reasonably expected to be knowledgable about the outdoors. Also children mature at different rates.

I think the boy and his parents need to be cut some slack. His knowledge, skills, abilities, and equipment are certainly not what we would want, but fortunately he survived and in good shape.

Incidentally, in the absence of a lot more detailed facts, I don't think we should regard this case as reflecting badly on Scouting.

John

Tom,

Hi,

I agree with you that Scouting has picked up a lot of tawdry and excess baggage. I commend you for your work to remove it. I am afraid I have simply resigned myself to accept it as inevitable in a large institution. I also agree that it is a the troop level where Scouting does its best work.

We just went to our first Camporee where the boys were checked on their equipment and their ability to use it proficiently in major outdoor skills. This is the first time I have seen them seriously tested. It was a very good and pleasing experience. It resulted from our small district consolidating its camporee with that of larger district. The latter obviously takes its scouting skills seriously. I am going to try to ensure that we continue to merge our camporees.

What do your boys carry in their ready bags and how do you induce them to continue carrying the gear?

I really like your discussion of current events as a standard item in your meeting agenda. I think we will start doing that as well.

Thanks,

John

I don't know a damn thing about kids, but when I was 11 I had my own horse, and had been taught enough to go miles and miles on my own. I won't say I never had any problem, but I always got back on my own. If I had a kid, I would expect to teach him enough to do the same.

Do like our old Scoutmaster did years ago - took us out for an overnighter in perfect weather without any other comforts than a canteen full of water. When everyone was cold and miserable by 2am; he then showed us how to make fire by friction, fire by flint&steel, and fire by battery/steel wool. Once the fires were going, he broke out the stash of s'more fixin's and we had a great time. Everyone slept fairly well by the fire and were all anxious to learn how to build a proper shelter and boil up some more fresh water the next morning.

After that night, he had no problems with Scouts not having proper gear on their person. There were Camillus or Ulster Scout knives and Marble's or Everdry matchsafes on every belt. Most had pockets or pouches stuffed full of other possibles, too...

M

I agree with John Baker. Every young child and their parents can learn something from this experience. The boy and his parent's could've done better, but I can't see myself being anything other than happy that this boy was found. Having taught children around his age, I know how I would feel if one of them went missing.

I do, however, resent his parents falling back on his being born premature for making mistakes. I was 3 months premature, born weighing 1.5 pounds, and almost blind. I still found my way here!

>>We just went to our first Camporee where the boys were checked on their equipment and their ability to use it proficiently in major outdoor skills.<<

Very cool! Good luck with that - see Sarge's comments about his experience as a scout - that kind of thing, with many variations, works. I've had the pleasure of putting together winter survival training a couple of times here for the scouts and every scout that has gone through that with me is a real trooper - and real believers in being prepared. (I had their pads and sleeping bags brought out to the site later, before they settled down for the night). Things like that can be really exciting for the boys, especially here in the seemingly benign and placid MidWest. Those of y'all who have close access to Federal Lands and wilderness have quite an advantage - we practically have to fabricate our situations in fantasy.

As for what we require the boys to carry - the scout outdoor essentials (I don't lay on hard about sunscreen). The only thing we require in addition to that is non-aerosol insect repellant for 3/4 of the year. When they first come to us, I start right away with them. Most of them get a 2nd class requirement checked off by me before they pass muster with the SM on joining requirements - the personal FAK. In any event, they have to accumulate the essentials and go over them with me, etc. We split small wood with our knives, make cotton balls & vasoline, learn how to use matches and FC rods, build fires, etc. - tell-show-do stuff and mostly I coach the older boys thru that so they are teaching the newbies instead of me, but that does not always work out. I help out a little here and there with inexpensive bits and pieces, and ParamedicPete has generously equipped two needy scouts (one with invisible parents AND poor; the other merely poor).

I guess there's other bits and pieces - I all but require them to carry a small repair kit and most of them have one that they assembled under my supervision. And boys can be real gear freaks, collecting all sorts of stuff. Oh - I make them carry a blade in the pack if they don't have the Toten' Chip yet, and they may only get it out with permission from an adult until then (or if an older scout is teaching them Toten' Chip)

I don't actually REQUIRE them to have a canteen cup or stainless Nalgene cup, nor do I require them to have a small inexpensive stove (pop can, esbit, etc), but just about all of the 2nd year and older scouts seem to aquire something reliable to heat water with. I've been derilict on the topic of water purification, despite having had to do that real-world for myself most of my adult outdoors life. My rationale - or poor excuse, I guess - is that surface water in this part of the country is sure to be full of agricultural chemicals and in many places, farm animal waste. But it's the chemicals that irk me - I'm just not up for teaching these youngsters wierd stuff like expedient activated charcoal filtering and frankly, I don't think it's important here. But that shortfall is irksome - I have to think about it some.

Anyway, we really only require basic, common sense stuff.

How do we induce them...? Heck, I don't know, John - I expect them to and they comply. I never yell at them or anything. It pleases me that they do this, and I let them know that it pleases me. I brag about them where they can overhear me. I'm disappointed (lightheartedly) if one forgets, but that's pretty rare. They're just kids - it's my job, difficult as it is for me, to act grownup <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Look, it's simple: The BSA motto is "Be Prepared... (...for anything)". Make a little adventure for them, let imaginations work, let boys be boys, and it all fits together. Not perfectly - but it works well enough for me.

It was a hot bike ride up the hill from the river today for this old desk jockey, so my brain's prol fuzzed up. I'm sure you can figure out something that works for your troop if you think it's worthwhile. Meanwhile, you've got an Eagle ceremony to participate in - enjoy the voyage, Eagle Dad.

Tom

That sort of thing can be the greatest fun when it's done well like that and the cool thing is that the kids LEARN useful stuff without even thinking about it.

I've got to toss out one thing that has been "bugging" me for the last few years - ticks. I never had a tick on me all my growing up years here. I go away at 18, spend a career in the Army, retire back here, and OMG! We've got some sort of ecological spasm going on here - dunno if it's a cyclical thing with a long period or if it's an eco problem, but it's nasty to be warm-blooded around here and be out anywhere. One of our dogs already tests positive for Lyme, and they go nowhere that we don't go. Last backpacking trip, despite frequent applications of DEET, wife scrounged 4 off me when we got back and I got 7 off her - and we were flicking the little buggers off us constantly, DEET or not. I'm now resigned to having to permethrin my clothes (thought I was done with that when I left Africa). That's expensive and I doubt that I can convince many parents to do it.

I slept out on the ground lots of times as a youth and sure as heck spent a lot of time wandering ravines, woods, creeks, etc. Never had a tick on me - I was an adult before I even saw one. This is wierd.

Oh, well. Winter is my favorite time to camp anyway...

Randjack,

Your own upbringing sounds like an excellent way to raise children. It is surprisingly similar to my own experience and the upbringing we have tried to provide our own children. However, it appears far beyond what the subject boy could handle given his own seeming immaturity. Anyway, that is my remote read on his situation.

Regards,

John