the Scouting crayon

Girl Scouts rule!

And now a word from our sponsors...

Let's not start that conversation that begins, "But there's not enough money for programming and Camperships" and continues with "Oh, advertising money is separate" and just say that these ads are pretty fucking cool. The green hair ad above is out of the Atlanta council. The Brownie Smile Song remix is from National. And my very own local SF council worked to create these three ads:

• Cleopatra has nothing on GS
• Not even speed-remote-pressing?
• Wait, I made potholders, and look how I turned out...

We're also not going to have that conversation about fair use of copyrighted materials.

Camping and Events

National Convention 2002

This was a bittersweet event for me. I went on my own, because it seemed close enough to justify the splurging. And I had the time of my life. A friend came up to visit me from San Diego, and we did the social bits together. I enjoyed the business side and the exposition. I found the whole weekend to be inspiring. But this was also a farewell time in many ways. I've never connected with the SF council the way I did in Santa Clara. There are more holes than reason behind this, and I find myself still ticked about the brush-off. To be fair, my local GS association has extended an open hand... it's the SF Council that I find to be staffed by rude, abrasive people. So I no longer volunteer for GS, and it's a mutual loss. I'm volunteering for the NPS now instead, which is much better for my career. Once I start working for the NPS, maybe I'll go back to GS. I miss GS terribly, and it's not the kids' fault that the adults are playing petty games. To be fair, most of my fondness for the Santa Clara GS comes from the fact that I was in the best service unit ever, with the best adults ever. That SU had so many non-parent volunteers. It rocked! So maybe I don't need to work with council directly at all.

Summer Camp 2002

Wow! Camp Chameleon has etched itself into my psyche. Quite an experience: paperwork, problem campers, problem parents, problems with yellow jackets. Fog in the morning, 110 in the afternoon, no buildings, no electricity, not much running water. Yow! I was involved in dismissing a staff member, which seems vital to my resume these days, but of more valuable to me personally, I made some strong connections to other staff members. I loved the dailiness of it. It was a hard job, with low pay, and it was awesome.

Golden Gate Bridging 2002

This event contains 100% of the stories I use when asked in interviews to describe an event that didn't go smoothly. That about sums it up.

Solo Backpacking 2001

Henry Coe State Park. Land of no water, fierce wind storms, and a plague of caterpillars. A plague I tell you! The whole experience ruled. I think about another solo trip everytime the weather gets nice, or I get unemployed.

Camporee 2001

Space theme, of course. This was the first Camporee I was truly in charge of. It went well; I had stellar help from numerous people. I would do it again in a heartbeat. Maybe I can do it freelance, without being a troop leader. I think that's the way to go for my future GS volunteering.

Camporee 1999

Swaps, s'mores, hiking, and some education to boot. Lots of kids... Making geodomes... Standing on geodomes... And a bobcat?!...

Backpacking

My advanced backpacking training was completed with a weekend at Lake Winnemucca in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. We started at 8000' and hiked up to about 9000'. High enough for snow at the end of July. We took the long way towards Wood Lake, stopping for some rock climbing. When we got there we used garbage bags to sled down the mountain snow. Lake Tahoe was visible in the distance. Flowers were just starting to be plentiful. Plenty of laughter could be heard during the cursed evening bear-bagging (no really, we know what we're doing).There was a fabulous sunset followed by star gazing. Cassiopia, Scorpio and the Milky Way were clear and bright.

Snow Camping

I went snow camping at a Two Sentinels, a Girl Scout camp in the Tahoe National Forest, near Donner Summit. We hiked in on snow shoes and dug out caves to sleep in, as well as digging a trail to the latrine. We planned on skating on the lake in the morning, but an unexpected blizzard dropped over a foot of snow on us, so we headed to the cars right after breakfast. Forging a trail through new-fallen snow is hard fucking work. We dug out the cars (notice a theme?), but that wasn't enough. We flagged down CalTrans to plow the road, only to find out that all the southern routes were closed. We ended up crossing the mountains at Reno, getting home about 3 a.m. I think we were on the road more than we were in the snow caves, which were damn cool, by the way.

Gorp

Songs

Most troops have a song that is their own. For my troop in Rochester it was Together Tomorrow by Tom Chapin. For my troop in Sunnyvale it was Joni Mitchell's The Circle Game. You can Google all the songs you sort of remember from childhood. SF GS have taught me some of my favourites, including Moon on the Meadow and I Believe. There are lots of collections out there. I used to want to create my own web and hardcopy ultimate library of lyrics. But currently I think that the ability to obtain is better than having. When I have time I'll make a good hardcopy collection, because that's useful around the campfire.