A good friend sends sad news. The Boy Scout Council that received a generous gift of land in the 60's for the purpose of camping and outdoor activities, has decided to close the camp and sell the land. More about this later; I have no time now to do more than provide the link to this appalling and deeply shameful act.
Conservation is a fundamental value in Scouting, and what this news amounts to is a gross failure of stewardship -- a disgraceful failure to conserve the benefits of a generous gift so that it might be enjoyed for the ages. In just 40 years, the incompetents in charge of the Council have managed to screw it up so badly that the lands we loved are now on the auction block. They can claim to be doing this as a service to the boys, and in making such a claim they confess their own culpable dishonesty and reckless destructiveness.
When the camp is no more, and the lands have been put to other uses, who will know the true cost? Those of us who slept soundly on summer nights under canvas tents beneath familiar Hemlock trees, and who tread the trails from one end of the camp to the other a thousand times, will have our memories. Little did we know how lucky we were, nor appreciate how vulnerable such things are in a world where even Scouters fail to conserve.
2 comments:
Well, little did I expect to get what feels like a blow to the heart from coming over to visit your journal, as you visited mine yesterday. I never slept under those hemlocks, but news like this is always devastating. What connection will future kids have to the land, if this is what is happening. Those who gave these acres to the Scouts surely did it to keep this from happening.
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