Explorers – Are you prepared for the unexpected??

Baden-Powell would consistently tell stories of his adventures, first as a boy and later as an officer in the British army, as to the importance of being prepared for the unexpected.

Today’s outstanding Explorers and leaders are prepared to deal with the unexpected by keeping their wits about them (don’t lose your cool or panic), to be resourceful, while also being able to draw on the strengths of his brother Explorers in his patrol or Troop.

Our first camp of the season

Hi, my name is Jim, and I am the Patrol Chief of Bear Patrol. I want to share an experience we had last weekend at our first camp of the new season. Two weeks ago, John joined our Troop. He convinced “Coyote”, our Explorer Troop leader, and even me – that he knew what to pack for the camp that we went on last weekend.

Boy, that was a mistake. We had just arrived at our campsite, and it started to rain. As we got into our rain gear to stay dry, there stood John getting wet. John, get on your rain gear… he responded, “sorry, I forgot to pack my rain gear!” We thought about how to keep him dry; I quickly got a hold of Jonathan, my assistant Patrol Chief; we grabbed the tarp, quickly set it up, and had John sit under it until the rain stopped.

Dinner without pots and pans

We had no sooner finished getting our tents up when I announced that it was time to get started with dinner. Frank, who is 13, brought the food… John, who promised to bring the pot and pan set sheepishly announced, that he had forgotten the pots and pans for tonight’s dinner in his dad’s car… boy, was I mad at myself for not checking all of our Patrol equipment before we left for camp. Lucky for us, we had lots of tin foil, we soon built a reflector oven to enjoy our meal to our heart’s content.

The fishing challenge

Right after dinner, our Troop leader “Coyote” announced that the first patrol that could catch a fish would earn a prize… but we did not have any fishing equipment! Fox patrol jumped into the water and tried to catch the fish, but that did not work! Hawk patrol tried to build a dam with rocks to trap fish upstream, but all they did was to get wet.

As we watched our brother Explorers splash about in the water, boy did they have lots of fun getting wet, and they didn’t even catch anything!

Together we carefully carved out three wooden hooks with our knives, found some worms under some rocks as bait, and then used twine weighted with some smaller rocks secured to the twine in little plastic bags that we carried our matches in.

Within 30 minutes, we caught not one but three fish (even if they were not big ones)! We won the prize, ice cream for the patrol once we got back home!

Now I understand why Baden-Powell tells us to be prepared for the unexpected! Are you prepared for the unexpected?