On the Heavens, Scouts, and Weed

A personal essay by Anson Call


A lame week at an Indiana scout reservation allowed us to experiment with newfound idealogical freedoms and the beginnings of growing up. 

Every night, we’d quietly lift our hard, nylon mattresses off of our creaky, rusty cots and out of our dirty, canvas tents down the trail a half-mile to the beach's easy swells.

We laid on the sand, carefree, (Kolten, the two White brothers, and I) listening to the lake while Kolten showed us where the stars were. We'd done constellation requirements before for merit badges, but when Kolten pointed them out, we faced them for the first time.

Camp Ransburg

The troop had driven hours from our north central Indiana homes to Camp Ransburg, southeast of Lake Monroe, and at the heart of south central Indiana. While our troop was setting up camp at Ransburg, I was given a tour from a camp counselor in a green uniform named Dylan. He had pulled up to our campsite on his ATV with a jocular, college hippy vibe that contrasted with his Midwestern inflection when he made sure we were the “Mormon troop.” He'd come to show the Senior Patrol Leader “the ropes of Ransburg.” This involved him taking me down the reservation’s wooded dirt roads whose fingers led to camp sites and merit badge pavilions. Eventually we hit the central/medical office and the mess hall where Dylan told me to “stick with the apples and bananas and anything else no one’s had to cook.”

On the way back, we passed by the waterfront, a bay full of old canoes and racks of life jackets, where the road afterwards paralleled the shoreline, only a few meters of trees between us and its sandy banks. “This here is Fossil Beach. It's got a lot of fossils. It’s not really on Ransburg's property. But it’s always a good time.” He chuckled. “You didn’t hear it from me.”

Camp Ransburg

A Four-Man Job

The moon danced, glistened, lustered, off the soft repercussions of our swim. We didn’t know how to describe those moments; we didn’t know what to say; we were thirteen, we’d never even read any poems. But those nights at Ransburg, we became whatever-transcends-thirteen; and when you're thirteen and your reach exceeds your grasp, the best you can do is to whisper inarticulate permutations of “dude” and “man” and “hell” and “so” and “dope,” then demean everything else out there to put where you are and who you are on a pedestal: a four-man job, as it turns out.

A Midwest, LDS BSA

In our view, the BSA was where parents sent their dweeby, sour cream kids to develop some semblance of maturity when they (the parents) didn’t have the heart to consider a boarding school. We were convinced that anywhere from 65-75% of Boy Scouts in the Sagamore Council had a learning disability, autism, some sort high functioning down syndrome, or all three.

Since our Mormon church essentially outsourced its young men’s rec programs to the BSA, we were business execs with company suite tickets at a Monster Truck Rally, and not part of the bald, tatted, Midwest hoi polloi down below, clothing beer bellies and jiggly chicken wings via cut-off collared shirts and graphics of eagles, crosses, skulls, American flags, and flames.

 They were a different breed, they fell into the larger category of sincere, Midwest-Truck-Rally-uniform-wearers who’d gather as families at Walmarts, Circle Ks, Dollar Generals, Star Lanes, Trashicanoe Cove, and Triple XXX Family Restaurant. Frankly, a culture foreign to us. 

Games of Truth

Miles away, a small town’s well lit boardwalk bore the lakes soft contours. We could see each other, but we were instead honed in on our dialogue. Between the White Brothers and I, games of “Truth or Dare” become games of Truth; and games of Truth were what made Kolten our prophet.

“Dude, I promise. You care so much more than they do. You’re the oldest. They were like that with my older brothers. Give it a rest.” Poetry.

“So what if its bad? And who’s to call it that? It's not always bad, people use it as medicine. Like, prescribed and stuff. The Church knows that, and it’s cool. But who’s making the call then? Some doctor? So you’re telling me, that some MD is the interpreter for the will of God? I don’t know man, my brother’s one.” Doctrine.

“Sure I’ll get married, I’ll always want that. But I'll tell ya dude, I'm not worrying about it till I get my fill.” Prophecy.

Dylan

We laid on the sand carefree, (Kolten, the two White brothers, and I) listening to the lake while designing our own constellations, when 40 yards down the beach, to the north, in between us and the camp offices, a group of young people in green uniforms appeared. Spooked, we watched. They were quiet, but we had to manage to be quieter. We waited for them to find us, ensconced by nothing. They started to spark lighters, igniting cylindrical rolls, and a burnt, sharp, sour smell drifted towards us. A man left the bunch and walked towards us and the tree-line. Anxiety mounted. He approached us, and his face was made apparent as he caught sight of us. I knew the guy: Dylan, the counselor. 

He carried a stench with him, green as his button up, and he asked what we were doing. 
"We're sleeping on the beach. We have every day this week." 
"Oh, well that's cool," he said. Then he said that he recognized me. 
Well, I recognized him. 
He sighed. 
"Well, neither of us are supposed to be here, and none of us are really hurting anyone. I think it might be a good idea to keep this on the DL."
We agreed.

"Fossil's a weird place," he said.  Then he walked away and told us to be safe.