--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Plummer, Charles G. collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 20 number: 11 published: 1917-09 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'Charles G. Plummer, "Outdoor Scout Work," *Improvement Era* 20, no. 11 (September 1917): 961–969.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera20011unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera20011unse start_page: 961 end_page: 969 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1917-09) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera20011unse publication_year: 1917 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1917, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # Outdoor Scout Work Outdoor Scout Work* Hikes, Troop Camps, Cooking, Sanitation, Supervision By Dr. Charles G. Plummer I am reminded, on looking at this program, that I am to give the experiences of a lifetime in about twenty minutes. I have five sections to each of which I must devote but four min- utes; and I am reminded again that it is a very strenuous task, but because it is a strenuous task I would like to have your closest attention. I am going to put some data on the black- board later that I think will be helpful to scout masters and assistants. The first part of the topic is Hikes. If I were a scout- master the first thing I would take into consideration would be the boy himself. I know perfectly well, from a good many years' experience with the boy, that there never was one boy like another boy; that no one boy ever has a physical equipment that another boy has; that physical equipment and mental equipment vary with each individual; that we are not dealing with a mass. We are dealing with a great number of particularly refined individualities, and each one of those in- dividualities functions according to a law unto itself, and func- tioning along that law he is looked upon as peculiar. So each one of us looks at them with the eye of peculiarity. Now then, we have a scout leader who has thirty-two men under him; may be he only has twenty-four. If he had sixteen he would do belter work. The troop is too large at thirty-two. That would be my idea. It is about large enough at sixteen. He has boys over twelve years of age. He has boys who still have imagina- tions. I dare say that any person in this room who is over sitxeen years of age, unless he be an unusual individual, has forgotten even how to spell Imagination, let alone what it means. Why? Because he has lost the vision for everything in life except success by the money way. The dollar is the great big, round, iron wheel that rolls and rolls into his pocket and keeps his imagination under cover until it is educated out of him. So the adults, to whom I speak, perhaps have lost most of their imaginations. The boy has the vision and if the scout- ; *An address to Scout officers, delivered at the M. I. A. Conference, June 8, 1917. IMPROVEMENT ERA master has the keenness of perception to see the boy's vision, or the beginning of the boy's vision, and can take him into his — confidence so far as to get the boy's point of view each and — every one different he will cause to bloom in that boy that — particular thing which we most desire the flower of a per- fect manhood! — The boy himself must have a good heart, first, physically I mean. That heart must be possessed of unknown power. It must have great endurance; because I have tramped with boy- scouts, and I know what the scout pace is — fifty paces, big, long Hikers at the Head of the Glacier Hiking on Mt. Timpanogas Mt. Timpanogas paces, running; then fifty big, long paces walking. I am sorry to say that the scout patrol-leader who sets the pace, takes a much longer stride running than he does walking; and a boy, carrying a two, three, five or twenty pound pack on his back, besides ax and canteen, is carrying altogether too heavy a load for such a pace. The boy is not like the man, though "men are only boys grown tall; hearts don't change much after all." The man has changed his organism, perhaps, in physical size. The boy is growing, and he has not that completed mechanism. His heart is a muscle, the same as the man's heart is muscle, but the boy's heart has not developed to its a maximum size and its maximum efficiency as a muscle; the OUTDOOR SCOUT WORK 963 man's has had more stress placed upon it, and it is capable of standing more labor. When we run or climb a hill, with a pack on the back, whether or not it be a long or short hike, there must be a certain amount of muscular stress; about the same as if I take this arm up here and flex the fore-arm continuously for an hour, I would be so muscularly fatigued that I could not raise it to my head. A man is like a horse: he is as good as his feet. A horse is absolutely worthless unless he has good feet. A young boy-scout cannot get around with bad feet. Of course, that takes us immediately to what we would do with bad feet. This is the physical equipment of the boy, mind you. In the first place, he has to be well shod. He must be so well shod that he may step with comfort. Whether he steps a pace of eighteen inches or thirty-six inches he must have comfort. The horse that is shod uncomfortably, where the shoe is pinched in at the heel, and if it is off level, he develops a corn. The boy does the same thing. A lame horse is no good; a lame or limping man is no good, unless it be some physical accident that has put him that way. He cannot be a soldier, because he cannot fulfil all the requirements of a soldier. He must have the good heart and the good feet. Then, he must have the good eye. The eve must be perfect. It must focus here and focus here, exactly alike. It cannot focus with the left eye there and the right eye at this point. Without glasses there is a muscular strain; and the boy in the developmental period is just like a piece of — exquisite man-made mechanism, only far finer, it requires ad- justment. The hike must be planned for the boy's development. When I see boys of twelve and thirteen going out taking a fourteen mile hike I often wonder how they do it. I ask them how it feels to go fourteen miles. I get a great variety of an- swers. I know how it feels, because I do a good many hundreds of fourteen miles, going alone, and I know how my legs feel in fourteen miles' tramping, sometimes tramping over heavy roads. I wonder how the boy stands it, because he has to use up so much more vitality than I do. I know how the mechanism of the boy must suffer, and I wonder that there is not better physical inspection of the boy before he starts out on such long journeys. Now, another thing about the hikes, whether long or short: the short hike for the growing boy, at a slow pace of two or two and one-half miles an hour, is to be recommended. When I am rushed for time trying to catch the last train, I often make four miles or even five miles an hour, and I have to hustle. A mile in twelve minutes, for three or four miles, is pretty good going. If you don't believe it, try it.^ If the boy goes out for a twenty-four hour hike and camp IMPROVEMENT ERA lie must be prepared for that night out of doors. That brings me to the second division, Troop Camps. Suppose you have a troop of thirty-two men, and you go into camp. You select a gcod site, and that site always ought to be properly elevated above the surroundings. Three particular things determine the making of a successful camp: water, fuel and drainage. Whether a camp of one day or one week it does not matter; secure perfect drainage away from the camp site. The most essential thing of all is water; and the next is fuel; and the next ip protection from heat or from cold. If you are on the desert you have to hunt a long time to get protection from heat. If you are in the mountains you can get all the protection you want from heat, but sometimes you cannot get much protection Camping from cold; but while in the mountains, camping where I do occasionally, frequently winter and summer, I find that one must protect oneself by selecting a good site, where he can al- ways get water. You can get along without warmth; you can go several days without much food; but you cannot go without water. Why? The main ingredient of your blood is water. There are pounds and pounds of water in your blood ; and when you perspire, carrying a pack-sack with a lot of stuff in it, you lose a certain amount of water. Where does that water come from? Right out of your blood; and unless you replace it you are reeking, you might say, with thirst. Thirst is only the — cry of the blood for water. That is all just the cry of blood for water; and when we make that demand of the body and do not supply it we are overtaxing the boy. The man may hike on his own development which he has built up. He goes from that camp for a long walk, and when he comes back he requires really only two things: food and water; and in using that OUTDOOR SCOUT WORK 965 food and water, he does what? Just supplies, repair and waste. The boy must eat enough and save enough to supply the third thing; and what is that? Development. You wonder how he can eat so much, and you say a boys' eyes are bigger than his stomach. I doubt it. His stomach will hold almost everything he can see. I know mine can. He must grow while he walks and while he runs, and he must replace that loss or waste; so he must supply himself with proper nutriment. The waste goes on whether he walks or sleeps. He must build up tissue for the next day. Now, the man puts it away in little cells in the muscles, puts away a lot of energy, starch or sugar, whatever you want to call it; but the boy has to make bone, which grows long and strong. He must build the muscle while repair and waste go on. If he fails to build up more than he consumes in the muscular exercises, his little legs will drag, and he will come into camp like a man of seventy-five. He should not be called upon to endure these things. If he only makes eight miles a day it is better than making sixteen and being in bad condition. The hike should be such that it will leave him with a little energy to hustle for himself when he gets back to camp. So in that camp, whether one day or a week, the considerations are good water, elevation, fuel and pro- tection from heat or cold; and the hike should be planned so that it will suit the condition of the boy. Then I have here Cooking. Now, cooking is the basis of all of our troubles. We must guard against three things in connec- tion with cooking: bad selection of food, the improper cooking of food, and then the improper eating of the same. The boys have a bad habit; they are desirous of taking along a whole lot of nicknacks, so-called dainties, from home. They want to load up on a lot of sweet stuff. It takes sweet stuff to make the legs go, to make the heart go, to make the muscles respond and function properly. It takes sweet stuff, but the boy wants to take everything in sight and have a little bit left that he can stow away in his coat somewhere, for eating between meals. That is a bad thing. The less one carries in a cooking outfit, the less in equipment, the better he is off. Now, I am going on a long tramp in July or August. I am going down to Lund on the train; then I am going to tramp Little Zion. I to Kanarraville, over into the head waters of pack of about thirty-five pounds am going alone, and carry a From the head waters of Little Zion I am going to explore all and around through the forks that spread out down to Rockville Saint George and back up to Lund, about two hundred miles in to carry twenty-hve ten, twelve or thirteen days. I am not going coffee pot, an old trying or thirty pounds of grub, nor an old of things like that. In the first place, 1 pan or skillet, a lot IMPROVEMENT ERA 96C IMPROVEMENT ERA dcn't drink coffee. I am too good a "Mormon" to drink coffee. (Applause.) And still I don't belong to the Church; but I feel just that way about it. While I am out tramping or anywhere else I do not carry a lot of meat with me. I do not require that meat, but I do carry a pound or two or three pounds of this, that or the other thing that is in a very concentrated form. I carry the most concentrated foods because they take up so little — space, and one is not obliged to eat so much at one time such as cheese, nuts, raisins, chocolate. You may stick your nose up at cheese, but cheese is rich in fat and protein; it is so concentrated there is no waste, and it sticks to your ribs and gives you muscle and warmth that you cannot get from meat. Then, the lowly bean occupies an im- Learning Scout Cooking in the Open portant place. It is rich in food elements. When I come to a camp at night I cleanse a cupful of beans, carefully, then put them to soak for a while. Then I make a Dutch oven, which is a hole in the ground, with hot rocks around it, and put the beans, with enough water to keep them cooking, in the con- tainer, and let them simmer there all night. Then in the morn- ing, when you break camp, select a suitable place in your pack to dispose of the package of beans, still cooking, and carry them until the next camp fire when you start them cooking again the same way, and that night for dinner you will have a mess of beans that is thoroughly cooked and is most appetizing. They have 29 to 34 per cent protein, which makes the muscular tissue which you need to carry this big body. Beef-steak has nine to twelve per cent protein. Beef-steak is rotten, filthy OUTDOOR SCOUT WORK 967 material which passes away the same as this body will, some time, but a bean lives forever. It is the net product of the plant. It is the seed of the plant that contains the most nutri- — tion from the mustard seed, about the tiniest seed of any plant to the largest nut, the cocoanut, it is the quintessence of nourish- ment. If you get hungry for food you can eat the rose tips and even weed-seeds, any except poisonous seeds, because they do contain every concentrated food products. It does not sound palatable, but if you are put to it, as I have been, fifty miles from home, without grub or water, you would be glad to eat almost anything edible. Now, I do not carry a big cooking outfit; I do not drink tea nor coffee. Let us name a sample: the first week I will not be in touch with any markets. At the end of the first week I will land at Rockville, down at the mouth of Little Zion Canyon, where the Little Zion River flows into the Virgen River. I will have consumed about all of my supplies. I will have a pound of cheese, a pound of good nuts. I will not take salted pea- nuts, because salt makes you more thirsty and adds to the chlor- ide content of your blood. I will take a pound of chocolate. My cheese gives me my protein and my fat. The nuts give me my carbohydrate, or the sugars. My chocolate gives me my carbohydrate, which is my sugar. I will walk with most any of you. You may carry all the meat and vegetables you want, and I will walk you to death, day in and day out, and I will not be overburdening my digestive system. The boy wants all these — other things potatoes, ham, bacon, eggs. The boys will often carry so many eggs that their arms stand out like this, to keep from crushing the eggs; and then they want to carry a lot of vegetables. I carry a dehydrated vegetable — about seven pounds of green corn, reduced to one pound. The nourishment is not impaired, just the water driven off. A tablespoonful of that green corn put in a few tablespoonfuls of water, in a little dish, gives me a very delicious vegetable. I would not attempt to carry a dozen or two dozen of corn with me. It would be fool- ish. If I want to carry eggs, I take a pound of egg-powder, which is equivalent to about three and one-half dozen eggs and ; two level tablespoonfuls of egg powder, with water or milk, gives me two good, big eggs. A half pound of powdered milk gives me about eight quarts of milk. All I have to do is to add the water. That is pure, powdered milk, dried milk, all of the milk content except the water, residualized to a powder by heat. I go light but I try to go right. I carried a pack of seventy pounds, last February, up the South Fork of Big Cot- tonwood, on snow-shoes and skis, and I tell you it weighted me down very heavily. I will not carry any bed on this trip, be- IMPROVEMENT ERA cause I shall sleep on the ground, with one light blanket. The farther south I go the hotter it will get, and I will not need much cover. He who looks for great comfort and wants to have his beef-, steaks, and potatoes, and lettuce, and ice-cream and so forth, will miss them out there because they are not there. If you are going to put a pack on your own back you know how it feels. When the boy puts all these things on his back he is overbur- dened the first day, but he will grunt on and bear it, and then he will do all he can the next day to get rid of the extra load. So he eats all he can, and then he has the stomach ache; and there is no castor oil in camp. What are you going to do with him? You lay him up, and then you prohibit his eating. Still he is down. A friend of mine, who is a naturalist in Colorado, Mr. Enos A. Mills, of Estes Park, Colorado, started out two or three years ago to make a trip of one week, and what do you think he carried with him for grub? — Just one pound of raisins one pound. He apportioned that one pound of raisins off into twenty-one meals before he started, because he thought he might be tempted to eat more than the allotted amount for a meal. Then he did from twelve to twenty miles a day, tramping over the rough mountains, and he lost only about four pounds during the week's travel. He told me the number of raisins he — ate just so many a day. He had them stowed away; and as he took one out it did not look very big, but he chewed it so long and hard! Why? Becau&e he knew he must get every bit of nourishment that each raisin contained; and the only way to get it is to chew it, not to bolt it so the whole of it goes down into your stomach, the whole piece entirely unchewed, into the stomach. In this state it goes through your intestinal tract and is lost in foecal discharge. Mr. Mills wanted all that was coming to him, so he took time to get out all the nourishment. Why do I want to spend forty minutes, when another man wants to eat in fifteen? I want to get all that I paid for that meal, and I can only do that by chewing the food material until it becomes a cream, when it slips down and you don't know it. Of course the raisin contains some protein, but unless you do chew it the stomach is impaired in its functioning, and you have a sour stomach; because you have introduced into the stomach some- thing that is not digested by hydrochloric acid and pepsin. For instance, all sweet stuffs are taken care of only by the pancreatic juice just below the stomach. So it behooves you to chew all sweets very thoroughly. Now then, this boy in looking at the roisins has a different notion. I have spoken of this before in boy scout camps. A boy would eat a pound of raisins at one meal, if you gave him the chance. Some people are so foolish OUTDOOR SCOUT WORK 969 as to say that raisin seeds develop appendicitis. Well, I never have seen any raisin seeds in any excised appendices! Besides, Mr. Mills carried seedless raisins. Now, a sick boy in camp is worse than a sick boy at home very much worse. His health must be maintained at the cost of everything else, or you have to pack him back to camp. I have spoken of your troop camps and how they should be located. I have discussed food and cooking. The next topic is Sanitation. Whether it be a one day camp or a week's camp I take precautions to adopt sanitary means. It does not matter, the method applies to one man or to thirty-two men. The camp ought to be laid out, not particularly with military precision, but laid out in the very best place it is possible to obtain; and when it is laid out it must be done with the idea of conserving every bit of the garbage, foecal matter and urine m such a place that it will not contaminate any stream anywhere near. Who knows but some boy has had typhoid fever a year or two ago? Who knows but what that boy's foecal discharges and urine contain the bacilli of typhoid fever, and when they drop on the ground, hit and miss, all over a little camp or a big camp they will stay there all through the summer and winter, as lively as a cricket; they get into the water, and the first man who drinks that water gets typhoid fever. We have some people, for in- stance, working in dairies, who, thirty years ago, had typhoid fever, and all of these thirty years, wherever they have worked they have taken typhoid fever. A little treatment and they lose the germ but it is the idea of taking care of all discharges and ; having a particular place in which to dispose of them. The way I do in a camp is to build a little trench in the ground two to four feet square, and I erect three or four stones pyramidal in shape; one thin one on the bottom and underneath a Dutch oven affair, and every bit of garbage or discharges of any kind from the human bodv go into that receptacle, and a continuous slow smouldering fire goes on here. Occasionally I turn in some water. What happens then? Your base stone cracks. The base stone cracks and lets a little water on to the fire. That makes steam. Steam is the best sterilizer which we know m sur- be in surgery, and we gery. Of all the places we must clean it is everything in surgery by steam. So that little steam sterilize sterilizer takes care of that. dry dirt The next best thing for sanitary purposes is the discharges; toilet— a hole in the ground, with dry dirt, over all because we do and that latrine location is chosen with nicetv, not want it in porous soil, but compact soil. Why? Because it porous of rock drains slowly through compact soil. The soil and whenever a boy has to and sand drains off verv quickly, of his bladder or bowel into that latrine discharge the contents