The Adventures of Scout Woman; or, How to Teach People to Get Lost in the Woods

I am Scout Woman, I mumbled to myself in a heroic sounding voice, picking up the papers I had left on my desk. Those papers denoted what I was supposed to be planning for at our next scout meeting. I am Neglectful Scout Woman, I corrected myself as I realized the scout meeting I was preparing for was in less than twenty-four hours.

A year ago my friends and I created a little scouting group that would accommodate the shy nature of my five-year-old son. At that time he had a tendency to shut down in large groups, so our new group was capped at the cozy number of seven scouts. I signed myself up as leader largely because I knew I could be relied on to keep things rolling. Since then other parents have stepped up to the plate to take on some of the badges—things that didn’t suit me to be leading. I am Neglectful Scout Leader Woman.

To be clear, I love nature, but I’m not exactly Survival Woman. I’m not the person you want to have with you when you are lost in the woods. I’m the person you want to have made you cookies to eat while you are lost in the woods. I knocked the cooking badge out of the park. Those kids were doing things like chopping garlic for their balsamic vinaigrette and mastering the art of a homemade pie crust.

The painting badge I led was pretty impressive too, if I do say so myself. And I had no problem slopping through mucky pond water to collect trash with the kids for our community service badge. Overall, things have gone well.

So I rubbed my hands together with enthusiasm as I ran a fingernail down my notes. Let’s see here. I’m a little late on planning this time—too many nights coughing my lungs out. The scout meeting is tomorrow. But no big deal, I’ve put together last minute plans before. What badge are we starting work on? Direction Finder. Direction Finder?!

Well, shit.

I’m not sure how I ended up with the responsibility of leading a badge that teaches children how to use a compass. It was very poor planning on my part. Bad Scout Woman—I am revoking your title.

I rummaged through the house and produced a compass. A cheap piece-of-crap compass, but a compass none-the-less.

These are five-year-olds, I reminded myself. It’s not like they were going to be dropped off in the woods and expected to find their way out based on the erroneous crap I was about to try to teach them. There would be plenty of opportunity for them to figure this navigation stuff out. Plenty. I started doing my research:

So there is a big magnetic rod inside the earth. You knew that, didn’t you? I think I might have at some point too, as it sounded familiar from my school days but since then I lost it in my mind. I’ve been busy making a lot of cookies and that sort of thing.

I watched the first video that came up on how to use a compass. There was exciting action music in the background and flashing pictures of scenic mountainous views. For a moment I felt like I was on some great hiking adventure, hawks soaring passed me as I listened to the crunch of gravel beneath my ugly hiking boots, and there would be my cheap piece-of-crap compass at my side. This was for a moment, and then I remembered that I come from the fabulous flat forests of Florida. I like my land flat. I like my feet in sand.

Quickly the video spiraled out of control. Before I knew it they were trying to get me to calculate declination and I panicked!

I closed the window. I took a deep breath and realized I was getting ahead of myself. I needed to focus on the actual badge requirements and just learn enough to cover those. No need to be an over achiever, Scout Woman.

So I learned enough about the magnetic field of the earth to explain why a compass works, the basics of the functionality of a compass, set up the old magnetized needle on a floating cork experiment, and then we all went trotting through the woods following directions to find a hidden letterbox. It went swimmingly.

Now I’ve got two weeks until the next meeting to get my shit together. Or possibly to beg someone that sucks at making cookies but does own a pair of ugly hiking boots to take over the rest of the badge work—badge work that requires actually navigating.

I’m thinking the later. I’ll provide the cookies.