GAIL WHITE Adults meet the challenge of an overnight Webelos camp

We had no idea what we had gotten ourselves into.
When our Cub Scout troop leader handed me a flier at a pack meeting about overnight Webelos camp, I promptly stuffed it into my bag.
"What they don't know won't hurt them," I reasoned.
The troop leader foiled my plans when she discussed the three-day "adventure" for 15 minutes at the meeting. By the time Debbie was done describing all the "fun," every boy in my den had eyes as wide as saucers.
I was on my way to camp.
We arrived at Camp Akela in Carrollton County with 11 Cub Scouts and four adult leaders. Three of the leaders were women (half of the camp's female population).
Trek to the site
After checking in late, resolving a discrepancy over certain forms and being reprimanded by the camp's scoutmaster, we lugged our boys and our belongings to our campsite.
Sweating profusely and swatting mosquitoes, we followed a path through a grove of trees and came to a clearing. Eight green tents formed a semicircle. A fire pit was in the center and a flag pole was situated off to the side.
I looked around for the leader's cabin. There was none.
We did have a latrine, however, which one of the boys investigated immediately and came back announcing excitedly, "It doesn't flush! It's just a hole in the ground!"
We were beginning to realize what we had gotten ourselves into -- and we weren't using nice words to describe it.
Because we were late, we immediately shuffled the boys off for the swim check. There was only one problem: We couldn't find the pool.
We wandered aimlessly up to the mess hall and around the flagpole. No pool. One mother found a path leading up a hill into the woods around the amphitheater. She followed it while the rest of us waited. Ten minutes later, she yelled from the top, "Come on up!"
We hiked up the hill, walked a half-mile across a sunny dirt path and down a set of steps made by Boy Scouts. Just as we were ready to give up hope of ever finding water, we asked a man dressed in full Boy Scout regalia where the pool was.
"Pool?" he feigned surprise. "You mean I've been coming here all these years and they never told me they had a pool?"
We glared.
"The lake is that way," he said, feeling the heat of our stares.
Finding the lake
We would have splashed in a mud puddle at that point. After another half-mile, up a hill and down another, we found the lake.
Walking a mile and a half to swim truly makes the water feel good. Walking a mile and half after a swim makes nothing feel good.
Dinner made us feel worse. It wasn't the food. The meals were surprisingly great (or maybe we were just really hungry).
The problem was the company. We sat across the table from a pack that had forgotten their matches and started their campfire by rubbing two sticks together. We nodded nonchalantly, all the while thinking of our fire-starter sticks and butane lighter.
Still, the boys were having fun and seemed oblivious to our ineptitude.
"We can do this," we encouraged one another.
Then night fell.
Eleven excited campers crawled into their cots. Ten fell asleep. One did not -- all night long.
Around 4:30 a.m., he finally quieted down. At exactly 5:12 a.m., a thunderstorm hit. The entire camp was awake for the day.
Our little camper was not the only one who didn't sleep at night. The campground came with its own nonsleepers.
I believe our problems started with our snack tent. We noticed that the tent where we kept our snacks was a little different from the others we saw at camp.
It seems metal poles with a tarp over the top is the norm for Cub Scout camping. We had a tent fly -- a screened-in porch of sorts, a lovely color of green, complete with zippers.
Animal attraction
I believe it was the aesthetic beauty of our site that attracted our nighttime visitors of raccoons and skunks.
The first night, they ate most of a loaf of bread. The second night, they devoured an entire bag of marshmallows -- except one.
Dennis, the lone adult male in our group, took this as a taunt. He spent the entire third night chasing critters away.
The boys woke up each morning telling stories of little brown mice in their tents. There was one report of a "long, black animal." (We believe a baby skunk got curious.)
They were fascinated. We were horrified.
Cindy woke up one morning and called her husband with the details of the night's wildlife visitors.
"It's camping," he told her.
"I'm just not a raccoon-skunk-mouse kind of woman!" she wailed.
Overall, the boys had the time of their lives. We may not be able to start a fire without matches, but our pack can fish with the best of them. We won every fishing derby. (No fish, however, were caught by the bait another mother and I walked two miles to purchase at the Scout store.)
Minus one case of poison ivy, the boys are all "itching" to go back. We three women, however, have earned our last outdoorsman badge.
gwhite@vindy.com