Raven Scouts

Today I began working on the Insect Study Merit badge! To begin with, you learn about the kingdom, phylum, and class of insects, along with the major orders and families.  You also label the parts of an insect. I also need to observe 20 insects in my area... I took it upon myself to sketch them in my journal.  I started with 6, but I'll keep observing until the badge is complete.  Here we have the common Black Carpenter Ant (Camponotus pennsylvanicus), the Green June Bug Beetle (Cotinis nitida), the Lady Bug Beetle (Coccinella magnifica), the Carpenter Bee (Xylocopa micans), the Green Darner Dragonfly (Anax junius), and the Paper Wasp (Polistes dominula). I did realize, that most of the photos I've taken while camping and hiking weren't insects... A black widow (Latrodectus hesperus) while we were camping at South Mountain State Park.... very poisonous. A flat millipede (Apheloria tigana) on a hike (seen both in South Mountain State Park a

Mouse: Today I was fortunate enough to go on a 7 mile hike as a component of our hiking merit badge.  Bobcat and Wolf accompanied and we trekked into the Eno River State Park on a beautiful Sunday morning with a cool breeze and a light rain.  We decided to enter at the Pump Station Trail-head and connect with the Laurel Bluff Trail before looping back the way we came. Wolf: Side note: the Laurel Buffs Trail is kinda confusing, because it actually is three distinct parts, and it's all part of the Mountains to Sea trail. That's fairly unimportant, but it's mostly cool because we got to spend some time on the MST today, which makes me really happy. We hope to hike the full thing when it's finished as footpaths, someday (of note, over the last ten years or so, each year about 15 miles of footpaths have been added to the path; they have almost 700 miles of footpaths now, with an additional 500 of connecting roads...so it will take some time...). Additional side note: the b

We haven't had a chance to take an archery lesson - translation, I kept forgetting to email the local archery teacher this week about beginner lessons - and so today, in the absence of a new challenge, I decided to start ticking off on the cycling merit badge. The requirements for the badge are naturally more for the novice cyclist, so like other aspects of our journey, I plan to tailor the requirements to suit my level and desire for experiences and gaining knowledge. I started out by making a cue sheet. For those of you unfamiliar with cycling, a cue sheet is a way of planning a ride. It entails the turns onto different roads and often incorporates the length of time spent riding on that road. I haven't made a cue sheet in years - my style of riding is more often to go out and go adventure cycling by taking turns onto roads previously undiscovered. However, I wanted this to fit in with the planning and preparedness aspects of being a Scout. It was a really gorgeou

As we prepared for merit badge requirements, we also began reading about the Boy Scout Oath, Law, Motto, Slogan, Sign, Salute, and handshake... these figured fairly prominently in some of the merit badges so we wanted to have a firm grasp... we liked a lot of what we read, but didn't really feel like certain aspects were a great fit for what we were doing. It's important to remember we're amending something written for boys and we're adults... some of these tweaks are to be expected :)  Ultimately we felt that, in the spirit of this whole process, we should come up with our own oath, etc.   We also thought we might be able to approach this a bit more efficiently and combine some of the above... so we whittled it all down a bit and made it our own.  To start, I got us all cool journals to document everything we'd be doing. Before we get into what we created, it may be worthwhile to share the boy scout versions so you can have a basis for comparison. Scout Oat

Although Bobcat couldn't join us, Wolf and I set out to complete some of the requirements for the camping merit badge.  Counting this as our second overnight camp, we hiked 7.5 miles to a campsite which was over 2,000 ft above sea level.  This took care of all of the ancillary camping requirements, although we still had 18 overnight camps to go to earn the badge. A bit more prepared than last time, we came equipped with a hatchet for cutting firewood, and a shiny new tent.  Our dog also seemed more prepared somehow, although she had no interest in any of our merit badge discussions. To be perfectly honest, she seemed rather ambivalent to the whole quest for knowledge in general.  She enjoys a good camping adventure, but has no interest in anything that doesn't involve treats or snuggles. A disappointment as dogs go, when it comes to intellectual pursuits. After setting up camp, we had time to relax and enjoy our surroundings.  We read about

We got home and I immediately began to map out our options with Wolf and Bobcat.  All the merit badge requirements can be found here: http://www.scouting.org/ with handy-dandy pdfs breaking down what to do.  This, combined with the Boy Scout handbook and Internet search engines were all the resources we needed to get started.  We wanted to start out by looking into the Eagle Scout requirements... from a Merit Badge stand point, Eagle Scouts have to earn the following 13 badges: Camping Cooking One of: Swimming, Hiking or Cycling (though we planned to earn them all) Citizenship in the Community Citizenship in the Nation Citizenship in the World Communication One of: Lifesaving or Emergency Preparedness One of: Environmental Science or Sustainability Family Life First Aid Personal Fitness Personal Management In addition, an Eagle Scout would need to earn 8 elective merit badges.  The merit badges that peaked our interest either individually or as a group included: