Raven Scouts

Part I - the Camping Trip:      Early Saturday morning we started driving to South Mountain State Park for a camping trip.  We took two cars with Bobcat and I in one.  On the way there, we talked about a lot of things... I told her about my new job, we talked about how we'd survive if society collapsed.  At one point I mentioned our failed attempts to get a puppy recently.  Bobcat commented that it was probably a good thing since it opened us up for something serendipitous to happen.  This way a pet could just walk into our life when the time was right.  She really said that... also, this is called foreshadowing. We hiked into South Mountain State Park on a Saturday around noon.  Wolf, Bobcat, myself, Badger, Dragon and a new Raven Scout... he hasn't picked a name yet so I'll call him Hawk until he decides. This was Badger's first camping trip and the weather was perfect. The time passed pretty quickly as we hiked up the mountain...

Bobcat, Wolf and Mouse were the names we gave each other on our first camping trip... We hiked around 6 miles to our site with packs that were far far too full... we had enough food for a five day trip, even though we would only be there for one night.  In our eagerness, we also chose a trail that was categorized as "strenuous" and which ended up being a significant amount of uphill for three out-of-practice campers.  Along the way, we adjusted who was carrying what, changed from pants to shorts, and generally figured things out as we went.  For all of us, it had been years since our last trip into the woods... but this trip sparked a pretty amazing journey for the three of us. It all really started because we decided to engage in a survival exercise.  Imagining that we were in some sort of post-apocalyptic end world scenario (one where we could survive in the woods, albeit with risk - e.g. not a nuclear fallout situation), we started talking about the sk...