Aspen Mountain Rover Crew

Vigil

 I've been a busy woman.

On July 25th I had my Knight Vigil, which is a requirement to become a Rover Knight. It is a time of self-reflection on how I can be a better person, what my strengths and weaknesses are, and how I can best serve others. I hiked a local trail up a mountain, set up a small camp, and wrote in my journal beside a campfire. It was nice to have some solitude in such a beautiful place.

Entrance to Hidden Valley, Ogden,
where I had my Vigil.

Found an owl feather, so cool!

There's a lot of things I wrote about, but I had a chance to think about how I want to respond to challenges with more logic and reason rather than emotion. I don't want to be a "cuckoo," as Baden-Powell puts it, that gets offended easily. I also thought about how I need to be more attentive to my husband's and children's personal wants and needs, especially since most of my service as a mother and a Rover circle around my home life.

It was a beautiful day and a beautiful trail. There are several openings in the forest that would be good for camping. Evergreens and aspens line the trail, creating a world of green green green.

From BPSA-US to R4LA

I'm in a period of transition. In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, the leadership of BPSA-US has decided they want to remove the name and general influence of Robert Baden-Powell from their program. This is based off of his personal views and I guess some racist language he used back in the day? While some terms he used for native peoples can come across as strong to modern readers (like the term "savage"), he spoke of many of them with respect and admiration for their scouting methods. Aside from his talk, I like to look more at his walk, something BPSA has apparently failed to do. B-P actively worked to create a world movement that connects many countries through scouting, with his original intention being that such a brotherhood would prevent any more world wars. I think in a way it has indeed prevented many conflicts. Brotherhood, education, high adventure, increased awareness for God, and more have been the fruit of his work. He wasn't perfect, but he should be honored for his work.

What has been the fruit of BLM? Firstly, their active calling to destroy friendship between people of different ethnicities (I don't like to say "races," because there's only one race, the human race). They have been actively influencing politics, and not just society,  through their movement, which should automatically bar any scouting organization from supporting them. They have a bizarre, disturbing obsession about skin color and the segregating thereof. There has been mass rioting, unneeded violence, and de-funding the thin blue line between civilization and barbarism, all in the name of BLM and which has not been condemned by the top leaders of BLM. Their manifesto, which you can read on their website, calls for many things, but most disturbing of all, the dismantling of heterosexual relationships and the nuclear family. If you destroy the family, you destroy civilization altogether.

So it's strange that the leadership of BPSA-US chooses to eat the rotten fruit of BLM rather than stick with a fruit, that of traditional scouting and the involvement of Lord Baden-Powell, that has worked for 100+ years in the scouting movement in general. I exchanged emails with the head commissioner of BPSA-US over their decision. After she made a blatantly racist, sexist, and bigoted remark about B-P, she completely invalidated her other reasoning for future program changes based on BLM's influence. It's both funny and sad how a people and program that boast inclusiveness don't want to include the founder of scouting that actively promoted inclusiveness in scouting. It's kind of like trying to practice true Christianity while trying to take Jesus Christ out of the picture because you don't agree with a few things He said. BPSA's current Rover program is great and adheres to the fundamentals laid down by B-P, but I've been concerned about changes and the qualification of BPSA's leadership.

With all that being said, and after much thought and prayer, I've decided to create my own Rover Crew under a different organization, Rovering 4 Life Association. R4LA was founded by a man who became disenchanted by BPSA-US and where they were headed as an association. Once I attain my Knighthood near the beginning of September, I will quietly leave BPSA-US and completely invest my continued personal progression and my Crew under R4LA. I'm grateful to BPSA-US for introducing me to traditional scouting, and I wish them the best of luck, but I am about ready to move on in case things do indeed go badly for their program.

My Crew is Aspen Mountain Rover Crew, based in Ogden/Weber County, Utah. The hub for the group is on Facebook, so if you're interested on learning more, send a membership request and I will happily approve you. You can remain a friend of the Crew, or if you live in the area or a nearby county, you can take steps to join the Crew. There is a Welcome document on the Facebook Group that outlines these steps, and which I may add to this blog. I'm still getting the infrastructure in place, such as where we will meet, the roster, our necker colors, etc., but it's starting to roll.

Thanks for reading, and happy scouting!