The Things My Scout Leader Taught Me

The Compendium 002 ( A Short Story )

My Scout Leader used to say :

The forest can teach you everything you need to know, if you wait long enough. If you listen.

He was right, I think.

The woods have taught me more than anyone else in the world, except him, my Scout Leader. They taught me through the quiet, and then time did the rest.

Repetition, he would say, is the Mother of…

What was it the mother of, again ? I can’t remember. Been too long.

Whatever repetition gave birth to, my hands remember. This knot I’m tying proves it.

Without thinking, my hands make a loop in the rope, we used to call it the rabbit hole, back then, when I was in Scouts. My left hand passes one end of the rope, that was the rabbit, up through the loop, that was the hole. The rabbit runs around the tree, that’s the standing line. My right hand pinches the loop together, and then the rabbit goes through the hole again, and then you tighten with a tug.

The rabbit comes out of the hole, around the tree, and back down the hole. That’s what my Scout Leader taught me.

When I first learned the bowline we tied it to trees and trailer hitches. You earn a few more badges and you can haul rocks and test loads, and one day, with enough badges, you can toss it as a lifeline during survival drills. One kid pretends to drown and the rest of us lasso him in.

That was it. Learning.
Repetition is the Mother of Learning.

You know that squint you do when a memory starts to come back ? I’m doing that now, rope in my hands, remembering those long days in the deep woods. On those expeditions. It was just us four kids and our Scout Leader. He said we were going to hunt a deer, kill it, prepare it, and eat it for dinner.

He was a happy man, thin, and a sharp smiling face. His hands were thick and huge, and his wired, corded legs muscled out from his tan shorts. He always wore the Scout uniform, pressed, even in the woods, somehow. Said it was really important that we pay attention in life, especially to the little details. And he straightened his Smokey Bear hat and tightened his red neckerchief as he’d tell us.

Dressing well is good manners, he would say.

We are walking through the bright greens of some Pacific Northwestern forest, a blank and unnamed stretch of wild on the map, and the round sun of spring is illuminating shrubs and feeding bulbs and seeds.

Our Scout Leader is teaching us how to track animals properly.

Observe without disturbing, he would say, holding his pointer finger up, smiling.

Respect nature, that was what he meant. Don’t leave your garbage, don’t leave your mess, and pay attention. The woods are always telling you something.

See here? he said, This is where the deer have been grazing. That usually means they bed down nearby.

Bed down, that’s what he called it when animals sleep.

He’s crouched and observing some pressed down grasses, some half chewed stalks, and he’s showing us, pointing, and looking along his arm, a winding path that trails up up up into the woods.

The smallest signs tell you everything, he would say. Broken twigs, bent branches, everything.

All you need to do is listen.

And listening takes time.

Patience is a virtue, he would say.

And he would stay very still, watching everything, reading the woods like a book, line by line, and showing us how to make sense of the hidden language, too.

My knot is tied, just like I learned from these memories. I shake my head and smile, noticing my pants and shirt are pressed, just like my Scout Leader taught me. Lessons then, character now.

“You see,” I’m saying, my Scout Leader’s words coming out of my mouth, “you can’t control the wind, but you can orient the sail.”

My Scout Leader taught me that on the deer trip. Said you always have to be prepared; need to have every tool ready, because life, like the woods, is wild and unpredictable.

I reach for the next tool, tongue tucked in the corner of my mouth, same as he used to do. Funny how habits pass down. And then I’m doing that squint thing, again.

Slowly he led us along the side of the dirt forest path, through thinning brush, telling us to keep down wind, to walk heel to toe, and he is smiling, and the birds are singing and the butterflies are fluttering and you can hear the clap clap clap applause of grasshoppers leaping.

Our Scout Leader, he takes his bow off his shoulder, and he signals for us Junior Scouts to keep very still and very quiet. He motions with his hands, signals, letting us know there’s a buck just over the next crest of earth.

We don’t know how he knows, but he does, and we’re just crouched there, covered in dirt with wrinkly uniforms, crawling along at his pace.

And there it was.

The big buck, huge like he had been there forever; antlers scraped earth while he grazed.

Wait for the broadside.

He didn’t tell us this while he was prepping to shoot. No, he was a ghost, then. Silent and haunting.

You want to hit the heart, or the lungs.

He told us that later on, at night, around the campfire.

He strung his arrow, my Scout Leader, and drew the bow, his forearms rippled lean sinew. There was no quivering in his arm, no stress. No effort. Just that learned power, through repetition, like Mother said. Your muscles learn, too, I guess.

Aim just behind the shoulder.

And we watched him slowly breathe out, and his lips mouthed something, maybe rest in peace. Probably that, except in Latin.

His fingers relaxed, releasing the taught bowstring, and the air popped thunder, and the buck’s head shot up, but the arrow pierced through his heart like a storm, and the buck sprinted off like lightning

Wait, he said out loud, watch his tail, follow where he goes, and let him die in peace.

And so we crouched there, smiling and giggling like we’d seen magic, hands over our mouths, eyes in half moons. We waited patiently, because it’s a virtue.

Our Scout Leader stood and we followed him and he followed the frantic trail of the buck by his blood and by the crushed earth. Our Scout Leader tracked with a quiet reverence. I’ve always been grateful for that lesson, the giving and the taking.

If you take a life, he would say, give with yours.

We found the buck’s body, laid out on a bed daisies, the power of his muscles and the courage of his face dripped in crimson, drenching the soil. And I wondered if he had lost his soul.

Quick and practiced our Scout Leader drew his knife and began to Field Dress the buck. That’s what he called it.

You lay the buck on its back, and he shows us as he tells us. You spread its legs and you cut through the belly, shallow, from sternum to pelvis. Steam and blood emerge from the incision, the hot body of the buck blown away on the forest wind.

The blade should glide easily, he would say, you want to avoid the organs and the gut, you want to sever the wind pipe and the anus, and then you need to tie them off. His hands work quick and he rolls the deer to its side and more blood poured out thick and steaming, pulled by the slope and by gravity.

He ties a bowline, throws the rope over a thick branch, binds the buck’s legs, and pulls.

One good pull, he would say, and the body rises.

As it hung, he explained the pulley system, force and energy, already cutting around the ankles, slicing lines down each leg to meet that first incision.

He tells us that to skin the buck, to keep the hide, you just grip, and pull, and use your knife to free all the stubborn tissue that holds on. It comes off like a coat, he would say. It was still warm and he laid it down in front of us, skin side up, brown coarse fur resting on that crimson soil.

This salt, he said, pulling a labeled plastic tub from his pack, is how we preserve the hide. Rub the coarse salt in, extra thick at the edges, and fold it in on itself, flesh to flesh.

You can hear it when he makes the fold, like two pork chops kissing. Then he rolls it up tight and ties it off.

He steps back to the naked buck and says we’ll only take what we can eat tonight. The rest is for the coyotes and the grizzlies.

He takes his knife, A dull blade wounds the wielder, he says, and we’re watching him prep to cut the back-straps and the inner tenderloins.

I have my own knife now. And every time I’ve had to do this, since then, I’ve thanked him for his wisdom, for his teaching me, and being patient. I am thinking about how much we’ve lost whatever it is he had — some kind of fatherhood to all us lost boys.

My knife is sharp, dull blade and all that, and it cuts at the skin just as easy, round the ankles and up each leg, meeting that center cut.

In my memory, my Scout Leader is showing us how to get the back-straps. You cut along the spine, then slide your blade beneath and pull.

This meat is delicate, he would tell us, because the buck hasn’t used this muscle much.

He then motions for me to come to the buck’s side, and I am smiling, remembering. He tells me to reach my hand inside the gut, the open body, and follow along the ribcage to where it connects to the spine near the buck’s hind quarters.

The tenderloins are back there, you need to loosen them slightly with your hands, and then cut at them gently to disconnect them from the spine.

He hands me the knife, and I just about have to crawl into the hot meaty cave to get at the loins; my left hand bumps against each rib like speed-bumps, until it reaches the thick trunk of his spine.

You feel them?

I do.

I tug and the loins start to give.

Careful, he says. They tear if you rush.

I expected him to say slow and steady. Instead, he just nodded and he motioned for me to reach in with my knife hand, make two incisions, and pull the tenderloin free.

I do, and it comes out hot and red and pulsing, and my Scout Leader tells me good job, and wraps it up in some brown paper along with the back-straps.

Who wants to try next?

And each of the other boys says me! me! me!

I shake my head and smile.

My knife keeps moving, working, making the same cuts I learned back then, along the spine, through the gut. Lots of the boys I went to Scouts with still use their skills, too — some even live off the grid. Most turned out decent. Most of them turned out like him, happy and generous, helping folks reconnect with self and nature and community.

I make that small incision, along the spine, just like he taught me, and gently tug as the back-strap pulls free. I lay it gently beside the other one, beside the tenderloins, the same way I did as a boy, the same way my Scout Leader showed me.

The man in front of me, he is quiet, has been for little while now, thanks to the ketamine. Blood pools in the tarp beneath him, gravity doing its work. His wrists and ankles are tied in bowlines, hoisted to the rafters. He is barely breathing.

You only take what you need. That’s the rule.

My Scout Leader taught me that.

The rest is for the coyotes, for the grizzlies, and for the wild lurking all around us.

And I’m grateful, truly, for everything he taught me. All the those little lessons.

Even now, I can still hear his voice :

Repetition, he would be smiling, is the Mother of Learning.

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Let me know what you think this story is about — and let me know what you think about it, overall.

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Every Day Saints is a torchlight searching for the quiet miracles, the beautifully human stories and ideas that exist all around us. And it is a place to dialogue, not Holy Ground, but still a place of gathering.