Fencerows: My Nemesis
I have distant but fond memories of being a Boy Scout. Now, in an older and supposedly wiser reality, I am still an active adult leader in our own local Boy Scout Troop. I believe there is inherent value in pitching a tent that will keep the rain out and building a fire that won’t burn down the forest. More importantly, there is value in providing today’s kids with the opportunity to pitch headlong into the outdoor world and start building their own memories.
That being said, the world of Scouting is still a ton of fun for me. I can challenge the physical limitations of age, go to cool places, and act like a kid myself. And there is no finer place than summer camp to do it.
The grown-up planning for a week at camp is a bit of a hassle, not as easy as still being a kid for real and just showing up with a loaded pack and tearing into it. Gear has to be checked over and physical forms collected. There are reassuring promises to parents that their children will be deposited home at the end of the week in more or less one piece. Organizational skills are not exactly in my wheelhouse, so I have to rely on more-competent adults than myself in order for those promises to actually be kept.
But at the end of the organizational tunnel there comes a moment when I shine into my element, walking through the gates of summer camp alongside the other Scouts and into the outdoor world, ignoring the nemesis of old age and walking back into the perceived glory days of my own youth.
The mists of time rise on a summer-camp lake.
This year, I took a bit of work from my basement office and packed it off to camp with me. With age comes responsibility. There was a particular stretch of a local river that I’d been meaning to fish, and there was a lily-pad lake that held rumors of largemouth bass that could break the waters of a silent evening like a mortar shell. Rods and reels were a necessary evil.
I’d make sure everyone got happily to work on their outdoor studies, studying the younger Scouts in particular to make sure that their knife whittling only took off pieces of their fingers in small shavings instead of lopping off whole digits at a time. Then, I figured to hand off the supervision responsibility to the more-responsible adults in our Troop, who were better equipped than I to handle authority anyway, before quietly slipping off into the woods with my fishing arsenal in tow.
It was a good plan but it went south in a hurry. Although I did spend a majority of the week on the water, finding myself on remote trails, and, in fact, even crawling around on the ground the same way that I’d stalk a wary brown trout, it was not at all what I imagined. I ran headlong into a battle of old age versus youth. I ran into my nemesis, not the figurative nemesis of old age, but an actual one of flesh and blood. I still bear the scars to prove it.
It started with the mile swim. In order to qualify, the Scouts are required to swim a quarter-mile on Monday, followed by a half-mile on Tuesday, with the actual mile swim happening on Wednesday. I thought I should set a good example for the Troop and swim the quarter-mile on Monday, showing everyone that the mile was indeed possible for those who desired it. Of course, I had no intention of actually swimming the mile myself. A good leader takes the first step upon the battlefield before retreating to his battle bunker and letting the army take over.
The mile swim – photo credits to Jake Kempka and Tyler Luthens
There were quite a few others swimming with us, but there was one Scout in particular, from another Troop, who showed up with the fire of competition in his eyes. I consider myself a strong swimmer, but he turned the quarter-mile into a race and it was all I could do to keep up with him. I mulled the possibilities of my nemesis in my tent that night. The game was on. My rods and reels were discarded into a pile.
The majority of the other Scouts decided that a quarter-mile was all the fun they needed to have in the water and went off to enjoy themselves in other activities. When the half-mile rolled around on Tuesday, it was down to me and my nemesis. We went neck in neck down to the end. I gasped for air on the dock as my nemesis happily sauntered away.
It went on like that. I ran into my nemesis on the obstacle course, the kind of challenge where you have to crawl through tires, cross monkey bars, and balance on a swinging log to finish. It should have been my kind of thing. I can crawl on the ground and cross logs in full chest waders while holding a fly rod to boot. My nemesis breezed through the course in a camp record. I got stuck in the first tire and skinned my knees. My fishing gear was growing moss by this time.
Onto the rifle range, where I put 5 shots into a nice grouping and was feeling pretty darn proud, until my nemesis showed me his target with the middle, black ring all but decimated. That one stung, but I’m happy to say that it didn’t push me over the edge. It did, however, push me into the water for the mile swim.
Each swimmer had to follow a rowboat across the lake to a buoy and back, and I likely would have been beaten again if it weren’t for the fact that my rower knew how to handle a pair of oars, while the rower for my nemesis was a wee bit erratic. I swam 1 mile, my nemesis probably tacked on an extra 200 yards, and it was still a close call. I claimed a victory nonetheless, and would have danced around the campfire that night except I couldn’t feel my arms or legs.
The last day of camp was the triathlon, and I really don’t want to go into that. Suffice to say that I saw the back of my nemesis’ head for a while on the half-mile swim, but by the time I was half-way into the 9-mile bike ride, all I saw were deer flies and mosquitoes. I finished the mile run into camp, but my nemesis was already off to his next conquest.
I’d danced into camp with visions of youth. At the end of the week I limped out and I felt like an old man. But somewhere out there, I can’t help but believe that my nemesis built some memories. He was a great kid, and I bet he’ll make a great adult leader someday. Maybe my grandkids will have a shot at besting him. That thought almost makes the pain in my joints and muscles bearable – almost.
John Luthens is a freelance writer from Grafton, Wisconsin. His first novel, Taconite Creek, is available on Amazon or at www.cablepublishing.com or by contacting the author at Luthens@hotmail.com