Obsessing

I'm obsessing again.

There's a creative genius (ha!) buried deep inside my brain, muffled by years and years of meaningless management drivel, who longs to create something wonderful and beautiful and practical; but every time an idea forms, it is overwhelmed by the day to day activities and responsibilities which are required for survival, and often comes to nothing. Or sometimes less-than-nothing, because what is actually produced is not worth the materials which have been slapped together.

About a month ago, all the memories of my wild, unhindered youth brought to mind an earlier obsession with electronics, and so for the next two weeks, I could think of nothing else. All my old electronics notebooks and references were pulled from the shelves, and my desk became cluttered with wires and batteries and transistors and various other technological detritus. Circuits were designed and built and measured and analyzed and discarded, and many hours were burned in a fruitless attempt to create something useful out of all the disorganized rubble.

Then it fell on my lot to arrange/plan/implement the Winter Campout for the Youth Group at church, and my attention was completely and utterly blown. Panic in the streets! Even though I've been on several Winter Campouts of the Scouting variety, it had never been my responsibility to put one together. And owing to my extremely strong desire (obsession?) to avoid humiliation and embarrassment, it is paramount that everything go off without a hitch.

Which means, of course, that I'm stressing out about it.

You'd think that a Winter Campout - especially here in Michigan, where it's rather ordinary - would be a simple matter. You take your tent, plop it in the snow, curl up in your -10°F sleeping bag, and sleep the night away in cozy comfort. Until your bladder wakes you up at 3 in the morning with an Urgent Message. At which point you put on all your heavy snowgear, tromp out into the snow, find an appropriate facility (for Scouts, it's very simple), and afterward, tromp back to the tent whereupon your fellow tentmates yell at you for making too much noise, bringing snow inside and waking them all up.

Ah, if it were only that simple.

There is one important and critical difference between the Scout campouts to which I am accustomed, and this particular Youth campout: there are girls involved. And the very first question asked by the girls when the campout was announced? I'm sure you can guess.

"Will there be rest rooms?"

The typical guy response is to laugh out loud and make rude comments about how girls always want to be pampered, and how they don't know how to "rough it". (And sometimes those rude comments come from other girls who actually enjoy roughing it!) And then everyone agreees that it would be difficult and pointless to go to a lot of trouble to provide something so unnecessary, and we move on. And a lot of girls decide not to go after all.

But there are a couple of things about the scenario that appeal to me. First is, I have two daughters, and I enjoy spoiling them rotten. And if I could convince them to go along on a campout merely by providing adequate 'facilities' for their use, I would do it out of a desire to spend time in their company. Secondly, though, I'm an engineer. And you never tell an engineer that something can't (or shouldn't) be done merely because it might be difficult. That is a gauntlet-in-the-face challenge to do it. So I'm going to do it. And it may be a complete failure, but at least no one will be able to say I didn't try.

I did quite a bit of research on the subject on-line, and was amused to discover the various methods that have been devised to provide facilities on campouts. Mostly for summer, of course. No one in their right mind would go out camping in the middle of winter. The flaw in most of the designs, at least as far as winter applications go, is the lack of adequate protection from the elements. Nylon mini-tents don't provide much insulation against the bitter winds (15°F on a good day!), and no one likes to do their business while shivering. So the first item on the agenda is to provide a secure, insulated enclosure, sizeable enough to handle an occupant wearing several bulky layers of down.

The next item on the agenda is practicality. Those tank-style RV toilets are not practical for winter camping. You really don't want to be lugging around a tank device in the bitter wind. Luckily for me, I have lots of experience with cats and their waste products. And my research indicated that it is actually an accepted practice to treat human wastes in a similar manner while camping, using various clumping compounds, deodorants, and germicidals, all of which are availabe at home. Meaning that at the end of the campout, we are able to toss our bags of de-toxified waste material directly into the weekly garbage. And no one gets grossed out by having to clean out any tanks.

So over the next couple of days, I'll be building the 'facility', and you'll be able to see what happens to a degenerate engineering mind as he goes completely bonkers in an attempt to prove that It Can Be Done.

Hope you enjoy it!

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There is quite a bit more to the Winter Campout than just having a warm rest room, of course. There's also the part about having fun. And having a purpose.

For this campout, to make it as fun as possible, we're going to have a Scenario for the kids to play so that they'll be engaging their minds while they're engaging their muscles.

Here's the Plot.

The kids will be taken to the edge of the property and dropped off. They will be given a map and a set of instructions. The map is incomplete, containing only enough information to get them to the Base Camp. The premise (provided in the instructions) is that they are on an Survey Expedition whose purpose is to complete a map of the area, but their supplies (food, water, firewood) were accidentally scattered throughout the woods. The instructions will tell them that they are to use sleds (provided) to cart all their gear to the Base Camp and then set up. Then they must split into teams and go out into the woods to map the area. While they are mapping the area, they are to locate their supplies and bring them back to camp on the sleds. It will be necessary at times to traverse gullies and streams, so everyone will need to work together to avoid losing supplies or getting wet. After they have returned to camp with the supplies, each team will have to (1) start a fire; (2) boil water; (3) make hot drinks for their team. Then each team will provide a cook's helper to assist with dinner.

After dinner, we'll do some cleanup, then get the teams together to come up with a definite 'map' of the area, which we'll be using the next morning. Then it's time for a campfire devotional, with hot chocolate and cold-weather (i.e. high-protein) snacks), then bedtime.

Next day, we have breakfast, then cleanup, then devotional/worship time, then we'll use our 'map' to go on a meditative hike around the property before coming back to break camp and head for home.

Of course, it probably won't go like clockwork, but that's the general idea. I'm hoping to take lots of pictures, but will probably be too stressed out trying to make sure everything is going smoothly to worry about it. I won't relax til the cars are all loaded up and heading back up the road.