Washington: Blogger tells his story of Boy Scout corruption

During my Seattle Scouting years, I experienced an organization that
was creepy and morally bankrupt. So while the Hearst series doesn’t
shock me, it confirms a sad truth that Scouting is in many respects
the opposite of what it says it is: a morally superior organization of
trustworthy people. Earlier this year, I had the chance to visit Goose
Prairie, Washington, the iconic wilderness spot in the Cascades made
famous by Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas as the place that
nurtured his environmental ethics, his Walden Pond. Elk still browse
on the prairie, and cabins and mountains surround it.

Click link for full text/increase funding for writer/producer of these
words:http://crosscut.com/2009/02/03/mossback/18818/

But I was rather surprised to see what sits right in the middle of it:
a Boy Scout camp that looks a bit like a mini-Fort Lewis plunked down
in what was once a paradise. The valley is still beautiful, but I
couldn’t help but wonder at the judgment of the builders. Which brings
me to one of Scouting’s dirty secrets.

In the 1960s, I experienced the
organization as less of a group that fostered nature-lovers in the
Teddy Roosevelt or Douglas spirit than as a paramilitary organization
that would rather build a boot camp in a sensitive ecological zone.
The only saving grace, I suppose, is that they didn’t have to log the
prairie first. All this confirms that scouting is, in short, a fraud.

Knute Berger is Mossback, Crosscut’s chief Northwest native. He also
writes the monthly Gray Matters column for Seattle magazine and is a
weekly Friday guest on Weekday on KUOW-FM (94.9). His new book,
Pugetopolis: A Mossback Takes On Growth Addicts, Weather Wimps, and
the Myth of Seattle Nice, has just been published by Sasquatch Books.
You can e-mail him at mossback@crosscut.com.

Click link for full text/increase funding for writer/producer of these
words: http://crosscut.com/2009/02/03/mossback/18818/

Keep this blog going by keeping it growing: Comment, email, repost,
share this…