Philmont

Philmont

As I stood on the ledge looking at the mountain peak across the fog filled valley, I realizing to myself exactly how small and insignificant we really are. I couldn't help but enjoy the beauty of it all though. Slowly I raise the camera to my eye, taking a few movements to bask in the view, and then with only the smallest of clicks I take the picture. To this day it hangs on the wall of my study. But before I get ahead of myself let me tell you how I got to be on that mountain.

It all started about a year and a half before the mountain top photo was taken. My Boy Scout Scoutmaster informed all the boys in my troop that we would be taking part in the first ever contingency going to Philmont Scout Ranch from our local council. I was kind of young then being only of the ripe old age of thirteen and I was not sure I would be old enough to go with the other boys in my troop. However the Scoutmaster informed me that I would just make the cutoff date for the age limit. When I heard this noise I was overjoyed, at least untill I found out the estimated cost of the trip. See I was not from a family with a whole lot of money to spend on things like Boy Scout trips, whenever I went on a campout it was with money that I had earned through fundraisers. I started to think about ways that I could earn enough money to go on this "ULIMATE SUPER-COOL AWSOME TRIP OF A LIFETIME".

Within a few weeks the troop had formulated a plan of action to help all the scouts go on the trip. There were the spaghetti diners, raking leaves in the fall, shoveling snow, selling carwashes, door-to-door book sales, and the ever popular popcorn. Selling popcorn was fun because even at that young age I still liked to hustle people. They say "a fool and there money are soon parted", well I say that is very true when it comes to a little kid selling Boy Scout popcorn. I would go door-to-door, but only in the ritzy neighborhoods. I had my hustle down to an art form. I rehearsed exactly what I would say to the people when they opened the door. I had those poor unsuspecting people "marked" before they even had a chance to open the door. I'd pull out the big blue eyes and the pouty face and they couldn't say no. My mom once told me that "I could sell an icebox to an Eskimo". The popcorn was my big money maker. Buy the time came around to pay for the trip, everyone was able to pay there share plus buy some new equipment to go with. Once I no longer had to worry about raising funds for the trip all I had to do was deal with the anxiety of having to wait another six months to actually go.

Well the day we were scheduled to leave I finally found out that "waiting would not kill me" as my mother kindly put it. I had already had my gear packed up for about a month and I had check it several dozen times since then "just to make sure" that I had not forgotten anything that I might need while I was gone. All the scouts from my troop and the other troops that were going with us loaded up on the bus that was to take us to Chicago to board a train that would take us down to New Mexico and our final destination.

When we arrived in Chicago at the train station we all got of the bus and went inside. I had never been to Chicago before much less in the train stain, or even on train for that matter( I lived kind of a sheltered life). When we went inside and got into the main plaza, I looked up and it was "like a million feet high". I had never seen a glass ceiling before. The