GimletBlog

See Thing One’s NAYLE photo album in the Gimlet Gallery.

An overview of the NAYLE program from the official web site:

The National Advanced Youth Leadership Experience (NAYLE) is an exciting program where youth enhance their leadership skills in the Philmont Backcountry. Scouts will expand upon the team building and ethical decision making skills learned in National Youth Leadership Training (NYLT). NAYLE uses elements of the Philmont Ranger Training as well as advanced Search and Rescue skills to teach leadership, teamwork and the lessons of selfless service. NAYLE will offer Scouts an unforgettable backcountry wilderness experience where they live leadership and teamwork, using the core elements of NYLT to make their leadership skills intuitive.

NAYLE will equip youth leaders to be better leaders, NYLT staff members and/or superior camp staff. It will help guide their journey to become true “servant leaders,” able to develop all members of whichever team they lead. It provides life skills for now and the future.

On Friday, June 25, I flew on a plane from Seattle to Albuquerque.  The Saturday flight from Seattle to Albuquerque would have been too late for the Philmont shuttle so I had to arrive a day early instead. I stayed at the house of a friend from my last Philmont Trek.  We hung out, went to Chili’s and watched movies.  On Saturday we had lunch at Dion’s Pizza in Albuquerque, and then I went back to the airport to take the shuttle to Philmont.

About eight other people rode on the shuttle, and we watched the movie Dodge Ball. The trip to Philmont took about four hours. Half of the people came on Saturday, and the rest arrived Sunday morning.  Everybody was either from Indiana or Texas, with sizable minorities from California and Minnesota.  Saturday night we stayed at Base Camp, ate dinner at the Philmont Training Center (PTC) cafeteria and there was a cracker barrel later in the evening.  At dinner I was recognized by one of my dad’s friends who was attending the LDS week at the PTC.

(more…)

Related posts:

Not long after this photo was taken, Thing One boarded a flight to Albuquerque, where he will spend the night with one of his friends from last year’s Philmont mountain trek.  Saturday morning he begins his NAYLE course at Philmont, which we’ll describe in greater detail when he returns.

If Thing One were here, he’d like to point out that he’s just about Gimlet height.  (And as much as we like Alaska Airlines, they don’t offer a nonstop flight to Albuquerque.)

We hope he takes plenty of photos and has many stories to share from his week.  Meanwhile, we will do our best to keep Thing Two from appropriating all of the cool stuff in Thing One’s room that Thing Two would like to have for himself.

Related posts:

Thing One’s bus arrived just as we were finishing our breakfast Saturday morning.  After a photo to commemorate his dirt, we isolated Thing One’s laundry in a sturdy plastic bag, and sent him to the showers with a bottle of soap and instructions to return the bottle empty.  Now he was ready to rejoin Team Gimlet.  A final trip to the Trading Post was in order to collect patches from the various camps he’d visited, buy some souvenirs (he was a bit overwhelmed by all the Trading Post had to offer; the rest of Team Gimlet has had all week to get used to it) and stock up on some much-missed snacks and soda.  By 10:00 we were on our way to Santa Fe, New Mexico.

(more…)

Related posts:

Editor’s Note: Every afternoon after the programs ended for the day, Team Gimlet would go to the Trading Post for ice cream.  While there, we watched Boy Scout troops from all over the nation arriving for their two weeks of hiking, or arriving from the backcountry, having successfully completed their trek.  It was easy to tell the two groups apart:  incoming groups were a little nervous and overwhelmed by the immensity that is Philmont.  On the other hand, if we were downwind of a returning group, it was an olfactory experience not soon forgotten; but it was also apparent in their feeling of accomplishment and newfound unity as a group.

The accumulated layers of dirt were not necessarily something the young men would want to bring home with them (especially not in an enclosed vehicle for hundreds of miles) and a shower and change of clothes would take care of that.  But the lessons of teamwork, brotherhood, and an expanded sense of what they were capable can be brought out of the backcountry and remembered for a lifetime.

• Learn more about Philmont Mountain Treks.
• Short descriptions of the Philmont camps.

(more…)

Related posts:

Pictures.  Gimlet Gallery.  You know the drill.

Thing Two spent the week attending the Small Fry program, or as he called it, “Camp School.”  The program is for children under age five and offers play time, nap and snack time, and a special activity each day.  The children made T-shirts in the Handicraft Center, toured the Villa Philmonte greenhouse and planted seeds, and had two opportunities to ride ponies.  (Thing Two, however, decided that the ponies were too large and preferred to sit on the sidelines and watch.)  Thing Two eagerly ran up the hill to the Small Fry Center every morning and afternoon, and played with his new friends at the Tent City playground and Dining Hall as well.  One day an adult Scout leader “of a certain age” visited the Small Fry Center and reported, “I’m supposed to tell you that I was a Small Fry in 1962.”  It’s fun to think that today’s Small Fry may be tomorrow’s group of young men heading off on a two-week trek, or even future Scoutmasters.

(more…)

Related posts:

The week began with a picture:  30 Scoutmasters.  Later in the week, our wives kept having a hard time identifying their husbands.  Their middle-aged guy in the Scout uniform was hard to identify among all the other middle-aged guys in Scout uniforms.

As my experience was mostly a classroom there is little that is specifically exciting to report.  I enjoyed discussing how to make Scouting work with Scoutmasters from all over the world.  We had three BSA units from Europe  (Trans-Atlantic council) represented.  We saw slides about Kandersteg scout reservation in Switzerland and camping at Normandy.  The discussion from Scoutmasters from all around the United States from every kind of troop helped us all to think of ways to improve our programs at home.

The vision of scouting is a great one.  I sometimes refer to the program as a “bait and switch”:  the boys come for camping and adventure, and come out with character and virtue.  We have to have the camping and adventure or we, as adults, lose the chance to teach them the principles they need to become great men.

Philmont is uniquely able to provide the opportunity to meet a diverse group of men and women who have common goals.  We come from different religious, racial, and economic backgrounds, but all want the boys we work with, and our sons, to become men of character and virtue.  The good men of Lutheran, Catholic, and Methodist background attending the program with me equal the best men of my tradition in their hopes and ability to train their boys to become men of honor.  A scout is a friend to all other scouts, and Philmont is a place where you get to see that at work.  It was a unique experience and I am better for it.  Anybody who has the opportunity to go should seize it.  You and your family will be better for it.

Related posts:

We’re slowly catching up with photo uploads:  watch Philmont gradually appear in the Gimlet Gallery.

After spending a night in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, we were up early so we could check in to Philmont by 2:00 pm.   Most of the drive was through winding, mountainous terrain.   We stopped at the visitor’s center in Chama to get our bearings (and make a souvenir penny), but after that we didn’t stop until Taos.  As we approached the Rio Grande Bridge we were stopped by a police roadblock.  The officer was friendly and we soon realized that a movie shoot was taking place:  a large, old, boxy RV drove back and forth over the bridge, swerving in and out of its lane, as a helicopter equipped with a movie camera swooped and dove around it to capture the shot.  After a few back-and-forth passes with the RV and helicopter, we were permitted to drive over the bridge ourselves; the bridge was scenic, but our passage over it was nowhere as exciting as the RV.

After a quick stop for gasoline the Gimletmobile crawled along the very picturesque (but very narrow and congested) road through Taos to begin a corkscrew journey of about fifty miles along the Enchanted Circle to Cimarron.  The narrow, winding road was beautiful, but not very forgiving to the easily motion-sick.  Luckily Thing Two slept through most of the drive.  At 1:30 pm, a woozy Team Gimlet pulled in to Philmont Scout Ranch and the fun of settling in began.

How do you tell the story of a week at Philmont?  We’ll try to give you an idea by giving each Team Gimlet member’s perspective on the week.  First, The Gimlet will share his Strictly For Scoutmasters program, followed by Thing Two and Your Humble Narrator’s experiences.  Thing One’s Mountain Trek will finish out the Philmont blog posts.  After that, it’s time to get back on the road again and turn west to Santa Fe and Albuquerque, the Grand Canyon, and points beyond.

Related posts:

It’s time for Team Gimlet to hit the road and drive to Philmont!  It seems a little odd to drive east when our destination is the Wild West, but we already knew those of us who live in this part of the country are a little different.  Our first travel day will proceed along our usual route, and then we’ll head further south and east to visit southern Utah and the Four Corners area.  After a week in northern New Mexico, we’ll head west to the Grand Canyon, then north through Utah where we’ll spend a few days with the grandGimlets, and home again in time for Thing One to get his cast off.

We’ll post photos and updates as WiFi availability permits; otherwise it will be pretty quiet around GimletBlog until we reach Cache Valley, a much-needed oasis of many good things (grandparents, Aggie ice cream, free laundry, and Internet access, to name a few).

Related posts: