Kid Four went to one meeting by herself with Adam, and came home ECSTATIC about how much fun she had. The whole troop thought this tiny 11-year-old was just the cutest thing ever and were so excited to have her join. The next week, One and Three went along and were looped in immediately, and Five was registered for Cub Scouts because she was not yet old enough for the troop. This was going to be so fun for Adam to do with our girls!

Also, during that month, I learned there are no co-ed troops – they can share a committee, but girl and boy troops are separate entities. A girl troop is required to have at least one female leader at every single weeknight meeting, activity, campout, service project, everything. I was encouraged to register so I could rotate with the other moms for campouts. I said okay, but really, this was for Adam! I would do my own thing of “earning the Eagle” on the side, with the kids teaching me all the knots and whatever, and cheering me on. It was our family joke.

Of course that did not last long. The troop was led by one scoutmaster and two assistant scoutmasters (ASMs) – two men and one woman, Taylor. Taylor pushed hard to recruit me to be an ASM but it felt off – I can’t just walk in and declare myself an ASM, don’t I need to be invited by some higher-up, like the Committee Chair? Yeah, yeah, we’ll get to that. Taylor asked me to cover the Monday night meetings for February because she had to go out of town for work. Fine, no big deal.

Except she never came back. It’s now over a year later, and she never. came. back. She pops up every now and then – she’ll show up at one meeting, tell everyone what to do even though she’s unfamiliar with what’s happening, and then we won’t see her again for 2 or 3 months. So I’ve been the ASM for a year now, kind of. I wasn’t included in any of the scoutmaster meetings or communication for 2023, just Taylor, even though she was never at anything.

There has been a lot – A LOT – of anger and turf war and conflict among the adults. It’s the most bizarre thing ever. Adam and I are here to help and people get mad at us for it – we don’t get it. The scoutmaster was out for a number of weeks to recover from a health issue and Adam offered to step in to assist until he was healthy again. It was all of one month before random people claimed he was trying to “take over” and stirred up a lot of animosity. So Adam literally just stopped going. I could write for a really long time about all of it, but how much of that do I really want on the internet … I’ve done some writing about it but it’s not even in a Google doc with online access. Offline Word only. Needless to say, my scout experience has not been pleasant, and I question regularly why our family is even doing this.

Well, we’re doing Scouts because the program itself is a good thing – Adam and I want our kids to learn the values of servant leadership and integrity, and the outdoor skills certainly don’t hurt and are even pretty fun. I haven’t figured out any memoir outlining yet, or even how I’m going to EARN MY EAGLE!!!! My kids want me to do it. We should get on that.

We are in North Carolina right now – spring break in the Outer Banks. We’ve spent a couple of days going to the Kitty Hawk and Roanoke Island historic sites, both count as field trips for the Citizenship in the Nation merit badge. So there’s something we’re doing! It’s an Eagle required badge.

The scout activities for 2023:

• April: district camporee for wilderness survival skills – our troop got 2nd place in the competition. Adam was the troop adult lead, all three kids went.
• May: Introduction to Leadership Skills for Troops (ILST) campout – ILST is supposed to be done at least once a year, and we’re not sure if this troop has ever had it. The campground was fairly close to home, so Adam came during the day and taught it. Henry and I were the overnight leaders.
• June: whitewater rafting – I had my own adult training the same weekend (IOLS), so Adam had to stay home with the kids. We sent the three Scouts off by themselves with other adult leaders and that was … eh … they had fun rafting, but it would have been helpful for one of us parents to be there.
• July: summer camp – it was a really good week! Definitely the best week of the year for the Scouts having a bonding experience and really coming together as a group. My three kids invented a medley of camp songs that they performed at the whole-camp final campfire and it was a hit. I was there the entire week and Taylor showed up for about 36 hours, “I knew Trina was here so I didn’t need to be.” No, you don’t need to show up and do your ASM job at all … *eye roll* One, Three, and Four all came home with four or five merit badges completed – their first ones! They all did art classes. One loved the rifle range. Three knocked out Swimming. And Four did great in archery.
• August: the beach campout – Adam was the adult leader again and it was just too dang HOT to do anything. Even the water temperature in the ocean was getting close to 100 degrees (and did pass that number in Florida).
• September: bike trip campout along the C&O canal – a 15 mile bike ride is one of the options for the Camping merit badge. Two other adults rode it with the scouts, Three was the only one of my kids to go. I went to the campground for the weekend as the backup adult in case something happened, which it did … One of the scouts got sick about halfway through the ride and came back to the campsite, and one of the adults had a family issue and their spouse asked them to come home early. So I stayed the whole time.
• October: due to a large conflict involving one of our kids and a pretty nasty exchange in a meeting, our family took a six-week break. We were persuaded to not quit entirely – which we definitely considered – because the adult in question was moved to a different position. It would be safe to return.
• November: the Cub Scout recruitment campout, which wasn’t much of one because it was the Caudles and just a couple of other scouts, and a couple of Cubs. It was also in the dark, because it was after the daylight savings time change. Fortunately there was a small lodge where we could hang out after dark, when we still had four hours to go before bedtime. We played card games to pass the time.
• December: historic ships in Baltimore harbor and a walk-through of Fort McHenry. They got to sleep on one of the ships! Three and Four went with a trusted adult leader, Adam and I couldn’t go because it was the same weekend as the Christmas music program at church, and we were singing.

Ranks: One and Four finished 2023 at the Tenderfoot rank, and just signed off with Second Class. One turns 18 in May and will age out – the goal is to get to First Class before then. All the skills ranks accomplished!

Three rushed all the way to First Class with one of her friends and they got it together in August. They both ranked up to Star in January. I think she needs to slow down a little and make sure she’s actually learned the skills instead of passing them off quickly and forgetting them.

2024 has its own set of fun challenges – that’s another blog post.

I haven’t started writing about Scouts for the “do a extreme thing” memoir, because well, I haven’t started my own efforts yet to pass off all the requirements (see: adult leadership unnecessary drama). 2024 will give me a lot of material to work with – I’m registered for Wood Badge.

9: I branched out in my writing with some new publications:

• Healing Powers: an Interview with Charlotte Condie, Wayfare Magazine, November 27, 2023
• Can I Speak Aloud About Menopause?, Exponent II blog, April 4, 2023
• Steps into the Dark: an Interview with J. Kirk Richards, Wayfare Magazine, January 6, 2023

8: Marci McPhee and I tackled Listen, Learn & Love: Building the Good Ship Zion with Richard Ostler – the third installment of the LLL series.

7: I’ve heard enough bits and pieces of Marci’s personal history that I wanted more details. So I interviewed her for the LDS Women Project: Go Far, Stay Long, Look Deep. My other favorite interview of the year was with childhood bestie Rebecca Cheney, and now we know why the Tabernacle Choir sounds amazing. Because it’s REALLY HARD to get in! Nearer to the Lord Through Music.

6: I took a flying leap into the unknown of self-publishing production with Russ Hinckley and his book, Beyond Belief. Learning Adobe InDesign for producing a book has been its own version of hell. I’ve learned a lot and I’m glad I did it, but I don’t know that I’ll be ready to try this again soon.

5: A couple of years ago, I interviewed Celeste Mergens for the LDSWP – she’s the founder of Days For Girls, an international nonprofit that provides reusable fabric menstrual supplies and education to women and girls around the world. She recently released her memoir and was in DC for a book tour presentation, and I made sure to be there. So great to meet her and get my book signed!

4: It was the year for meeting people in person … I went to lunch with Charlotte Condie when she was visiting her sister about an hour from me. I broke an internet rule and invited Jeff Andersen and his family to my HOUSE for dinner just based on Instagram conversations, but all is well, he’s not an axe murderer. He is a strong LGBT ally, podcaster, and writer, and his wife is just as awesome. Instagram friends are real friends!

• Charlotte is an artist on Instagram.
• Jeff is a progressive mover and shaker in the LDS Insta-ward.

3: The LDS Women Project had an in-person event in Washington DC, and for the first time in three years of working together, the editorial board was all in the same place at the same time. Liz gave a great presentation on her dissertation about cultural narratives among LDS women and how they affect our perceptions of ourselves and our place in the world.

2: I spoke in church on Mother’s Day about Heavenly Mother – I’ve never heard a talk or lesson about Her in a church setting, ever. I was requested by the Relief Society president, and I’m still curious (although I’ll probably never know) what she said to get this idea past the bishopric. It was interesting to me that the most feedback I got was from men, who thanked me for bringing up this doctrine because they’d never thought about it before.

1: By far, the top thing of 2023 was publishing Cherish, and being with Ashli and McArthur for a 4-day book tour in Utah. More meeting people in person! Lots of them! In Utah, I had breakfast with podcasters Susan Hinckley and Cynthia Winward (At Last She Said It), and dinner with Monica Packer (About Progress). I met lots of contributors to Cherish. But most importantly, I met – after working together for a year and a half – Ashli. We had both spent time with McArthur in 2022 when she did a speaking tour on the East Coast, but it was the first time Ashli and I were together. All the way around, creating the book and talking about it has been one of the pivotal experiences of my life.

I’m reviewing plans for 2024 this week, but it definitely includes more Cherish, more LDSWP, more Scouts, and more writing of my own.

I’m going to earn my Eagle.

Yeah, the Boy Scouts Eagle.

Scouts was created for teenage boys, which I most definitely am not. Let’s just be blunt. I’m a 50-year-old woman who is 50 pounds overweight and a total wimp. Not exactly Scout material here.

But I’m going to do it anyway, because I wanted to be a Scout the entire time I was growing up.

When I was a kid – third grade maybe? – I was briefly a “Campfire girl.” I vaguely remember that my adventure lasted only a few months and I have no idea why I stopped going. (Did my parents pull me out? Did the troop disband? I don’t know.) My brothers, on the other hand, were in Cub Scouts with all the meetings and accoutrements and camps that came along with it. Our mom was the den leader for awhile, so the meetings were even at my house. I can still, forty years later, rattle off the Cub Scout oath from 1982:

On my honor, I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country, to help other people, and obey the Law of the Pack.

For decades, Scouts was the official youth program in the LDS Church for the boys. When my brothers moved up to Boy Scouts, they went to summer camp in the mountains with horses, a shooting range, and even a lake with water skiing. They did all kinds of activities all over the place, and all three of my brothers reached Eagle before they were 16.

The girls, on the other hand, got no such attention at church. There was no activity program at all for girls under age 12. When I moved up into the youth program, the girls did have weekly activities but I don’t remember a single thing about anything we did. Probably crafts or cooking or talked about the scriptures. I do remember that our weeklong summer camp was in tents in the middle of an empty field and we all had to walk out to the road where two little outhouses stood next to some brush for our “facilities.” We did crafts and talked about the scriptures. At camp.

Personal Progress and the Young Women medallion – our goal and achievement programming – was supposed to be the girls’ equivalent of an Eagle but I was never convinced. I did complete it, but by the skin of my teeth because I just didn’t care. It was boring – mostly reading scriptures and writing in a journal, and service. I would rather have been in Scouts having outdoor adventures.

(Sidenote: I was a Personal Progress advisor as an adult, and got a lot more out of the program then. It did turn out to be a good thing, before it was replaced by new programming in January 2020. But as a kid? Nope. In part, because it was so inequitable.)

Fast forward a whole lot of years and I married an Eagle Scout. He was a Scoutmaster for a couple of years (only left it because we moved), and has done all the adult training, including Wood Badge. We are the parents of a bunch of girls, no boys. Sooo … no Scouts.

When our oldest turned 8, (the same age boys were enrolled in Scouts in our church), I made darn sure there was a girls activity program. They had activity nights but no structure beyond some vague guidelines in “Faith in God.” So I created it myself. By sheer force of will, my daughters and their friends did have fun activities and summer day camp and a structure for consistent and frequent awards for reaching goal benchmarks with Faith in God. We played and made and learned.

People asked why I was so adamant about the girls’ program doing a lot “because other girls around the area and around the world don’t have this type of activity.” I responded that I did not care what other girls around the area did or did not do – my concern was what my daughters saw the boys down the hall at church get to do, and the girls were going to get a program as equal as I could make it. My strongest measure of success was when parents told me that their little girls could not wait to be old enough to join my group – they were so excited, because we had so much fun.

Four years ago, at long last, BSA opened enrollment to girls. I was STOKED. My girls could do what I could not! We would have located – or formed – a girls’ troop and registered them immediately, except they didn’t want to do it. Outside with bugs? Ewww! Sigh. Adam and I quietly put all of his Scout gear in the back of a closet and didn’t talk about it.

But we have more kids … Last summer on a road trip, we watched the old Disney movie “Follow Me Boys” and our 4th kid – who was now ten (and had been too young at the initial announcement) – said, “I want to do that. Can I be a Scout?” Why, yes you can! As soon as you turn eleven. “I want to earn every merit badge!”

Well, then …