When I get up, my first impression on seeing the bathroom is wonder that they have flush toilets out here in the wilderness. My second is despair at seeing that there is no lady’s room. But come on, this is a boy scout camp, so duh! Also, the stalls have a half door only, and I look on this as truly rustic. Luckily there’s no scouts awake, so it doesn’t matter.  Much.

Now I make my way up to the camp kitchen, where scoutmaster Mr. B is making coffee and slicing onions. My fingers are a little cold as I type but overall it’s not very bad out here. The moon is huge, more luminous than it was last night, and the stars are still burning bright. On the horizon, a yellow glow has begun to herald the dawn and far off is the hum and rumble of a railroad train as it trundles on, rolling, rolling, rolling. 

Mr. B pours me a cup of camp coffee which is pretty good, then digs out some milk from a cooler. I ask him how he manages making decent percolated coffee over a fire in an automated drip world. He says it’s in the slowness of the brew. You can’t let it go crazy, boiling up like mad then pouring grounds over the rim of the percolator. You have to take it slow.

Now Mr. McC comes in, says that we need to get the scouts out of their beds so they can see Polaris, the North Star, before it fades in the dawn light. “I want to see that North Star,” I say. I step up and stand in for sleeping scouts and am taught the following:

You can find the North Star, Polaris, by finding the Big Dipper. The two bottom stars on the Dipper, that make the edge of the bowl away from the handle, point to the North Star. It’s the brightest one in the sky, you can’t miss it. If you stand facing the North Star, you are facing Polar North.

Orion is on the other side of the sky from the Big Dipper and the North Star. You can identify Orion by the three stars in a row which are his belt, which form a line east and west. So if you were lost out on the wilds on a starry night, and you were out there and paid attention to Mr. McC’s star instruction, you could find either North, East, or West. Of course, it would be dark, so you couldn’t actually go anywhere very fast, especially if, like me, you forgot your flashlight.

Now Mr. M, who snored in the Mt. Everest tent, comes up. He gets coffee with Coffee Mate mocha. The gasp of delight as he takes the first drink is one of true gusto, a great burst of air which says “okay, let’s start this day.”