<p>So I tried to do this from a completely different angle. Please take a read and let me know what you think.</p>
<p>Describe a place or environment where you are perfectly content. What do you do or experience there, and why is it meaningful to you? </p>
<pre><code>I just happen to be an anthropomorphic camp located in Rising Sun Maryland right off of Route One that’s called: Camp Horseshoe Scout Reservation. I have been around for little over 100 years and have seen thousands of scouts come and go. There are usually only a few scouts that ever really have a passion for scouting and those are the ones that come back even when they are adults. Its been said when people come to visit they often forget about every thing else going on in the world and feel perfectly content while at Horseshoe.
One thing I love to watch is when scouts come together and make new friends who they would not normally meet anywhere else. I am pretty well known, so people come from as far as Florida or as close as Maryland. These scouts don’t care who you are or where you come from, everyone is just looking to make a friend. The friendships that form between the scouts are incredible. Scouts come back to me year after year just to reconnect with the their friends from the summer before. I have seen these relationships last a lifetime as scouts become more like brothers than friends.
Through out the week, scouts despite being friends, compete in cutthroat competition against each other. I host events such as track meets, tug of war, and a timed obstacle course. Scouts become incredibly competitive to see who can win the most competitions by the end of the week. The troops that end up winning are the ones that come together to work as a team and play to each other’s strengths. It’s amazing that such simple competitions as these can bring together boys who would never have talked to each other if it was not for scouts. The variety of scouts can range
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<p>from the varsity athlete to a farm boy and despite their differences when they come to visit me, none of that matters.</p>
<pre><code>The growth of these boys in both their stature and character is a sight to be seen each and every year. The same boys that return year after year develop more and more into young men. A reoccurring characteristic I see that developing in scouts is their leadership capabilities. I offer the scouts an opportunity to grow as leaders in an environment unlike any other. Some people have this narrow-minded idea that people are either born leaders or followers. Well I have seen first hand scouts who came to camp their first year whom are unsure of themselves and quiet leave a few years later having developed stronger leadership skills than most adults will in their lifetimes.
Usually when scouts first come to camp they will take the role as patrol leader and as they mature they become the senior patrol leader of their troop. Past the troop level I host programs such as Order of the Arrow where scouts put their leadership to the test on the County level to devote their time and effort to maintain me. Some even go beyond the county level and their leadership skills on the Sectional level. There are always a few particular scouts who really develop a passion for the Order of the Arrow as it gives them the opportunity to come to camp a few more times through out the year and really give back to an organization that has helped them develop from boys to young men.
One day this past summer I over heard two scouts, Philip and Eric, talking on Mermaid’s rock just off the river that runs around me. These two scouts had just aged out, but were sticking around as adults to help give younger boys the same experience they had enjoyed so much. They talked about how their life truly would not be the same with out scouts and how little old me, a camp in Maryland, has played such an intricate part in their lives. They, like so many other scouts, have come to recognize me a their second home.
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