"By Rovering I don’t mean aimless wandering, I mean finding your way by pleasant paths with a definite object in view, and having an idea of the difficulties and dangers you are likely to meet with by the way." - Lord Baden-Powell of Gilwell
Eight years ago, on Sunday April 2, 2006, I became a Rover Scout. I traveled to southwest Florida as the only representative from my then new crew, the 3rd Charter Oak Rover Crew, and camped with the 2nd Southwest Florida Rover Crew, to take part in the first Brownsea Training Camp (1BTC-1). My investiture happened at the end of the weekend. My own personal notes are written up on my archived copy of my old crew's website. A lot has happened between then and now... too much to write in this blog, which frankly would be well beyond the scope of what I'm trying to do here. But the short version is, life took me in a different direction, with my crew eventually disbanding, with my service being needed elsewhere in my home community. My life in uniformed service unofficially went on ice in May of 2009.
As luck would have it, the Baden-Powell Service Association continued after I took several steps back. On March 6th of this year, they reached out to me. My original lifetime membership would still be honored. The organization is still going strong with now over 400 members. For the time being, I can get used to the idea of being a Lone Rover until the time is right to relaunch a new Connecticut crew.
In recent months, my life has changed dramatically. I recently started a new job which now allows me the time to do some of the things that I love to do. I have scaled back my level of commitment in other areas of my life so that I can find some much needed time for my health & sanity and for my family. Due to life's choices or whatever, I had unfortunately become a bit sedentary. With a brutal winter finally behind us, I threw on my hikers and my red Lone Rover neckerchief to hit the trail for the first time in a very long time. The hike itself, I will describe in another post. It will be the first that will count towards my Rambler badge. It's my favorite walk, up to Castle Craig which overlooks Hubbard Park in Meriden. It's one that I had done many times before as a boy scout and as a young adult. It is just uncanny how I needed to be on that trail, climbing that ridge, with that red sandy dirt under my feet. Is it any coincidence that the date of this hike was April 2, 2014, eight years to the day of my Rover Scout investiture?
It's been said that the "Y" in a Rover's thubstick is there to remind you about the different paths you can take in life. Sometimes it's summed up simplistically as taking the right path or the wrong path. True, there are some paths which are clearly not the best ones to take. In many cases, however, I have found that life is not always that simple, but in other ways it is. What I mean is this.... in life, we do our best to stay "on course"... whatever we feel that is. We may find ourselves lost along the way, but if we keep our heads about us, we find ourselves back on our path. I find that it really wasn't a wrong turn, it was merely a little meandering to the left or to the right. We were never really off our path to begin with; at least, we were still moving in the right direction even though it didn't look like it from our perspective. I have found this little bit of wisdom to be incredibly helpful in coping with the unexpected things in life.
To answer my own question as to whether it was a coincidence to get back on the trail on the anniversary of my knighting, I will say no. I had no idea the dates lined up when I made the decision to hike this week. I did decide it was time to get active again, and to commit to my own well being. I do not believe in coincidences because I believe everything in life happens for a reason. Seeing an alignment with the dates, however, makes me smile, and helps me realize that the path I chose was a good one.
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