Philmont TRAINing

It was a trip to Philmont that reminds me of one of these experiences that still makes me laugh. We had had a great time at Philmont and had spent the last two weeks in the back woods of Philmont High Adventure base in Cimarron New Mexico. The trip is truly and once in a lifetime experience that I have been fortunate to experience many more times than once. Each and every time you go, you remember some of the items that we all take for granted. Food, nice bathrooms or just the freedom to go where you want when you want. Being basically tethered to a group of 8-10 fellow teenagers and a few adults for 24 hrs x14 days is a lot to handle. Needless to say, you either get to like each other or you kill one another. Seeing I have never attended a funeral after a trip like this, I think it is safe to call it a success. Even so, we still take for granted the many things we did or didn’t have for those two weeks. I remember my first trip to Philmont when I walked into the bathrooms in base camp and wondered why there were no doors on the bathroom stalls. It seemed so impersonal, then after spending two weeks on the trail, you once again use the bathrooms and you say WOW, walls!!! When out on the trail, you do get over your shyness of things like that, so to say it is an adventure, truly makes you aware of what you are missing.

Having taking the train when we go, you get to see a lot of the country not to mention all the variety of people that ride the train. There are several different people that I can think of, each of them have their own unique things about them. One that always comes to mind, is one meal when Jerry Kirkland and I went to breakfast and one of the traditions of the train is to seat people in the dining car in groups of four, so only having two of us, we were seated with two people, one was a man in I would say his forties or fifties, the second person was a lady I would guess to be in her late fifties to early sixties. As we sat down, the conversation, as it always did, started to be around scouting and the adventure we were either headed to, or returning from, as each time we went to the dining car we were wearing our Full Class A uniform. The uniform itself can be a conservation piece, but usually then turns to other Scouting stories. Well as we sat with these two people, the lady was the most talkative, the gentleman, was not overly interested in the conversation, and did not know any of us, so was reluctant to get involved. The lady on the other had, made up for the lack of discussion from the gentleman. We talked a lot about the upcoming trip, about how we would spend time in the backcountry, eating dehydrated food and things related to the trip. Think about the dehydrated food that helped make the train food more acceptable than it would have been otherwise. We looked forward to the side trips and the many adventures of the trip, and occasionally added goofy stories about the youth, seeing both Jerry and I had been to Philmont once before, we shared a lot of stories. The lady seemed fairly entertained by the conversation, on the other hand, the gentleman was basically there to eat, so from this point forward is really a non-element of this eating adventure. As we finished our meal, the check came, the lady got VERY quiet and started to weep. Jerry and I began to wonder what the situation was, but we didn’t say much. Now Train food is expensive, but nothing to cry about. Jerry and I began to think, did this lady not have the money to pay for the meal? Were we about to be stuck with the bill? If she didn’t have money, it would have surprised us, seeing she was a fairly classy-looking lady, not the typical look of someone who was bad off, not saying there was not some of those on the trail too. As she wept more, Jerry finally asked her what the problem was, she told us that we just given her new life to a very sad situation and she felt we were there for a purpose, to help her understand some issues she was having a hard time dealing with personally. It so happens, she was on the train heading to California to bury her son, who had committed suicide. She was having a terrible time dealing with the whole situation and could not understand the whole thing. She had focused her many aimless hours on the train, trying to understand it, but was not having much luck. She felt that the conversation we had, seemed to take her away from all that and give her a moment of “freedom” from this weight on her shoulders. Then she realized, that her son had enjoyed many of the things we would do on our trip and all the wonderful things about her son, as opposed to the negative issues. I think that her son may have had his own batch of struggles and all she was focused on was those negative issues. Having heard us, she began to see the good things about her son, and that is the memory she was struggling so hard to find, and something we accomplished in the matter of a 45-minute meal. She was so grateful, it warmed our hearts, to know that we helped her with that burden. We left the table that day, feeling we had done our good turn for the day, the it didn’t cost us, either, because we were not sure this lady was not a con artist trying to get us to buy her a free meal. Jerry and I still talk about that trip, matter fact several years later, when Jerry and I did another Philmont trip, we thought about making sure we filled our table with other members of our party, to make sure next time we didn’t get a con artist, just cause we didn’t this time, does not mean it wouldn’t happen next time.