Son 1.0 is working on his Environmental Science merit badge, the last one he needs before he can get his Eagle Scout. So we’re spending a good deal of time these days going over requirements, looking for areas to complete so we can plow through this stuff before school starts in the fall.
But Son 1.0 does not live by the ES merit badge alone. Seems the Boy Scouts did something sorta cool this year. They brought back some retired merit badges for 2010, and 2010 only. Carpentry (hand tools only), Signalling (semaphore and Morse code), etc. The one Son 1.0 is working on now is Tracking. It used to be called Stalking, but the name was changed for obvious reasons. Or at least it should be obvious.
One of the requirements for Tracking is to make a plaster cast of a wild animal track. Of course, tracks are everywhere, except when you want to find one. All was saw was trail runner’s tread and truck tires. We looked for a while, but the mosquitoes were beyond vicious so we ran away to the boardwalk that sticks out into the Teal Pond.
There were hundreds, maybe thousands of odes, and consequently, the mosquito count was nil. I could have slept naked on the end of that walkway and awakened the next day with nary a bump. Yay, odonates!
A dozen species were present – Cherry-Faced Meadowhawks, Common Green Darners, Twelve-spotted Skimmers, Blue Dashers, Widow Skimmers, and countless Bluets of multiple varieties all zoomed around the pond, over our heads and around our faces. One particularly audacious Darner landed on my head. How he got any traction is totally beyond me…it’s pretty sparse up there.
What it turned into was a nice walk with Son 1.0. We also call him Eagle Eye, because he spots things we miss, and we don’t miss much. Newly emergent damsels, almost invisibly translucent were no match for the All-Seeing Eye of Son 1.0. He spotted, I took pictures.
It sometimes strikes me that I have another summer with Son 1.0. After that, there are no guarantees. I may get a summer here and there, but the way time is accelerating for all of us, my guess is that we’ll see less of him as he goes out into the world to blaze his own trail. That means time is precious, and I better take all I can get, even if it means a mosquito-infested walk carrying a pail of drywall mud and other supplies for casting wild animal tracks.
Respectfully submitted,
Canoelover
P.S. No more Latin genus and species names. You don’t care, and I already know them. If you wanna know, ask.