A local crowd of Boy Scouts (troop?) has gone off to camp. This being the 21st century, it's not a matter of a nice Irish glen by a river big enough to swim in. It's somewhere near Regensburg, Germany, which isn't so far from the Czech border, and they mean to go and give Prague the onceover. A long time ago, two youngsters, said a sentimental friend, used to get a thrill making a day camp about four miles from their parental homes. This was before they, too, became scouts and learned all about reef knots and slipknots or whatever. But they did learn something about life in the open air. (Seems daft and almost unbelievable to this dot.com generation.)
The two got great fun out of a four or five-mile walk, rucksacks on back, to a little flat stretch of grass beside a clear mountain stream. They first built a fire from dead wood, easily found lying around or in the hawthorn hedges. They fried bacon and eggs and maybe sausages and then set out on a nature-study (as it was then called) ramble. Down the little stream it became a respectable three or four yards wide. Here and there a pebble shore, and always on the lookout for their favourite bird: the dipper, the blackbird-like figure who keeps bobbing as he sits on a stone in the river before diving in after his prey. They had heard of tickling trout, but this little watercourse held only small fry.
Nevertheless, they paddled, looking under stones and banks for the speckled small ones which they admired and carefully put back. They learned the songs of birds. A new one (they were both from the city) was a mistle thrush. They found its nest, from which they did not take any eggs, a formidable structure in the elbow of a tree. There were cuckoos and cornrakes and, of course - it being hilly, if not mountainous, country - curlews, whose plaintive call they learned to imitate
They prided themselves on not using devices, like the Primus stove, but never succeeded in that supreme test of craftsmanship, as they read, of lighting a fire without matches by rubbing two sticks together. The trick, apparently, was to have one piece of soft wood, in which to make a hole and into this insert a hard dry stick, well-pointed with a knife, which you then twirled between your palms until the soft wood became warm, then hot, and finally emitted sparks from which your fire began. Often read about. Never achieved.
Could they tell what wild animal had left its imprint in the riverside or sand? Or which bird? No, but they had fun. Then home to mama.