Wood Badge

The last two weekends I was up at Camp Tracy in Millcreek Canyon for Wood Badge. To be honest, as I was packing the first Wednesday, I was not terribly excited and was pretty anxious as I didn't know what to expect.

As I got there and went through the orientation and met my patrol, I still wasn't quite sure what to think about it. Those people who know me know that I am pretty reserved and it takes a while for me to warm up to new people. Anyway, I think that is the reason that by the end of Thursday, I still wasn't quite comfortable and wasn't enjoying Wood Badge that much. I called Stacey that night and expressed those feelings to her.

However, over the course of the Friday activities, something must have changed, and I don't even know exactly what it was that changed my attitude. Friday night, I was feeling much more comfortable with my patrol and was enjoying Wood Badge so much more. By the time Saturday was over, I was kind of sad about leaving.

The next Wednesday when I was packing and getting ready to go back, Stacey said to me "You're excited to go back, aren't you?" I said "Heck Yeah!" The second weekend up at Wood Badge was awesome. There were a lot of team building activities, and we had so much fun and learned so much.

The beauty of Wood Badge is that not only do you go and learn all the great lessons, skills, etc. But then you come back and apply it by "working your ticket." It gives you the opportunity to apply the lessons that you learned and to help improve not only yourself but your family, scout group, work life because of what you choose to work on.

Another thing that was so amazing was our patrol. We were quite different in personality and abilities, but we came together so well. I was truly sad to say goodbye to them and am looking forward for when we can get together again. We were the Bear Patrol, so we each came up with bear nicknames for each other. Friday night we had our campfire. We had a good sized fire, and we just sat around the fire talking until about 11:30 at night, at which point 3 of our patrol went to bed. The other 4 of us stayed up until almost 1:00 AM, then finally decided to go to bed. What a fun night of talking and getting to know and understand each member of the patrol even more. That definitely helped our patrol grow even closer together.

I would recommend Wood Badge to anyone. There are a lot of Scouters that I serve with who haven't gone, and I want to get as many as I can to go. Wood Badge is hard to explain why it is so awesome, it's something that you just have to experience for yourself. What an opportunity to develop your knowledge, skills, and an amazing relationship with other Scouters.

If you have gone to Wood Badge and have anything to add, please do so in the comments.