Douglas Mercer
February 8 2025
The big bird will take its first flight above the back of The Great Cecero electrifying the universe with amazement, and filling all the chronicles with its lore, bringing eternal splendor to the nest where it was born.
The Wandervogel was a German movement of the early 20th Century designed for young men to leave the sordid hatches of their urban environment and return to nature. The wandervogel protested against industrialization by going to hike in the country and commune with nature in the woods. Drawing influence from medieval wandering scholars, their ethos was to revive old Teutonic values, with a strong emphasis on German Nationalism. A major contribution of the Wandervögel was the revival of folk songs in wider German society. The name, referring to a magical, free and weightless bird, can be translated either as a bird of passage or as a wandering bird, slightly different in meaning from the Zugvogel (migratory bird). This then was a back to wilderness movement against the encroachment of capitalistic urbanization and represented a deep longing among German Youth to the ancient freedom of the German Forest.
In 1907 Robert Baden Powell founded the scouting movement in England. It was a program of informal education with an emphasis on practical outdoor activities including camping, woodcraft, aquatics, hiking, backpacking and sports. The Boy Scouts Of America was founded in 1910 and in addition to promoting good citizenship and ethics the Boy Scouts emphasized the ability to live in the wild and survivalist training.
The rank of Eagle Scout may be earned by a Scout who has been a Life Scout for at least six months, has earned a minimum of 21 merit badges, has demonstrated Scout Spirit, and has demonstrated leadership within their troop, crew or ship. Additionally they must plan, develop, and lead a service project—the Eagle Project—that demonstrates both leadership and a commitment to duty. Most importantly the Eagle Scout learned a wide variety of survival skills, including how to float in water and survive in extreme conditions.
Surviving in the wilderness is the ultimate test of a Scout’s knowledge, skills, and mindset. By earning the Wilderness Survival Merit Badge, one learns what to do if ever one is ever stranded alone in nature with no possibility of rescue. Plus, this badge will not only help one survive in the wild but also improve your camping and preparedness skills.
To complete the Wilderness Survival badge, one builds fires without matches, one learns the seven priorities for backcountry survival and even constructs an improvised shelter of one’s own.
These values of duty and honor and loyalty and self-reliance are now deeply unfashionable. So it is no wonder that we read this news item from February 8 2025:
“Boy Scouts of America, as it has been known for 115 years, is now officially Scouting America. The name change went into effect on Saturday.”
The change of course was to make the organization more “gender inclusive” gender being the all-purpose (and in this context) made up word to blur the lines of biological sex which is such a chief plank of Jewish predation. More than anything what they want to do is extinguish the famed “call of the wild” and the ability to live off the land and to be self-reliant and to live by one’s own hands and brains and wits. But as we all know all it takes is one thing to go and the whole edifice falls like a house of cards; and as Wolf Stoner sagely reminds us things always look a lot different when you are hacking through impenetrable forests and burying loved ones. Scout’s Honor, as the used to say.
