This December, members of Troop 581 traveled to Graves Mountain Lodge for a weekend of mountain man activities.
What is a mountain man, you ask? It refers to the pioneer woodsmen of the 18th and 19th century who explored the wilderness of early America. Mountain men of old relied on a unique set of skills and personal equipment to survive in the wilderness. In this tradition our Scouts practiced building fires with primitive means, use of basic woodsman tools such as crosscut saws and tomahawks, and cooking over an open fire.
Nature even provided the Scouts with an opportunity to test their skills when a large tree fell across the local creek. The Scouts got the tree out of the creek, limbed it and brought it back to camp to process into firewood.
The Mountain Man spirit still lives in Virginia.