Posts Tagged ‘yawgoog’
“Where do you get your ideas?” is an understandable but impossible-to-answer question for authors. But “Nuns at Scout camp” will be one of my answers someday.
I’m often asked where I get my ideas for books, which is an understandable but impossible question to answer. There is no well of ideas. There is no secret formula. There is no one answer to that question, as much as fledgling writers seem to want there to be. Simply put, I hear something. I…
Read MoreThe boys at the Big Swim Meet had no idea how fleeting boyhood is. Once gone, you will long for it forever.
This bit of newspaper was printed circa 1930. It describes the “Big Swimming Meet” at Yawgoog Scout Reservation, the same place where I would spend my summers half a century later. As a boy, I also participated in swimming meets as the paper describes. Every Saturday afternoon, troops would gather at the waterfront to compete…
Read MoreA place where time (and boys) stand still
I visited my former Boy Scout camp, Yawgoog Scout Reservation, last week with two friends from childhood who love the place as much as me. Danny and I visited camp together last year, and a few years ago, before the birth of my first child, I took my wife to Yawgoog for a day so…
Read MoreMy boyhood adventure land
One of my favorite moments of this past summer was the chance to visit Yawgoog Scout Reservation with an old friend and former Boy Scout. I spent many of my summers at Yawgoog as a boy, and they were some of the best days of my life. I have asked when if I were to…
Read MoreParenting is supposed to make you sad, frightened and neurotic. Don’t make your kids suffer by mitigating the pain.
When I was a boy, I spent much of my summer at a Camp Yawgoog, a Boy Scout camp in Rockville, Rhode Island. My troop would spend a week at camp, and then I would spend another 2-7 weeks at a campsite designed for boys who wanted to spend more than just one week away…
Read MoreHow to win at tug of war
Victor Mather of the New York Times proposed 10 Olympic events that should be resurrected for the upcoming London games, including tug of war. Tug of War was an annual competition at Yawgoog, the Boy Scout camp where I spent many of my childhood summers, and my troop, Troop 1 of Blackstone, Massachusetts, was a…
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