I was a scout master once. If I was in the same capacity, I would be be teaching the same same vision of self reliance.
Posted on 05/17/2009 6:05:22 PM PDT by appleseed
Scouts can earn activity badges for skills from skateboarding to global conservation, but the new chief scout could herald the prospect of members tackling some slightly trickier future pursuits – such as eating snakes and climbing Mount Everest.
Bear Grylls, 34, the former SAS man and survivalist who, as television viewers will know, long ago earned his stripes for both the above, said he would be encouraging more adults to volunteer so that 33,000 youngsters on waiting lists could join scout groups.
Grylls will become the youngest chief scout in the organisation's 102-year history later this year when he replaces the former Blue Peter presenter Peter Duncan, and he spoke warmly of his boyhood memories of scouting. "I got a sense of identity and a sense of belonging from scouts. My love of the outdoors started with scouting. It was a real confidence boost for me and opened a lot of doors."
An author and public speaker whose television shows have included Man vs Wild, at 23 he became the youngest Briton to climb Mount Everest, crossed the Atlantic Arctic Ocean in an open inflatable boat, and served three years in the SAS.
Grylls said that he hoped to increase the 90,000 adult volunteers offering more than 200 activities and to dispel the image of scouts simply singing around campfires in old-fashioned uniform
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
I was a scout master once. If I was in the same capacity, I would be be teaching the same same vision of self reliance.
Great, he’ll be able to teach young kids to take stupid risks and hurt themselves.
Goofy guy though. And don’t let him teach outdoor safety. He’s had a couple owies lately (like almost cutting his fingers off a few weeks ago).
or how to go skinny dipping in any part of the world.
Self Reliant/Survivalist ping list
last I heard he broke his shoulder in a fall. how’d he cut his fingers?
Isn’t this the fraud who was busted sleeping at a hotel rather than “roughing” it?
No kidding. I don’t care what his credentials are, I’ll take my chances with Les Stroud because he doesn’t take stupid risks that need not be taken.
You would think that would be among the first rules of survival.
“Isn’t this the fraud who was busted sleeping at a hotel rather than “roughing” it?”
Yep the very one. There is video on Youtube of some of his things. The film crew walks with him and they stage each event. One of his scenarios was supposed to be remote, when it was actually within sight of the highway.
Yep.
One day Les Stroud will stumble across Bear Grylls’ decaying remains.
Read my tagline. Guess where I got that :)
He’s the guy featured on “The Soup” the other night, who took a hunk of bear poop and picked out undigested apple bits, splashed some water on the apple bit, and proceeded to eat it. The look on his face was priceless. Let’s just say it appeared that it tasted more like the poop than the apple.
Les Stroud is the real deal.
Bear’s fun to watch, and there’s some useful info mixed in with his shows - things like getting through the Everglades sawgrass if you need to with a stick. Les Stroud seems a bit more the real thing though.
Last month or so (both) seem to have been missing from their usual Discovery / Science channel homes. Wonder if some contractual issues are brewing?
Glad to hear Bear’s helping BSA.
In the litigious American legal climate today, there is no way I am involving myself in the Boy Scouts. Or anything like it that involves my engagement with your children.
I have a wee small aversion to the kinds of lawsuits that some of you folks just love to to file and that none of you decry.
Good luck with your next generation -- and what you're teaching them.
http://www.morungexpress.com/entertainment/23050.html
Intrepid TV adventurer Bear Grylls has had emergency surgery after almost severing one finger and slicing off the tip of another while filming his latest show. The star of Channel 4’s Born Survivor cut the middle finger on his left hand to the bone on a ‘razor-sharp’ bamboo shard during a trip to the Vietnamese jungle last week. The wound was sewn by doctors in Vietnam but Grylls, 34, was flown back to Britain, complaining of a lack of sensation in the finger.
The adventurer, who gives wilderness survival tips and demonstrations on his shows, posted a picture of his injury and the jagged lines of the stitches on his internet blog. ‘I got it sewn up but it was a bit of a quick job to see me through,’ he said. ‘Hence it looks a bit ugly and ragged. The production team flew me back to the UK but what concerns me is the lack of feeling in the end of the finger now. I also sliced off the tip of another finger, which bled like nobody’s business, but the raw flesh is covering up now, slowly. Dank, damp jungle conditions are bad for such injuries, trust me. Anyway, hopefully the nerve damage will repair and I can get back for the next show, God willing.’
Grylls, who has been forced to postpone filming until his injuries have healed, said filming the programme was ‘quite a mission’. ‘It reinforced the huge respect I have for any soldier who had to operate in those very intense conditions, especially for those who turned up with no jungle experience – it must have been hell on earth,’ he added.
A new Channel 4 Born Survivor series, which is also broadcast around the world as Man vs Wild on the Discovery Channel, begins next weekend, with Grylls once more stranded in remote locations with a camera crew to show off his survival techniques. Last December, Grylls and his crew had to be airlifted out of Antarctica after he broke his shoulder in a fall. The Eton-educated former SAS member had been travelling on wind-powered skis, propelled by kites.
Scouting is just one generation away from oblivion. Bear may be a bit nutty, but at least he’s helping to keep it alive.
Which one is the guy who never seems to ever be able to get any of his tricks to catch food to actually work?
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