Note: While this article is technically an official correction, it also contains editorial elements.
Local Scoutmaster Rick Dawson pointed out to me that in the article which I wrote about Michael Umthun earning the rank of Eagle Scout, published on last week’s front page, I accidentally wrote “Fish Camp” rather than “Fishpond” as the location for Umthun’s Eagle Scout Project, as well as previous Eagle Scout Cole Fourage’s project, the scouting monument at Fishpond Park here in Eagle Grove.
But that was not just a typo. Fish Camp Park is a park on the shore of Lake Kegonsa, right where the Yahara river feeds into it, which I remember fondly from my boyhood.
Probably, aside from the similarity in the names of the two parks, the subconscious reason I inadvertently typed Fish Camp for Fishpond when I was writing that article about a young man’s scouting career, was my remembrance of my own boyhood scouting career. My first exposure to the park came when my Scoutmaster, Merle Gjertson, took our troop camping there. I lived on the same lake, but until that trip I had no idea the park was even there, as I was at the time not allowed to boat on the lake on my own.
On that first Fish Camp trip we scouted along the shore for flint and shale, and both brittle, jagged rocks for arrowheads, and smooth, strong rocks for our slingshots. And we learned fire starting techniques, camp cooking techniques, and proper tent raising techniques. Most of all, we learned proper fish cleaning techniques, because the camp had a fish cleaning station.
Later, after my parents began to allow me to boat and canoe on the lake and river independently, I often returned to Fish Camp to while away afternoon hours. Sometimes I would fish from the shore, on the pier. Other times I would fish anchored off shore, both near and far from the camp. Almost always, I would use the camp’s facilities to clean my catch, as I’d learned in scouts.
And, I would often earn a few dollars cleaning the catch of others. That was easy money as far as my teenage self was concerned. I just had to sit nearby, whiling the time away reading, and wait for someone to bring fish and seem squeamish, or unsure what to do – and then volunteer to help them. I didn’t usually ask for payment, and didn’t usually have to.
And, my troop continued to camp and perform exercises and trainings at Fish Camp every year, through my whole scouting career. So I wasn’t always there alone.
When I was a young adult, I often made some extra money putting in and taking out piers on the lake, and along the river, with my brother and some buddies. When there was a storm, I’d often be the guy locals would call to go find their missing pier sections that had blown into the lake. Usually, that just involved motoring out to Fish Camp, where the river’s inlet was, and then following its current to where the pier sections would come together (which varied with the river’s flow through the lake). Sometimes, it would involve some free diving, which my younger self was adept at.
Long after moving off the lake, and even after moving to Iowa, there were still a few old timers on good ‘ol Lake Kegonsa who would call me to see if I’d put in their piers, or take them out, or go find their lost pier sections. Often, I’d just arrange someone for them, from among my local contacts. A few times, I even drove all the way there just to help some old friends, or their parents, out.
So, Fish Camp has been an important part of my life for most of my life, and is intrinsically tied to my own personal backstory, and the story of my own scouting career. And then when in the fullness of time I found myself reporting on another young man’s scouting career, which involved a very similarly named park, I fell right into the trap life had laid for me by the confluence of events.
Hopefully, dear readers, you can all understand how my mental wires got crossed here, and can forgive the mistake. And I also hope you’re now all as amused by the serendipity of this particular screw up on my part as I was, as soon as I realized just how, and why, I’d made it.
Here’s to fond memories of the good ‘ol days, and all those who sometimes find themselves swept away by them.
