Scouts at this year’s Rendezvous welcomed the frigid forecast to earn this rare prize

The sun hadn’t even crested the horizon on the day that marked the halfway point of winter this month, and I was out taking advantage of the warm day with an early hike.

Well, warm to me, at least. It was only 45 degrees, but that felt just about balmy after the January we shivered through out here. I was starving to get back outside for a couple of hours without heavy winter gear between me and the world.

Nothing against that gear. I’d hardly get outdoors at all in December or January out here without it.

As the adage goes, there’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad gear.

The truth of it hit me when I checked the temperature before I crawled out my sleeping bag on a campout with my sons’ Scout troop last month. It was 2 degrees below zero, but I was excited to get up and start the day.

Part of my enthusiasm was thanks to the all the good gear I’d brought with me: warm clothes, hand-warmers, a thermos for hot drinks, the works. What had me truly fired up to step out into the icy wind was back at home, though: a bag full of big, clear beads.

See, Scouts learn how to have fun camping in all sorts of weather. If a summer downpour churns the ground to mud, the kids have fun. If they set up tents in a snowstorm, the kids have fun. Because they camp year-round and make great memories regardless of what the weather does, they wear “camping coups” on their belts to mark the different experiences. There’s a black bead for rain, green for good weather, white for snow, that sort of thing.

That bag of clear beads at my house was something I’d bought when the kids looked at the weather forecast as they planned this campout. Clear coups commemorate camping when the temperature drops below zero. It had been 12 years since the last ones were handed out in our troop, and every winter the boys and girls talked with more and more excitement about their chance to earn this legendary coups.

This campout was looking like it could go either way when the kids were making preparations. Some forecasts were saying we’d be hovering just above zero and others had us deep in the negatives.

The January campout is always one of the Scouts’ favorites. It’s the Trapper’s Rendezvous, where they meet up in the middle of Kansas to trade old toys, pocketknives and things like that with thousands of boys and girls from other troops. No money can change hands, so they take pride in pulling off intricate series of swaps for better and better goods. Two years ago one kid showed up with nothing to trade but an offer to play a song on his harmonica (harmonica not included) and he kept trading up until he had an armful of treasures.

On the other hand, Trapper’s Rendezvous is the only campout I dread every year. Adults can’t trade with the kids, so there’s not much for me to do all weekend but freeze in camp and grumble to other adults about the cold.

This year was different. A worse forecast than we usually have for Trapper’s Rendezvous offered great justification to buy not only a giant box of hand warmers for the troop, but new insulated overalls that I’d had my eyes on for a while for myself.

I was almost looking forward to seeing how the new gear would stand up to the coldest weekend of the winter.

Then, on the drive to the campsite, I heard how excited the Scouts in my car were about the prospect of earning clear coups. None of the older Scouts they’d looked up to when they first joined the troop as little kids had been lucky enough to earn it. Nobody even knew exactly what it looked like.

Their enthusiasm was infectious. Adult leaders wear camping coups, too, and I like how mine bring to mind stories of campouts with my sons. Only my younger boy was along for this campout. If the weather got as bad as we expected, he and I would have rare clear coups to remind us how we had toughed out some of the worst weather that our winters throw at us.

When we emerged from our tents to a confirmed below-zero dawn after our night out, it was to huge smiles and glove-muffled high-fives all around. We’d experienced something that the troop hadn’t done since a couple of these Scouts were babies.

And the weather didn’t feel bad at all — more like a lot of fun, actually.

Turns out the adage is deeper than I knew. Sure, good gear does make bad weather — and many other bad situations — bearable. But the gear that makes the biggest difference isn’t necessarily any equipment you put between yourself and the world. Sometimes it’s more the sense of enthusiasm for the memories you’ll make as you power through.

Richard Espinoza is a former editor of the Johnson County Neighborhood News. You can reach him at respinozakc@yahoo.com.