Weather, Scouts not predictable

In the Boy Scout Handbook there is a discussion of the Scout Motto: Be prepared.

On two different pages, there is mention of the buddy system.

There is a warning about weather conditions and the problems of hot and cold conditions.

There is a chapter about "Finding Your Way," with sections on "How not to get lost" and "Strayed from your patrol."

There is a warning about setting tents up where lightning is more likely to strike.

It's all there in the book.

And yet the Boy Scouts still have trouble with all of the above. Imagine that.

Some people have been quick to say that the string of mishaps and tragedies that have befallen the Boy Scouts this summer could have been prevented if they had followed their own guidelines. The headlines, for example, said the Scouts were not prepared for the heat the day hundreds of Scouts swooned at the national Jamboree, thus violating their own motto.

All this overlooks a couple of problems that aren't covered in the handbook but probably should be. Teenage boys and Mother Nature are unpredictable and sometimes unmanageable despite best-laid plans and intentions.

You tell teenage boys to pick up their rooms, they still leave a mess. You tell them to stay with a buddy at Scout camp, they still wander off without him. These things happen. And sometimes bad things happen to Boy Scouts. This summer there has been a lot of that going around. To wit:

• Eight boys from a Springville troop were lost for a night.

• A 13-year-old Scout fell into the swift Yellowstone River and was never found.

• An 11-year-old Utah scout was lost in the Uinta Mountains for four days after trying to return to camp alone from a climbing wall.

• A 17-year-old Scout died in a zip-line accident at a summer camp in Idaho.

• A group of Scouts waiting out a storm under a tarp was struck by lightning, killing an adult leader and one boy and injuring six others in Sequoia National Park, Calif.

• A 14-year-old Scout from Utah was lost in the Wyoming wilderness for 19 hours after leaving camp to go to the bathroom.