We welcome Brianne Sanchez to our guest blog role this week. Brianne is a writer based in Des Moines and has some great comments regarding Girl Scouts!
If you'd like to be our next guest blogger, please email us and let us know!
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| Brianne and troop earning Silver Award (with rented uniforms) |
Girl Scouting was a fundamental shaper in the person I’ve become, so
I’m compelled to share a few memories — and hilarious photos.
As a kid, camp was a trial run at independence. A few short days
spent in the woods close to home, holding a flashlight in one hand and
my nose in the other in the spider-filled latrines. Then a week or two
in the northern woods of Wisconsin, where we’d sing over the calls of
loons in the night. My mom used to send me with candy to help me make
friends with girls on the bus during the eight hour ride up. (Because
everyone wants to sit with the girl packing treats, right?)
I’d always come back changed in some way, and come back with new
ideas (sometimes about nose rings and eating baby food as a snack, like
my counselors). It was a chance to be a little bit wild, to live as a
girl outside of time and city.
Most girls only stayed in through Brownies, or a year or two of Juniors.
Girl Scouting stopped being cool when sports and boys and those sorts
of things entered the picture. I was never very cool. And my mom was the
leader, so I was in for life. I remember selling cookies in the
freezing cold outside of the video store in high school, and being
mildly mortified when people I knew (OK, people I had a crush on) would
see me. It taught me hard work. We collected cans and turned them in for
spare change so we could take trips to places like Mackinac Island and …
Cleveland. We were Troop Beverly Hills, with braces.
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| Brianne on an Outward Bound trip during high school. |
In high school, I had an after school job in the council shop,
selling badges and whatnot. Sometimes I’d even dress in historic
uniforms and give presentations from the persona of Juliette Low, Girl
Scouts’ founder. And then things started to get truly fantastic. Through
the Wider Ops program, I spent a week backpacking in the Sierra Nevada
mountains with instructors from Outward Bound.
I flew to Germany by myself the month after graduating high school for a three week tour of Europe that involved hiking in the Alps (an experience I re-created with Joe for our honeymoon!)
and crewing a sailboat with other Scouts from all over the world.
Thanks to Girl Scouts, I have a stamp from Liechtenstein in my passport
and the courage to push myself to experience adventures.
The summer after my freshman year of college, I worked as a counselor
at a camp in Colorado. I went by the camp name “Ripple.” I lost a
llama. My walk to work every day passed a field of horses. I got
helicoptered out of the wilderness. A rodent ate my sleeping bag while I
was climbing Pike’s Peak. I had close encounters with bears while
carrying pizza supplies. It was the most random, story-filled summer of
my life. And I owe it to Girl Scouts.
Because of Girl Scouts: I’m more creative, more outdoorsy, more open,
more hardworking, more loyal, more generous. Thanks to my mom for
encouraging me to stay in it and for showing me what it means to be a
leader. Happy Birthday to all of the Girl Scouts out there!
This entry is being used with permission directly from her own blog.
Click here to read more and view her Girl Scout pictures!
- Brianne Sanchez
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