During the winter of my seventh year I went to a father son campout for the Indian Guides program, which is essentially Boy Scouts but with no structure and the only authority being fathers binge drinking around campfires. This campout was set to seriously test our survival skills as the forecast warned of record low temperatures and heavy snowfall, intimidating but not surprising for the frozen wasteland that is Northern Michigan. The main event of the retreat was a sled building competition followed by a race. As an innocent first grader new to the program, I attended the outing in search of unsupervised adventure and mischief. My search, while producing what I had originally set out for, also yielded profound moral insight.

My “tribe” was the smallest in the entire program; before the sled contest had even started we believed ourselves to be destined for failure just due to the sheer number of opponents that were already talking trash to us before the competition started. We built a sled that kicked ass and we ended up triumphing over the competition in areas of speed, aesthetics, and durability. After basking in the glow of victory for several hours, my comrades decided that our trophy alone was not enough to preserve our legacy. The competition had been done for several hours and the fathers gathered around scattered fires for alcohol, cigars, and complaining, completely oblivious to their children’s nefarious activities.  Older members of the tribe took advantage of this by taking me, the rookie, with them to enjoy the real fruit of our victory. We marched like a battalion of hardened infantrymen through the brisk nocturnal chill, visiting each other tribe’s cabin one by one, delivering the same coldly issued statement: “Your sled belongs to us.” My brothers in arms explained this to me clearly, we are the victors, don’t we deserve the spoils?  The victors and I claimed every last inferiorly designed cardboard sled from each of our speechless rivals without opposition. Now at the site of the the race we raced our opponents’ inferiorly designed cardboard sleds, now somewhat mushy from the snow but still usable. We raced and fought each other in the sleds as the original owners watched on longingly from afar, seeing the sleds that they worked their hearts and souls into being destroyed by their rivals (us), who I might add, were greatly outnumbered despite our cockiness. Eventually our triumphant energy surge became depleted and we prepared to end our festivities, but what kind of victory would it be if not for the ending ceremonies? The older boys in the tribe who I looked up to with nothing but respect and admiration had another surprise for me. Tommy, our de facto leader, produced lighter fluid and cold weather matches from his winter jacket, which was essentially was black market weapons of mass destruction to me. Every sled save for our own was doused in flammable liquid and set ablaze in front of their shocked architects. This was the ultimate symbol of disrespect to the other boys. Not a minute had passed since the ignition of the first sled when an absolute brawl broke out between my close knit squad of hooligans and the rest of the kids in the program. Initially the older kids on my team were confident in their fighting abilities, but skills don’t mean anything when you have an enemy with endless reinforcements and the thirst for vengeance. We got beat up pretty badly; injuries were nursed throughout the night but the wound that couldn’t be healed came about the next morning.
The next morning was characterized by an intense Lake Michigan wind that ushered the camp’s inhabitants towards warmer lands. A brilliant morning sun’s rays reflected off the crystallized snow in blinding illumination. The previous night’s shenanigans seemed almost unfathomable in the morning bliss. Our championed cardboard and duct tape creation was found burnt to barely recognizable pieces of black charred crust on our doorstep, a literal black mark. We received a small plastic trophy with a soccer played on it to commemorate our victory.