The OA Ordeal

Delaney spent the weekend at Peaceful Valley Scout ranch for his Order of the Arrow Ordeal weekend. He was elected a few months ago, and this was the first part of his initiation into the brotherhood, which will take another 10 months or so for him to complete. However this was the hard weekend.

We packed Friday afternoon, with me insisting he take a knit hat, sweatshirt, gloves, and hiking boots, none of which he thought to bring. He was glad I insisted and wished he’d have had even another shirt. We definitely need to make sure he has long johns for future trips. We did pack a new pillow and sleeping bag liner, which was good.

I dropped him off Friday night, with a tent and his backpack, and they immediately had all tents put to the side and everything packed up for hiking. They ended up hiking a few miles, and doing some work before coming back and sleeping out on their tarps and sleeping bags, no tents. That was good for Friday, but with rain here all day Saturday, we were a little worried about him. Fortunately he was fine, but it did snow there Sat night. I arrived to find this tent:

No kids around, so I packed him up and broke down the tent, and loaded the car, waiting for him to get back from whatever ceremony was going on.

He walked up, stiff and slow, and I know it had been a long weekend, but he looked good. He wasn’t frazzled from being on his own and I think he grew up quite a bit. He was definitely proud of surviving and some parents that were OA people told me he did really well with his vow of silence from Fri night to Sat night. He said it was hard, working to set up summer camp tents and also working on limited food for breakfast/lunch. He ate two salads and two servings of dinner and was tired from the weekend.

But he felt good he’d been through it and was proud of his sash and beads. Read to move to the next phase of his OA initiation.