Disastrous Alternatives: Boy Scout Disaster Stories and Legends and Imagining the Natural World
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Abstract
Hiking the Narrows in Zion National Park as an adolescent, I remember well the stories we shared of the flash flood that killed an entire Scout troop earlier that year or the year before. It was recent. The troop had been hiking up the Narrows just like we were, on a clear day, just like this was. Although they had taken all necessary precautions, the clear sky above them hid the fact that farther upstream a storm was adding large quantities of water into the canyon. Out of nowhere the flash flood came and killed the entire troop. Although we may have wondered why we hadn’t heard about it at the time, or why we were allowed to hike the same area, we did not challenge the veracity of the tale since someone had read, or had heard from someone who had read, the news article or seen it on TV. This was news, not legend we were sharing. The similarities between the ill-fated troop and ours gave it an ominous reality. Just like us, the Scout troop had come from Northern Utah and just like us, they had walked past these narrow sandstone canyons with the detritus of past flash floods as living proof that the stories were true. On another trip, a Scout cuts a green branch to roast a hot dog. Another Scout warns him that green branches have poisons that can seep into the hot dog when it gets hot. The Scout abandons his green branch to find one less likely to kill him.
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