Living life by the book

If it has to do with Scouting, Robert Birkby has written the book on it.

Three times.

Birkby, who grew up in Sidney, Iowa, is the author of the new “Boy Scout Handbook,'' which updates his 1998 edition, which updated his 1990 edition.

The latest edition celebrates the 2010 centennial of the Boys Scouts of America and, like earlier handbooks, is a guide to adventure and a guidebook for life — but in the 21st century.

The first handbook in 1911 taught boys how to find their way using the North Star. It included signaling and the American Morse Code.

The 2009 edition features up-to-date information for America's 4.1 million Boy Scouts on everything from geocaching to Internet safety — and includes an iPhone application.

“The old handbooks were always the right books for the time,'' Birkby said. “But the world changes. Young people and their relationship to that world changes.''

Not that the new edition slights outdoor adventure, the century-old message of preparedness, responsibility and self-reliance, or the core beliefs that a Boy Scout be thrifty, brave and true.

“The idea is that the most important thing about Scouting is the experience,'' Birkby said. “It's the idea that the more you learn, the more you are able to do and the greater and more exciting the adventure you can then set out on.''

Birkby knows adventure.

A lifelong outdoor enthusiast, the 59-year-old Birkby travels the world on mountaineering expeditions, backpacking adventures and backcountry trail projects from his home in Seattle.

An authority on trail construction and maintenance, Birkby is in Siberia this month working with Russians who are starting to build a trail around the 1,000-mile rim of massive Lake Baikal, the world's oldest lake.

Birkby's life of global adventures and good deeds started in the Loess Hills of southwest Iowa, where Scouting ran in the family. Birkby's two brothers were Scouts. Their father was scoutmaster of Troop 77 in Sidney for 33 years. The troop went on monthly campouts.

“I had great adventures camping in the bluffs above the Missouri River,'' Birkby said.

When he was 15, Birkby worked at Camp Cedars near Fremont, Neb., for the summer. The next year, he worked at a camp near Griswold, Iowa, and made his first two-week mountain trek at Philmont Scout Camp in New Mexico.

He earned Eagle Scout ranking.

Birkby returned to Philmont during college summers as a trail crew foreman and then was director of conservation. He taught English at Southwest Missouri State University, but the lure of the outdoors was strong. He went to Maine and started a five-month, 2,100-mile walk to Georgia on the Appalachian Trail.

“When I started, I thought that with that much time hiking through the woods, I'd be able to think about what I wanted to do next,'' Birkby said. “When I got to the end of the trail, what I wanted to do next was keep hiking.''

So Birkby moved to Seattle and supported himself by writing merit badge pamphlets and small articles for Boys Life magazine. He also directed high school-aged Student Conservation Association volunteers building trails at national parks and forests across the country.

He worked with Mountain Madness, a Seattle-based adventure travel company, started by climber Scott Fischer. Birkby bartered his writing skills to Fischer in exchange for climbing lessons. They led groups on mountaineering trips to such places as Kilimanjaro in Africa, Mount Elbrus in the Caucasus Mountains and peaks in Nepal, Alaska and the Cascades of the Pacific Northwest.

Fischer was a guide on Mount Everest during the ill-fated “Into Thin Air'' expedition in 1996. He died near the summit. Birkby's “Mountain Madness'' is a biography of Fischer.

Birkby said Scouting remains relevant to the lives of young people a century after it arrived on American soil from Great Britain.

The author of the first Scouting handbook was naturalist Ernest Thompson Seton.

“His philosophy was that if you got young people out into the woods and helped them spend significant time there, good things would happen,'' Birkby said. “It was a very simple message that in many ways is true today.''

The challenge for Scouting and boys today is that there are so many activities vying for young people's time, Birkby said. The Boy Scouts are for boys between ages 7 and 20.

“There are athletic leagues, school activities and lessons of all sorts. In our days, there weren't so many opportunities. There was Scouting, 4-H, church and school,'' he said. “But the one thing that Scouting offers is outdoor adventure and experiences, and a 100-year legacy of Scouting values.''

Birkby's 1990 Scout handbook emphasized the environmental aspect of Scouting. The idea of “leave no trace'' was embraced by the Boy Scouts of America.

His 1998 edition still focused on the environment and outdoor adventure, but also provided a page-by-page template for boys to earn a First Class Scout award and have their basic Scouting skills in hand.

The new handbook weaves vintage information and images to mark the centennial with state-of-the-art graphics, design and guidance — including Web links to videos on tying knots and other skills — on how to be good stewards of the earth.

Birkby traces the start of his backcountry journeys to camping as an 11-year-old atop the Loess Hills west of Sidney.

“You can camp on the bluffs and look out over the Missouri River bottom and know there's a huge world out there,'' he said, “and that one of these days you're going to be able to go find out what it is.''

Contact the writer:

444-1127, david.hendee@owh.com

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