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A Peculiarly Dutch Summer Rite: Children Abandoned in the Night Woods

162 points by vnglst 7y ago

throw20102010 7y ago
“with only a primitive GPS to indicate the right direction” ... so these kids are more at risk of being kidnapped than they are of getting lost. I’ll admit that I think it’s a bit weird to make kids walk home in the night, but the author does a terrible job of making it sound suspenseful. This activity has gotten a lot safer since GPS became widespread. I kind of feel bad for anyone that went through this in the 80’s, they might have actually gotten lost and had to knock on a farmer’s door for directions.
- hondadriver 7y ago
  Kids being kidnapped is not the first thought of Dutch (and Belgium?) parents. Example: We were at the Zoo with friends from the US and one of their small kids was out of sight for minute at the very large playground. My first thought: Will show up, but is there any water nearby? Their thought: he's kidnapped! (kid did show up few seconds later) I guess you're far more likely to drown than to get kidnapped in The Netherlands... (Most children learn to swim before they are 6 years old here) Droppings were really cool by the way and in the eighties when I grew up we only got a compass or nothing at all (no gps or cell phone). I was no boy scout, it also happens at school trips and birthdays.
  - wpietri 7y ago
    I just got back from visiting a friend in Amsterdam, and it was a delight to see how much everybody just assumed kids would be safe on their own. I'm pretty sure the US had the same attitude when I was growing up; I know I spent the bulk of my summer days roving the neighborhood. It's weird to me how much that has changed. Especially given that kids can be constantly tracked and contacted via cellphones, you'd think that they'd be roving farther!
- Scarblac 7y ago
  Current Scout leader here. In the 80s we were sent out to knock on farmer's doors to ask for a place to sleep, and we did it just over the German border so we had to ask in a foreign language too. I actually want to reintroduce that (but farms have fewer places fit for a few sleeping bags). The fact they are in groups makes it super safe anyway.
  - em-bee 7y ago
    a group from germany did that on a regular basis. all the trips were by bike. for weekend trips the whole group would stay on a farm. for holidays it was two weeks into the netherlands or denmark. groups of 3 would walk door to door to ask for a place to sleep. i then adopted the idea for trips on my own travelling through europe. but instead of knocking on any door i'd search for local scout groups and ask them.
- merijnv 7y ago
  > ... so these kids are more at risk of being kidnapped than they are of getting lost. Keep in mind that they're 12+ and travelling in groups of 10 to 20 kids. Kidnapping a group that big is...not easy :)
c1sc0 7y ago
I too have fond memories of droppings in my boyscout times (Belgium) ... I remember a particular one where we had to find our way through a forest before midnight ... it was then followed-up by midnight (catholic) mass at an abbey close to the edge of a forest to calm us down (bummer) ... another one was a multi-day thing where we had to find our way in small groups. As described in the article there were adults observing us but refusing to help. There were also staged “kidnappings” where we had to free the kidnapped at night. Pretty crazy thinking about that today but it was pretty much normal at the time (eighties) & I am sure a lot more vivid for impressionable kids ... overall I give a 9/10 rating ... “would recommend let your kids get kidnapped at night in the forest”
- jacobush 7y ago
  We had something similar in school in Sweden. We were to walk a path in the woods at night to get back to camp. And the teachers would jump scare us along the way. In retrospect I wonder how well that would be received today. We were 12 or so, in the 80s.
- Insanity 7y ago
  Just to confirm, this still happened in the early 2000s for sure. It didn't stay in the eighties :)
- Schoolmeister 7y ago
  Also from Belgium, but a whole lot younger. This still happens.
- 6thaccount2 7y ago
  "Night Infiltration" is one of the coolest activities I've had the pleasure of doing and I'm in my 30s now. I'm not sure how many troops do it. In my area, only our troop did it on our monthly camp out and I'm fairly certain our troop invented it, but that could be false. https://boyscouttrail.com/content/game/night_infiltration-421.asp https://boyscouttrail.com/content/game/night_infiltration-42... The above blurb does it poor justice though. Imagine a boy-led troop with around 60 scouts on a camp out and nearly zero adult involvement outside of transportation. We had a leadership group of boys in highschool (usually 16 & 17 year olds) and they performed the roll of sentries (~6 boys) and they had flashlights. These represented sniper rifles. Each sentry got one shot (straight line...they can't wave it around) before having to loudly count to 10 representing reload time. I'm from the American south where hunting is big, so it wasn't uncommon for full on camoflauge from nearly all participants...even those rediculous suits you see snipers wear in movies. There is one hidden individual making a quite noise every 20 seconds or so (you'd have to be pretty close to hear it). There are two teams and each scout (X or O team) tries to sneak their paper message (X or O on it) to the hidden individual if they can find them. At the end of the game, the team with the most messages wins. This is always at night and very dark in pretty thick woods. Running is absolutely forbidden as so many scouts have twisted ankles or even broken collar bones by running at night. If you get "shot" by a sentry, you have to go back to base to get another message (like respawning) and I think there is a wait period. If someone in your group finds the hidden agent, they'll naturally want to get the word out to all their fellow group without letting the other team notice, but it can sometimes be difficult. A fascinating and super fun game. In all the years I played as a non-sentry, I only found the hidden agent on my own a few times and with help a few more times. There were games when I never even found him and had to ask afterwards and was blown away by the location sometimes (inside a thorn thicket wth). It was always an amazing experience though. We played on a very large area too depending on forest density. The thicker the foliage, the smaller the need for additional area. Keep in mind that this is a pretty dangerous game from an injury frequency perspective. I'd also recommend the buddy system is used to prevent someone from getting injured and lost (think unconscious). I'd also only recommend playing in areas with no predatory animals (I wouldn't play this in New Mexico where bears and cougars exist).
hellofunk 7y ago
Personally, I find child droppings to be some of the most difficult to get out of the sofa, and I always regret not using a thicker diaper.
tiku 7y ago
The Dutch woods are not very big and not very far from the cities. You could get lost but you can always hear the highways and there is cell coverage everywhere. And the most scary thing you could come across is a wild boar, there are no dangerous animals. There were 2 or 3 wolf sightings the past 2 years, but they stay away from noise. Anyway I think Dutch kids are balsy enough to scare any wolf away. (Or a human predator, if they would even roam the woods..) I've always enjoyed "droppings" as they are called. There were no cell phones when I did it as a kid..I can't remember if we had a compass or not.. Oh and its not exclusive for scouting, it's also done on birthdays, I guess it happens more in places where there are woods nearby, so more towards Germany and Belgium.
- ar-jan 7y ago
  Of course in a proper dropping you're not allowed to have a cell phone. There's got to be some challenge in it.
  - oska 7y ago
    I approve the provision of a cell phone for that age group (early teens). Provided it's a dumb phone with only call service available in case they really need to call for help. I'm much more dubious about giving them GPS. It's a lot of fun figuring out where you are on a map and GPS takes that fun away.
    - namenotrequired 7y ago
      We always received an envelope with a dumb “emergency phone” and were expected to hand it back in closed afterwards unless we had used it to call them.
    - ar-jan 7y ago
      Yeah, a phone for emergencies is sensible. I mean they don't get to take their smartphone with GPS.
- scurvy 7y ago
  Are Euro wild boars not dangerous? So much for that Black Forest Ham premium! Boars definitely attack people in the US, and the wounds can be bad to the lower body and gut. Lots of blood loss isn't uncommon.
timzaman 7y ago
Can confirm (Dutch). I've been on a few droppings at night. Notice the woods in Holland are incomparable to an American scale forest. I can even nuance that you don't need to be a scout. This is fairly normal even to do on school trips or any other group/club of friends. We didn't even have GPS at the time, but just a map and a compass. You just need to have enough volunteering adults to catch any kids that go rogue. As long as you instruct the kids to stay together (they will, as they are typically a bit scared) it should be fine, especially if you place a few volunteers not too far out.
rauhl 7y ago
> ‘It shows you, even in very hard times, to keep walking, to keep going,’ [Stĳn] said. ‘I have never had to do that before.’ I recently read Dinner of Herbs and Going to the Wars, two books by a fellow who was a British commando in the Second World War who was captured by the Italians, escaped and had to make his way across country, living off the land and thanks to the kindness of local peasants. One of the things which really struck me was the mettle he & his comrades showed. I don’t know how many folks nowadays would have the same character — but I think young Stĳn has a better chance than most. AS do probably many other Dutch kids.
- oska 7y ago
  I found the book you mentioned - A Dinner of Herbs by John Verney. Looks good. Somewhat confusingly there is another book called Dinner of Herbs by Carla Grissman which is also a travelogue describing close contact with 'peasants', but this time in Anatolia in the 60s. It also looks good. (There's even another book with the same title, but it's a fiction novel by Catherine Cookson). Edit: I've just found that the title is a reference to Proverbs 15:17, ‘Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than feasting on a fattened ox where hatred also dwells’, which explains its multiple use.
  - Uhhrrr 7y ago
    Going To The Wars on Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/goingtothewars027493mbp https://archive.org/details/goingtothewars027493mbp
  - jgtrosh 7y ago
    Is that a fancy “i'd rather eat crumbs with bums than steaks with snakes”?
    - vented_sinus 7y ago
      i might be inclined to argue that the number of things fancier than two pairs of contextual rhymes which present a clear principle of morality in one simple sentence could be infinitesimal.
fjfaase 7y ago
Yes, I have fond memories of these. These were often seen as the highlight of a week of camping. In my youth we did not have mobile phones, even not everybody had a phone at home. Because the Netherlands is so densely populated, it is very difficult to find a place where there are no lights visible. I remember that usually, we knew within 10 minutes where we were and in which direction we had to walk. Never met any wild animal. Never felt I was in danger. I remember that in my youth, it was very normal to be away from home on your own. When I was about 12, I would go on biking trips of 20 miles and more, all on my own. When I returned after some hours and my mother would ask me where I had been, I just told her that I had been biking and she would be happy with the answer. Of course, she knew me and knew that I was careful person and would not do stupid things.
- fjfaase 7y ago
  I also remember Austerlitz. Camped there in the woods two or three times. One time in the winter. I also remember that we biked there from our home town, a little more than 20 miles. This was when I was 14-17 years old.
Insanity 7y ago
In Belgium we do this as well. It does sound a bit strange perhaps, but for us it's not something worrisome.
SOLAR_FIELDS 7y ago
Quite topical as Jamboree starts this week. I was flying out of Ecuador late last week and saw a bunch of excited scouts on their way to Jamboree and it made me smile. Are there any other bizarre coming-of-age scouting traditions that other countries follow? This article immediately made me think of USA’s similar tradition, the snipe hunt:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snipe_hunt https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snipe_hunt
- bane 7y ago
  We had a tradition of sending new scouts over to other camps to ask for a "left-handed smoke shifter" to better control the smoke coming off of the camp fire. No such thing exists of course, but sending off new boys (and receiving similar new boys from other camps) was a hilarious tradition and a bit of light hazing that nobody ever broke. One older scout even crafted a piece of equipment he instructed the newbie to take with him to ask for a replacement part.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    Other professions have similar initiation rituals: automotive mechanics get sent out to get boxes of blue sparks and people in the clothing industry have to find a spool of yarn with some specific pattern on it.
  - bluewater 7y ago
    That’s really funny. I always assumed that was a troop specific joke. No one ever reacts when I mention the need for one around a campfire :)
  - em-bee 7y ago
    the US shout shop at one point sold fly-squatters labelled "left handed smoke shifter"
zafka 7y ago
This gives me a little hope, knowing that some societies are still raising their children rationally. While we never had anything formal like this, when I was younger we were allowed to hike into the woods with a chance of getting lost. Of course, even when I was a kid, some parents of children I went to school with were far too protective. -- Late 60s, early 70s
oska 7y ago
A little bit tangential to this: bushwalking at night can be a very beautiful experience. I remember doing a ~15km section of the Abel Tasman track in New Zealand during the night so as to catch the early morning low tide for a tidal river crossing. It was glorious being on the track (and briefly losing it at one point), tramping under the night sky.
ilamont 7y ago
U.S. scouts have a special society known as Order of the Arrow ("OA", https://www.cityonahillpress.com/2008/04/10/the-secret-behind-the-order-of-the-arrow/ https://www.cityonahillpress.com/2008/04/10/the-secret-behin...). There are various ceremonies and rituals involved, but I remember the trial my father described to me -- being sent out into the woods overnight with an egg, a single match, and not much else.
- RandomBacon 7y ago
  Acitve OA member here. To provide an update to the article: The OA is removing Native American references and imagery from its program.
  - andrewem 7y ago
    Do you have more information about this? I'm wondering what the new program will be like, given as a member says in that article from 2008, “OA is very Native American-based”.
    - brians 7y ago
      When Canada wanted novel ritual for their engineering schools, they hired Rudyard Kipling. He adapted the story of Martha, Mary’s sister. The Masons too fictionalized the story of Solomon’s Temple. I think the OA could do worse than to hire Gaiman or similar to produce them a ritual set with historic resonance and good meter.
- jlgaddis 7y ago
  It's been ~25 years since I was initiated and went through the "Ordeal". Your father's story sounds about right. We were led through the woods (in the middle of the night, after the "tap out" ceremony, with no flashlights) all the way around to the other side of the lake at our summer camp and that's where we spent the night. I think we were given a light blanket to sleep on/with but I might be wrong. The next morning we were "picked up" and began the physical work part. The entire "Ordeal" lasted ~24 hours -- during which you were not allowed to speak. Honestly, it's a lot scarier than it sounds. I grew up out in the country and spent a lot of free time as a kid out in the woods so that was no big deal to me (later, I participated -- as "Kichkinet" -- in other initiation ceremonies). Many of the "city kids", though, did not sleep a wink that night. I've still got my "Brotherhood" sash somewhere around here. Around the time I received that, I "discovered girls" and my time in the Boy Scouts quickly came to an end.
gillesjacobs 7y ago
My scouting group was fond of "dot-arrow" droppings. We were dropped blindfolded in the woods and only given a piece of paper with arrow symbols on it indicating the turns to take on the route. Of course we missed turns and got lost, but we had a radio for calling in for hints. In bigger forests, we would get survey maps of the area. Then it was a matter of figuring out where you are on the map at the drop point. I have fond memories of those nights.
solidsnack9000 7y ago
The writer calls it peculiarly Dutch, but then describes it taking place in Belgium, as well.
- brians 7y ago
  They also describe how the Belgians do it wrong.
- tverbeure 7y ago
  You can find plenty of Dutch scouting troops doing their annual summer camp in the Belgian Ardennes.
- mobilemidget 7y ago
  As a dutch I've only been dropped in Belgium forests.
kart23 7y ago
Many fraternities do this in the us, but here it's considered hazing and gets you expelled if you're caught.
microcolonel 7y ago
> with only a primitive GPS to indicate the right direction. They have GPS? That's not even navigation, it's just a hike. Why bother to blindfold them if you're then going to give them a reliable device which will tell them their location within a few meters?
- function_seven 7y ago
  I imagine "primitive" may mean a device that shows you longitude and latitude only. Or keeps a track of where you've been. Without maps, you'll still need some knowledge of how to use the thing. Yeah, not as difficult as a compass and topo map alone, but also not as easy as Google Maps.
  - CrazyStat 7y ago
    The photo in the article appears to show a Garmin GPS60, which is a solid if dated GPS receiver that might be considered primitive to the extent that it can't show you a map of where you are.
lstodd 7y ago
How very beautiful. If I ever have kids, I'll drive them off a thousand kilometers or two. A measly forest next door is no challenge. It is suprisingly easy to travel without money nowadays. But it takes some communication with the world, and children must learn that. I'm of opinion that hitch-hiking is one of the most effective solutions. So, make them travel 2Kkm in a weekend, repeat that some times.. like we had back then. There even were sports - competitions over 3-4-8K km distances.
aerophilic 7y ago
As someone that would want this for their kids: Is there am equivalent in the United States? Perhaps through scouts, or another org?
- CriticalCathed 7y ago
  Years ago I did this kind of thing through the boy scouts, but I don't think it was official programming. The den leader, the scouts, and the parents all conspired to do this kind of thing. I should mention it was through the LDS church, too. The excuse was that it was training "orienteering." But really it was just fun.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 7y ago
  I left this in a sibling comment that we (I’m an Eagle Scout with long history of scouting) used snipe hunting as a somewhat equivalent rite of passage: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snipe_hunt https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snipe_hunt In my experience it was somewhat less dramatic than described in the article (I wasn’t left alone more than a half hour hike from camp and the few times I did it I never let the “victims” out of sight). It seems like these teens from the article are expected to put in a good few hours hike before getting back to a certain location. It was still a similarly formative and fun experience for me, especially because I got to do it with a couple other kids my age.
gnicholas 7y ago
This remind me of the Wilderness Survival merit badge in the boy scouts. We had to survive a night in the woods with no gear except a pocket knife and the clothes on our backs.
- bluewater 7y ago
  Good call on that merit badge! I remember vividly we got to bring along a hot dog and a fire starter (maybe flint and steel?). We had rain so the forest was soaked. Despite our best efforts there was no fire and we dined on cold hot dog.
  - gnicholas 7y ago
    You got food? Pretty sure ours was without food. But our forest was dry (Camp Winton in the Sierra Nevadas, in the summertime).
pacaro 7y ago
We regularly did this in Scouts in the UK in the eighties. We would have map and compass and know where we were supposed to get to, but there was general disorientation and disinformation about the starting location. IIRC we were always dropped somewhere such that the obvious path would lead us away from roads and there were certainly adults and/or venture scouts (16-21?) keeping some kind of track of us, but usually done subtly enough that we weren't aware that they were around
- gdfasfklshg4 7y ago
  We did it in the late 90's/early 2000's as well. I hope they still do it but I guess they don't.
deleted 7y ago
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smartbit 7y ago
http://archive.is/xJnkK http://archive.is/xJnkK
bane 7y ago
Grew up in the U.S. mid-atlantic, and spent many weekends camping out during my teens with the boyscouts -- at various levels of difficulty. The culmination was the annual "winter survival" campout where we were dumped miles off in the woods in the middle of the winter for 3 days with food, a sleeping bag, a box of matches and our pocket knife and had to survive for three days. As it was often at freezing and sometimes snowing, we had to build warm shelter (fast), start a fire, dig a latrine, find water, and get a meal prepped before dark on the first day and basically survive the cold with everything we knew. Our shelter had to be weather resistant, warm and sustainable enough to make it a couple of nights. Boys below a certain age and rank weren't allowed to participate as it was simply too dangerous. Night temperatures often went far below freezing and I remember waking up with my camp mates to see who's shelter had fallen in under the snow, and who had the most leaves stuffed into their sleeping bag for warmth -- despite that we'd all not be able to feel our feet for a few hours until we got moving. It was an amazing lesson in how the body's survival mechanisms work. We had two adult chaperones along who "glamped" in full gear and were available for emergencies. More than once boys had to leave early due to the cold, or a shelter falling in on them or simply giving up and throwing in the towel. This was all way before cell phones were common. At the end we'd have to break camp, clean it up as if we had never been there (leave no trace), hike and landnav our way back out of the woods with a rough map and directional reckoning using nature (no compass!) where we'd be treated to a hot meal, a hot shower (in that order) and an immediate blow-by-blow of what went right, what went wrong and awards were given out for exceptionalism in various facets of the camping arts. Most boys also earned various scouting badges and things during the event just by way of making it the entire way. I didn't care much for the Boyscouts, but I eagerly looked forward to that activity the years that I could do it. I'm pretty sure we were all secretly being trained for a Red Dawn scenario. The in-joke in my troop was that the Scouts were America's premier youth paramilitary organization.
- gumby 7y ago
  I am an instructor (for the scout leaders) for that kind of trip, and love winter camping. It's a lot tamer than that these days. But some of the kids get excited and take it up "on their own time". We've had some great sub-0 F trips with some of the more adventurous kids. US scouts are always shepherded around by adults. In Germany you see them moving around autonomously.
module0000 7y ago
These sound like night exercises from infantry school.
gumby 7y ago
My kid had a Palo Alto summer camp around 2009 where they did this. It was a new camp for kids too old for Foothills. Just a week, and they did several things, the last one being dropped away from camp and told to find their own way back (in groups of three). One group made it in 45 minutes, a couple more in an hour, and the rest...ranged from 3-5 hours later. He thought it was great, but Palo Alto being Palo Alto that was the only week that particular camp operated. Sadly.
bryanrasmussen 7y ago
I have a premonition what Ari Aster's next film will cover.
tdons 7y ago
Don't think of this as dropping your kids in say, the High Sierras or Death Valley ;-) This is actually an extremely safe thing, nothing much can go wrong. Some supporting facts: Our entire country (The Netherlands) measures roughly 161mi by 93mi and is densely populated. There's always a dwelling nearby. Consequently it's impossible to get really lost. We also have no natural dangers to speak of, no deadly animals, no dangerous terrain, no raging rivers (we don't have mountains).
- fouc 7y ago
  There's a small 707 acre park in the middle of a small island in Canada (Gabriola island, next to Nanaimo city), you wouldn't believe the number of people that get lost every year and don't get found till the next day or two.
- teekert 7y ago
  I think it is important to say this indeed. I also did "dropping" as a kid, and later with kids, but the only thing that "spoiled it" was cheaters that find a phone in 1 hour and call a cab. I haven't heard It being done for a while now, is it still a thing in this time of fear and smartphones?
  - Scarblac 7y ago
    Yes, their own phones are confiscated (for most of the camp). TBH last time we did one each group just had one adult with them, they'd just stay silent the whole time and follow along. So it was a bit boring. But we did that because we only had a few people and one car, and couldn't keep track of the whereabouts of the groups otherwise.
    - teekert 7y ago
      Well, I can understand that, it depends on the age of the children also.
- ddnb 7y ago
  >> (we don't have mountains). Woah, you forgot about the Vaalserberg?
ragebol 7y ago
Yes, as a Dutch scouts leader, can confirm we do this at least once a year. When I was a youth member, no GPS and no cell phone either as far as I remember. At our yearly JOTA-JOTI event we up the ante by going 'hunting' for the kids by cars or bike so they try to not get spotted by the leaders until they reach the main camp site. For Dutch scouts here: http://www.hikeandseek.nl/ http://www.hikeandseek.nl/ is super awesome (but typically fully booked).
kieckerjan 7y ago
I did that a couple of times in the last classes of primary school and it was fun. One time the organizers, seeking to spice up the proceedings, had planned a mock-kidnapping. One of the kids (who was in on the joke) disappeared during the hike and soon enough we received something of a ransom note. Kids excited, kids crying. At the climax one of the organizers jumped out of the bushes with a nylon stocking over his head. The biggest and strongest kid in the group (who if memory serves me went on to become a bouncer at a local pub) hit him on the head with his flashlight, almost knocking the guy out. Good times indeed. Of course nowadays the school would get sued into bankruptcy by angry parents for a stunt like that. :-)
- vanderZwan 7y ago
  It's kind of the same with "apekooien", no? At least I heard that's no longer done either. I don't know why adults don't understand that if there is one thing kids love more than running around screaming, it's running around screaming while risking sprained ankles and other minor injuries
mettamage 7y ago
This isn't done in other countries (except Belgium)? Who knew! I did droppings many times as a kid. Never did I feel unsafe. We did walk quite far. I remember it was 4 hours, we walked next to a highway for quite a while once. Since I was a kid, I have no clue whether we actually walked 4 hours.
apexalpha 7y ago
Ah yes we would do this in the Ardennes with a compass and some instructions! Few hours of hiking and drinks and snacks by the campfire at the end. Good times!

162 points by vnglst 7y ago

throw20102010 7y ago

“with only a primitive GPS to indicate the right direction” ... so these kids are more at risk of being kidnapped than they are of getting lost. I’ll admit that I think it’s a bit weird to make kids walk home in the night, but the author does a terrible job of making it sound suspenseful. This activity has gotten a lot safer since GPS became widespread. I kind of feel bad for anyone that went through this in the 80’s, they might have actually gotten lost and had to knock on a farmer’s door for directions.

hondadriver 7y ago
Kids being kidnapped is not the first thought of Dutch (and Belgium?) parents. Example: We were at the Zoo with friends from the US and one of their small kids was out of sight for minute at the very large playground. My first thought: Will show up, but is there any water nearby? Their thought: he's kidnapped! (kid did show up few seconds later) I guess you're far more likely to drown than to get kidnapped in The Netherlands... (Most children learn to swim before they are 6 years old here) Droppings were really cool by the way and in the eighties when I grew up we only got a compass or nothing at all (no gps or cell phone). I was no boy scout, it also happens at school trips and birthdays.
- wpietri 7y ago
  I just got back from visiting a friend in Amsterdam, and it was a delight to see how much everybody just assumed kids would be safe on their own. I'm pretty sure the US had the same attitude when I was growing up; I know I spent the bulk of my summer days roving the neighborhood. It's weird to me how much that has changed. Especially given that kids can be constantly tracked and contacted via cellphones, you'd think that they'd be roving farther!
Scarblac 7y ago
Current Scout leader here. In the 80s we were sent out to knock on farmer's doors to ask for a place to sleep, and we did it just over the German border so we had to ask in a foreign language too. I actually want to reintroduce that (but farms have fewer places fit for a few sleeping bags). The fact they are in groups makes it super safe anyway.
- em-bee 7y ago
  a group from germany did that on a regular basis. all the trips were by bike. for weekend trips the whole group would stay on a farm. for holidays it was two weeks into the netherlands or denmark. groups of 3 would walk door to door to ask for a place to sleep. i then adopted the idea for trips on my own travelling through europe. but instead of knocking on any door i'd search for local scout groups and ask them.
merijnv 7y ago
> ... so these kids are more at risk of being kidnapped than they are of getting lost. Keep in mind that they're 12+ and travelling in groups of 10 to 20 kids. Kidnapping a group that big is...not easy :)

c1sc0 7y ago

I too have fond memories of droppings in my boyscout times (Belgium) ... I remember a particular one where we had to find our way through a forest before midnight ... it was then followed-up by midnight (catholic) mass at an abbey close to the edge of a forest to calm us down (bummer) ... another one was a multi-day thing where we had to find our way in small groups. As described in the article there were adults observing us but refusing to help. There were also staged “kidnappings” where we had to free the kidnapped at night. Pretty crazy thinking about that today but it was pretty much normal at the time (eighties) & I am sure a lot more vivid for impressionable kids ... overall I give a 9/10 rating ... “would recommend let your kids get kidnapped at night in the forest”

jacobush 7y ago
We had something similar in school in Sweden. We were to walk a path in the woods at night to get back to camp. And the teachers would jump scare us along the way. In retrospect I wonder how well that would be received today. We were 12 or so, in the 80s.
Insanity 7y ago
Just to confirm, this still happened in the early 2000s for sure. It didn't stay in the eighties :)
Schoolmeister 7y ago
Also from Belgium, but a whole lot younger. This still happens.
6thaccount2 7y ago
"Night Infiltration" is one of the coolest activities I've had the pleasure of doing and I'm in my 30s now. I'm not sure how many troops do it. In my area, only our troop did it on our monthly camp out and I'm fairly certain our troop invented it, but that could be false. https://boyscouttrail.com/content/game/night_infiltration-421.asp https://boyscouttrail.com/content/game/night_infiltration-42... The above blurb does it poor justice though. Imagine a boy-led troop with around 60 scouts on a camp out and nearly zero adult involvement outside of transportation. We had a leadership group of boys in highschool (usually 16 & 17 year olds) and they performed the roll of sentries (~6 boys) and they had flashlights. These represented sniper rifles. Each sentry got one shot (straight line...they can't wave it around) before having to loudly count to 10 representing reload time. I'm from the American south where hunting is big, so it wasn't uncommon for full on camoflauge from nearly all participants...even those rediculous suits you see snipers wear in movies. There is one hidden individual making a quite noise every 20 seconds or so (you'd have to be pretty close to hear it). There are two teams and each scout (X or O team) tries to sneak their paper message (X or O on it) to the hidden individual if they can find them. At the end of the game, the team with the most messages wins. This is always at night and very dark in pretty thick woods. Running is absolutely forbidden as so many scouts have twisted ankles or even broken collar bones by running at night. If you get "shot" by a sentry, you have to go back to base to get another message (like respawning) and I think there is a wait period. If someone in your group finds the hidden agent, they'll naturally want to get the word out to all their fellow group without letting the other team notice, but it can sometimes be difficult. A fascinating and super fun game. In all the years I played as a non-sentry, I only found the hidden agent on my own a few times and with help a few more times. There were games when I never even found him and had to ask afterwards and was blown away by the location sometimes (inside a thorn thicket wth). It was always an amazing experience though. We played on a very large area too depending on forest density. The thicker the foliage, the smaller the need for additional area. Keep in mind that this is a pretty dangerous game from an injury frequency perspective. I'd also recommend the buddy system is used to prevent someone from getting injured and lost (think unconscious). I'd also only recommend playing in areas with no predatory animals (I wouldn't play this in New Mexico where bears and cougars exist).

hellofunk 7y ago

Personally, I find child droppings to be some of the most difficult to get out of the sofa, and I always regret not using a thicker diaper.

tiku 7y ago

The Dutch woods are not very big and not very far from the cities. You could get lost but you can always hear the highways and there is cell coverage everywhere. And the most scary thing you could come across is a wild boar, there are no dangerous animals. There were 2 or 3 wolf sightings the past 2 years, but they stay away from noise. Anyway I think Dutch kids are balsy enough to scare any wolf away. (Or a human predator, if they would even roam the woods..) I've always enjoyed "droppings" as they are called. There were no cell phones when I did it as a kid..I can't remember if we had a compass or not.. Oh and its not exclusive for scouting, it's also done on birthdays, I guess it happens more in places where there are woods nearby, so more towards Germany and Belgium.

ar-jan 7y ago
Of course in a proper dropping you're not allowed to have a cell phone. There's got to be some challenge in it.
- oska 7y ago
  I approve the provision of a cell phone for that age group (early teens). Provided it's a dumb phone with only call service available in case they really need to call for help. I'm much more dubious about giving them GPS. It's a lot of fun figuring out where you are on a map and GPS takes that fun away.
  - namenotrequired 7y ago
    We always received an envelope with a dumb “emergency phone” and were expected to hand it back in closed afterwards unless we had used it to call them.
  - ar-jan 7y ago
    Yeah, a phone for emergencies is sensible. I mean they don't get to take their smartphone with GPS.
scurvy 7y ago
Are Euro wild boars not dangerous? So much for that Black Forest Ham premium! Boars definitely attack people in the US, and the wounds can be bad to the lower body and gut. Lots of blood loss isn't uncommon.

timzaman 7y ago

Can confirm (Dutch). I've been on a few droppings at night. Notice the woods in Holland are incomparable to an American scale forest. I can even nuance that you don't need to be a scout. This is fairly normal even to do on school trips or any other group/club of friends. We didn't even have GPS at the time, but just a map and a compass. You just need to have enough volunteering adults to catch any kids that go rogue. As long as you instruct the kids to stay together (they will, as they are typically a bit scared) it should be fine, especially if you place a few volunteers not too far out.

rauhl 7y ago

> ‘It shows you, even in very hard times, to keep walking, to keep going,’ [Stĳn] said. ‘I have never had to do that before.’ I recently read Dinner of Herbs and Going to the Wars, two books by a fellow who was a British commando in the Second World War who was captured by the Italians, escaped and had to make his way across country, living off the land and thanks to the kindness of local peasants. One of the things which really struck me was the mettle he & his comrades showed. I don’t know how many folks nowadays would have the same character — but I think young Stĳn has a better chance than most. AS do probably many other Dutch kids.

oska 7y ago
I found the book you mentioned - A Dinner of Herbs by John Verney. Looks good. Somewhat confusingly there is another book called Dinner of Herbs by Carla Grissman which is also a travelogue describing close contact with 'peasants', but this time in Anatolia in the 60s. It also looks good. (There's even another book with the same title, but it's a fiction novel by Catherine Cookson). Edit: I've just found that the title is a reference to Proverbs 15:17, ‘Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than feasting on a fattened ox where hatred also dwells’, which explains its multiple use.
- Uhhrrr 7y ago
  Going To The Wars on Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/goingtothewars027493mbp https://archive.org/details/goingtothewars027493mbp
- jgtrosh 7y ago
  Is that a fancy “i'd rather eat crumbs with bums than steaks with snakes”?
  - vented_sinus 7y ago
    i might be inclined to argue that the number of things fancier than two pairs of contextual rhymes which present a clear principle of morality in one simple sentence could be infinitesimal.

fjfaase 7y ago

Yes, I have fond memories of these. These were often seen as the highlight of a week of camping. In my youth we did not have mobile phones, even not everybody had a phone at home. Because the Netherlands is so densely populated, it is very difficult to find a place where there are no lights visible. I remember that usually, we knew within 10 minutes where we were and in which direction we had to walk. Never met any wild animal. Never felt I was in danger. I remember that in my youth, it was very normal to be away from home on your own. When I was about 12, I would go on biking trips of 20 miles and more, all on my own. When I returned after some hours and my mother would ask me where I had been, I just told her that I had been biking and she would be happy with the answer. Of course, she knew me and knew that I was careful person and would not do stupid things.

fjfaase 7y ago
I also remember Austerlitz. Camped there in the woods two or three times. One time in the winter. I also remember that we biked there from our home town, a little more than 20 miles. This was when I was 14-17 years old.

Insanity 7y ago

In Belgium we do this as well. It does sound a bit strange perhaps, but for us it's not something worrisome.

SOLAR_FIELDS 7y ago

Quite topical as Jamboree starts this week. I was flying out of Ecuador late last week and saw a bunch of excited scouts on their way to Jamboree and it made me smile. Are there any other bizarre coming-of-age scouting traditions that other countries follow? This article immediately made me think of USA’s similar tradition, the snipe hunt:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snipe_hunt https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snipe_hunt

bane 7y ago
We had a tradition of sending new scouts over to other camps to ask for a "left-handed smoke shifter" to better control the smoke coming off of the camp fire. No such thing exists of course, but sending off new boys (and receiving similar new boys from other camps) was a hilarious tradition and a bit of light hazing that nobody ever broke. One older scout even crafted a piece of equipment he instructed the newbie to take with him to ask for a replacement part.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  Other professions have similar initiation rituals: automotive mechanics get sent out to get boxes of blue sparks and people in the clothing industry have to find a spool of yarn with some specific pattern on it.
- bluewater 7y ago
  That’s really funny. I always assumed that was a troop specific joke. No one ever reacts when I mention the need for one around a campfire :)
- em-bee 7y ago
  the US shout shop at one point sold fly-squatters labelled "left handed smoke shifter"

zafka 7y ago

This gives me a little hope, knowing that some societies are still raising their children rationally. While we never had anything formal like this, when I was younger we were allowed to hike into the woods with a chance of getting lost. Of course, even when I was a kid, some parents of children I went to school with were far too protective. -- Late 60s, early 70s

oska 7y ago

A little bit tangential to this: bushwalking at night can be a very beautiful experience. I remember doing a ~15km section of the Abel Tasman track in New Zealand during the night so as to catch the early morning low tide for a tidal river crossing. It was glorious being on the track (and briefly losing it at one point), tramping under the night sky.

ilamont 7y ago

U.S. scouts have a special society known as Order of the Arrow ("OA", https://www.cityonahillpress.com/2008/04/10/the-secret-behind-the-order-of-the-arrow/ https://www.cityonahillpress.com/2008/04/10/the-secret-behin...). There are various ceremonies and rituals involved, but I remember the trial my father described to me -- being sent out into the woods overnight with an egg, a single match, and not much else.

RandomBacon 7y ago
Acitve OA member here. To provide an update to the article: The OA is removing Native American references and imagery from its program.
- andrewem 7y ago
  Do you have more information about this? I'm wondering what the new program will be like, given as a member says in that article from 2008, “OA is very Native American-based”.
  - brians 7y ago
    When Canada wanted novel ritual for their engineering schools, they hired Rudyard Kipling. He adapted the story of Martha, Mary’s sister. The Masons too fictionalized the story of Solomon’s Temple. I think the OA could do worse than to hire Gaiman or similar to produce them a ritual set with historic resonance and good meter.
jlgaddis 7y ago
It's been ~25 years since I was initiated and went through the "Ordeal". Your father's story sounds about right. We were led through the woods (in the middle of the night, after the "tap out" ceremony, with no flashlights) all the way around to the other side of the lake at our summer camp and that's where we spent the night. I think we were given a light blanket to sleep on/with but I might be wrong. The next morning we were "picked up" and began the physical work part. The entire "Ordeal" lasted ~24 hours -- during which you were not allowed to speak. Honestly, it's a lot scarier than it sounds. I grew up out in the country and spent a lot of free time as a kid out in the woods so that was no big deal to me (later, I participated -- as "Kichkinet" -- in other initiation ceremonies). Many of the "city kids", though, did not sleep a wink that night. I've still got my "Brotherhood" sash somewhere around here. Around the time I received that, I "discovered girls" and my time in the Boy Scouts quickly came to an end.

gillesjacobs 7y ago

My scouting group was fond of "dot-arrow" droppings. We were dropped blindfolded in the woods and only given a piece of paper with arrow symbols on it indicating the turns to take on the route. Of course we missed turns and got lost, but we had a radio for calling in for hints. In bigger forests, we would get survey maps of the area. Then it was a matter of figuring out where you are on the map at the drop point. I have fond memories of those nights.

solidsnack9000 7y ago

The writer calls it peculiarly Dutch, but then describes it taking place in Belgium, as well.

brians 7y ago
They also describe how the Belgians do it wrong.
tverbeure 7y ago
You can find plenty of Dutch scouting troops doing their annual summer camp in the Belgian Ardennes.
mobilemidget 7y ago
As a dutch I've only been dropped in Belgium forests.

kart23 7y ago

Many fraternities do this in the us, but here it's considered hazing and gets you expelled if you're caught.

microcolonel 7y ago

> with only a primitive GPS to indicate the right direction. They have GPS? That's not even navigation, it's just a hike. Why bother to blindfold them if you're then going to give them a reliable device which will tell them their location within a few meters?

function_seven 7y ago
I imagine "primitive" may mean a device that shows you longitude and latitude only. Or keeps a track of where you've been. Without maps, you'll still need some knowledge of how to use the thing. Yeah, not as difficult as a compass and topo map alone, but also not as easy as Google Maps.
- CrazyStat 7y ago
  The photo in the article appears to show a Garmin GPS60, which is a solid if dated GPS receiver that might be considered primitive to the extent that it can't show you a map of where you are.

lstodd 7y ago

How very beautiful. If I ever have kids, I'll drive them off a thousand kilometers or two. A measly forest next door is no challenge. It is suprisingly easy to travel without money nowadays. But it takes some communication with the world, and children must learn that. I'm of opinion that hitch-hiking is one of the most effective solutions. So, make them travel 2Kkm in a weekend, repeat that some times.. like we had back then. There even were sports - competitions over 3-4-8K km distances.

aerophilic 7y ago

As someone that would want this for their kids: Is there am equivalent in the United States? Perhaps through scouts, or another org?

CriticalCathed 7y ago
Years ago I did this kind of thing through the boy scouts, but I don't think it was official programming. The den leader, the scouts, and the parents all conspired to do this kind of thing. I should mention it was through the LDS church, too. The excuse was that it was training "orienteering." But really it was just fun.
SOLAR_FIELDS 7y ago
I left this in a sibling comment that we (I’m an Eagle Scout with long history of scouting) used snipe hunting as a somewhat equivalent rite of passage: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snipe_hunt https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snipe_hunt In my experience it was somewhat less dramatic than described in the article (I wasn’t left alone more than a half hour hike from camp and the few times I did it I never let the “victims” out of sight). It seems like these teens from the article are expected to put in a good few hours hike before getting back to a certain location. It was still a similarly formative and fun experience for me, especially because I got to do it with a couple other kids my age.

gnicholas 7y ago

This remind me of the Wilderness Survival merit badge in the boy scouts. We had to survive a night in the woods with no gear except a pocket knife and the clothes on our backs.

bluewater 7y ago
Good call on that merit badge! I remember vividly we got to bring along a hot dog and a fire starter (maybe flint and steel?). We had rain so the forest was soaked. Despite our best efforts there was no fire and we dined on cold hot dog.
- gnicholas 7y ago
  You got food? Pretty sure ours was without food. But our forest was dry (Camp Winton in the Sierra Nevadas, in the summertime).

pacaro 7y ago

We regularly did this in Scouts in the UK in the eighties. We would have map and compass and know where we were supposed to get to, but there was general disorientation and disinformation about the starting location. IIRC we were always dropped somewhere such that the obvious path would lead us away from roads and there were certainly adults and/or venture scouts (16-21?) keeping some kind of track of us, but usually done subtly enough that we weren't aware that they were around

gdfasfklshg4 7y ago
We did it in the late 90's/early 2000's as well. I hope they still do it but I guess they don't.

deleted 7y ago

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smartbit 7y ago

http://archive.is/xJnkK http://archive.is/xJnkK

bane 7y ago

Grew up in the U.S. mid-atlantic, and spent many weekends camping out during my teens with the boyscouts -- at various levels of difficulty. The culmination was the annual "winter survival" campout where we were dumped miles off in the woods in the middle of the winter for 3 days with food, a sleeping bag, a box of matches and our pocket knife and had to survive for three days. As it was often at freezing and sometimes snowing, we had to build warm shelter (fast), start a fire, dig a latrine, find water, and get a meal prepped before dark on the first day and basically survive the cold with everything we knew. Our shelter had to be weather resistant, warm and sustainable enough to make it a couple of nights. Boys below a certain age and rank weren't allowed to participate as it was simply too dangerous. Night temperatures often went far below freezing and I remember waking up with my camp mates to see who's shelter had fallen in under the snow, and who had the most leaves stuffed into their sleeping bag for warmth -- despite that we'd all not be able to feel our feet for a few hours until we got moving. It was an amazing lesson in how the body's survival mechanisms work. We had two adult chaperones along who "glamped" in full gear and were available for emergencies. More than once boys had to leave early due to the cold, or a shelter falling in on them or simply giving up and throwing in the towel. This was all way before cell phones were common. At the end we'd have to break camp, clean it up as if we had never been there (leave no trace), hike and landnav our way back out of the woods with a rough map and directional reckoning using nature (no compass!) where we'd be treated to a hot meal, a hot shower (in that order) and an immediate blow-by-blow of what went right, what went wrong and awards were given out for exceptionalism in various facets of the camping arts. Most boys also earned various scouting badges and things during the event just by way of making it the entire way. I didn't care much for the Boyscouts, but I eagerly looked forward to that activity the years that I could do it. I'm pretty sure we were all secretly being trained for a Red Dawn scenario. The in-joke in my troop was that the Scouts were America's premier youth paramilitary organization.

gumby 7y ago
I am an instructor (for the scout leaders) for that kind of trip, and love winter camping. It's a lot tamer than that these days. But some of the kids get excited and take it up "on their own time". We've had some great sub-0 F trips with some of the more adventurous kids. US scouts are always shepherded around by adults. In Germany you see them moving around autonomously.

module0000 7y ago

These sound like night exercises from infantry school.

gumby 7y ago

My kid had a Palo Alto summer camp around 2009 where they did this. It was a new camp for kids too old for Foothills. Just a week, and they did several things, the last one being dropped away from camp and told to find their own way back (in groups of three). One group made it in 45 minutes, a couple more in an hour, and the rest...ranged from 3-5 hours later. He thought it was great, but Palo Alto being Palo Alto that was the only week that particular camp operated. Sadly.

bryanrasmussen 7y ago

I have a premonition what Ari Aster's next film will cover.

tdons 7y ago

Don't think of this as dropping your kids in say, the High Sierras or Death Valley ;-) This is actually an extremely safe thing, nothing much can go wrong. Some supporting facts: Our entire country (The Netherlands) measures roughly 161mi by 93mi and is densely populated. There's always a dwelling nearby. Consequently it's impossible to get really lost. We also have no natural dangers to speak of, no deadly animals, no dangerous terrain, no raging rivers (we don't have mountains).

fouc 7y ago
There's a small 707 acre park in the middle of a small island in Canada (Gabriola island, next to Nanaimo city), you wouldn't believe the number of people that get lost every year and don't get found till the next day or two.
teekert 7y ago
I think it is important to say this indeed. I also did "dropping" as a kid, and later with kids, but the only thing that "spoiled it" was cheaters that find a phone in 1 hour and call a cab. I haven't heard It being done for a while now, is it still a thing in this time of fear and smartphones?
- Scarblac 7y ago
  Yes, their own phones are confiscated (for most of the camp). TBH last time we did one each group just had one adult with them, they'd just stay silent the whole time and follow along. So it was a bit boring. But we did that because we only had a few people and one car, and couldn't keep track of the whereabouts of the groups otherwise.
  - teekert 7y ago
    Well, I can understand that, it depends on the age of the children also.
ddnb 7y ago
>> (we don't have mountains). Woah, you forgot about the Vaalserberg?

ragebol 7y ago

Yes, as a Dutch scouts leader, can confirm we do this at least once a year. When I was a youth member, no GPS and no cell phone either as far as I remember. At our yearly JOTA-JOTI event we up the ante by going 'hunting' for the kids by cars or bike so they try to not get spotted by the leaders until they reach the main camp site. For Dutch scouts here: http://www.hikeandseek.nl/ http://www.hikeandseek.nl/ is super awesome (but typically fully booked).

kieckerjan 7y ago

I did that a couple of times in the last classes of primary school and it was fun. One time the organizers, seeking to spice up the proceedings, had planned a mock-kidnapping. One of the kids (who was in on the joke) disappeared during the hike and soon enough we received something of a ransom note. Kids excited, kids crying. At the climax one of the organizers jumped out of the bushes with a nylon stocking over his head. The biggest and strongest kid in the group (who if memory serves me went on to become a bouncer at a local pub) hit him on the head with his flashlight, almost knocking the guy out. Good times indeed. Of course nowadays the school would get sued into bankruptcy by angry parents for a stunt like that. :-)

vanderZwan 7y ago
It's kind of the same with "apekooien", no? At least I heard that's no longer done either. I don't know why adults don't understand that if there is one thing kids love more than running around screaming, it's running around screaming while risking sprained ankles and other minor injuries

mettamage 7y ago

This isn't done in other countries (except Belgium)? Who knew! I did droppings many times as a kid. Never did I feel unsafe. We did walk quite far. I remember it was 4 hours, we walked next to a highway for quite a while once. Since I was a kid, I have no clue whether we actually walked 4 hours.

apexalpha 7y ago

Ah yes we would do this in the Ardennes with a compass and some instructions! Few hours of hiking and drinks and snacks by the campfire at the end. Good times!