Boy Scout Troop 489 will be starting up soon, on September 19, meeting at the Annex next to AE/MS at 6:30 PM every Monday until school is out. To become a member of the Boy Scouts, you need to be at least 12 to 18 years old or moving up from Webelos Cub Scouts.

We have some new kids who moved up last year from Cub Scouts, and we are looking for more kids to join.

We scouts do fun things like camping, hiking, bike riding, and swimming at Colby Sawyer College. At the same time, we earn merit badges along the way in the goal of becoming an Eagle Scout. Last year we did merit badges for pottery, cooking with Mrs. Bent, and fishing.

Every year we get First Aid certified, and we work to get all boys their swimming merit badge. We will be putting together a list of merit badges we want to do this year during the first couple of meetings.

We are very lucky to have a leaders like Doug Bent, Jim Reed, and John Morse, who has been in the Air Force and does survival training.

The great thing about Scouts is that you do the things that nobody else normally does, like winter hiking and camping and learning how to start a fire, not just for fun but to keep warm and to cook your meals on.

We camp up on Proctor land at the cabin or at the waterfalls, and one of the big rules we try to enforce is to leave no trace; leaving an area the same way or better than we have found it. Don’t worry if you don’t have the gear to go camping or hiking; the troop has gear you can use.

For any advancement through the ranks, you are required to do community service hours. For instance, every year we help the AE/MS school with restocking, moving books from the libraries for the Fourth of July book sale, and we also help at the auction at the Andover Historical Society’s Old Time Fair in Potter Place.

We also help out with the Firecracker 5K on the Fourth every year, and all the donations go to the Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts of Andover.

Come and check us out, you will have fun.