It’s 1998. It’s sweltering in the summer sun on the archery range. Pre-teen archers pull their arms back, ready to lose their arrows at the styrofoam targets across the overgrown grass at Camp Drake. I am 11 years old.
But I am not sweltering in the few weeks left of August before school starts. I’m under the pavilion waiting for the actual Boy Scouts to take their shots so they can earn a badge that I can’t. Even though I’ve been to all of the day camp sessions. Even though I’m just as eager. Even though I’m more than prepared. Even though my dad is the scout master. I wait for the turn my dad promised me. To be granted a chance to shoot once the real scouts are finished. To feel my biceps strain under a shot at a target that earns me nothing but self-satisfaction. To show the boys I’m just as good as they are even if I don’t get a badge.
Sometime in the future in the Colorado Badlands, Kit sits in the back of a truck. Flames engulf the family’s abandoned RV. She has survived a Highwayman attack with her dad. Her mother didn’t make it. But her father assures her they’ll work hard to be prepared next time, to believe in herself anyway. He promises her the chance to be anything she wants to be.
It’s the summer of 2000. I am 12, turning 13. My family is in my grandparents’ minivan. Our small Jeep wouldn’t have carried all five of us and our backpacking gear halfway across the country. We’re pulling up to the town of Cimarron, New Mexico, after crossing the Mississippi from central Illinois. We were rained out of our tent in Dodge City. We slept in a motel in Colorado where my mom wouldn’t even let us take our socks off because the floors were so gross. We rolled up to our tent at the Philmont Scout Ranch and participated in their family program. If I had been one year older, I could have ditched my family and done my first weeklong backpacking hike. Instead, I spent it avoiding the bully with the pink cowboy hat, reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and acting like I was too cool to be seen with my family. I was impressed that my dad had literally all of the Boy Scouts in the dining hall from across the country sing me happy birthday, though I would never have told him that.
Even though Kit and her dad take up safety in the residence of the Compound, Kit’s life is anything but safe. She breaks the Third Law every day by disguising herself as a boy. She braves Highwaymen again to prove her worth. She risks her life to obtain a drone that holds a secret. The secret of the Ranger Scouts’ twisted origin. Their founder, Hancock, hadn’t actually wanted them to be scouts ready to survive against all costs. Despite harboring two secrets now, Kit is eager to fight for the scout master. She’s eager to prove herself Eagle material. She desperately needs to feel worthy.
In 2001, I was 14 and old enough to join Venturing Crew, the co-ed branch of the Boy Scouts of America. The nearest one was a 45-minute drive away. After years of growing up having to watch my classmates earn badges I felt I should have had, I was finally going to be able to earn them as well. My dad eagerly drove me to each weekly meeting. I wasn’t just glad to finally get to put on a scout uniform of my own, but it was an escape from my small town. I’d had the misfortune of being one of the three kids in my class of 36 who wasn’t born and raised in that town, and there was nothing I could do to fit in. By then I’d made my peace with being a misfit. Luckily, those scouts took me right under their wings, and Caty and Beth and Maciek and our advisers, Mike, Rich, and Gay (Y’all can guess how many jokes we made about their names), saw my worth.
Against the odds, Kit does prove herself. She collects another secret. This one belongs to her best friend, Dez. And she finds that even with all her training and her skill, she still can’t protect everyone she loves. Trials pit Dez and Kit against each other. Secrets are always moments away from being spilled. Kit faces each challenge with the words her dad left her, that a scout’s truest compass is her heart. And it’s by being true to herself that Kit comes out on top, even while breaking several scout laws.
I ended up getting my Silver Award. I was bitter I’d never earn the rank of Eagle. I went on every weekend trip I could scramble up the change to pay for. I went back to Philmont as a staffer from 2007-09. My first summer out there I met a scout master who offered me a position back in my college town being a scout leader in the after school program, Scout Reach. I met my husband through that position. And lost him his job when I was promoted and we had to disclose we’d been dating. I’m pretty sure everyone in the office knew by that point, though.
In AfterShock Comics’ Scout’s Honor, David Pepose, Luca Casalanguida, Matt Milla and Carlos Mangual paint a post-apocalyptic world where scouting has become not just a way of life but a religion (As our own Dan Grote describes it). Mutant animals threaten any expeditions outside the compound. Highwaymen dish out violence to Ranger Scouts caught unaware. Worst of all, inside the compound, toxic masculinity is the rule of law. Women are second-class citizens. Anyone who doesn’t pull their weight is a burden to be left behind. And Kit, a girl in disguise, rises through the ranks trying to prove herself and earn respect. Casalanguida and Milla set a fantastic tone with their aggressive inks and energetic colors. Mangual’s lettering pulses behind every scene. It was a world I was immediately immersed in, not just because I related so closely.
Unlike Kit, I never battled suicide hornets or gamma boars. I never had to worry about defending my ragtag troop from Highwaymen. I may not have been able to participate in everything, but I never had to hide my gender in scouts. Unlike Kit, I had a score of adults in my various scouting circles who saw my worth. None of the men who shaped my scout experience had anything but support and encouragement for me. This wasn’t always the case for every youth in scouts. Even when I worked professionally for the Boy Scouts of America, the worst I ever ran into from a male supervisor was that they tried to manipulate me into fudging attendance numbers for grants. While not very trustworthy, it’s nothing compared to the men in Kit’s life.
As I look back and have talked to other scouts, I consider myself lucky. I never even thought an adult leader would approach me with the intent of sexual abuse. I never met a leader who put limits on my abilities. I felt more unsafe alone in the woods with a brown bear at Camp Abreu than with any of the people I met through scouts. Nevertheless, I related to every single experience Kit faced in Scout’s Honor. It felt like without even knowing me, Pepose had somehow written a story about my life.
Like Kit, I struggled and raged against the misogyny I faced in the Boy Scouts. As a staff member at Philmont, countless men tried to tell me how to do my job and make me feel unwelcome. Like Kit, I had an amazingly supportive dad who didn’t believe being a woman made me any less capable. Like Kit, my dad also died recently. I came from a line of scouts. My grandpa was awarded the Silver Beaver. My dad and uncle were Eagle Scouts. Everyone in my immediate family and my uncle and two cousins have all been in a Philmont Scout trek or worked on staff. I surprised a tattoo artist in 2015 by asking for a compass tattoo. Not a nautical one, but one of the little plastic ones they have Tenderfoots use when learning orientation.
I stopped being a scout in 2010 when I left my professional BSA position with that corrupt supervisor. I was coming into my identity as a bi woman at the time and struggled with their choice to come down hard on scouts and scout leaders in the LGBTQ community. I saw how racist scouts can be and how much it’s tolerated at a national level. I’ve since been repulsed but unsurprised by the BSA’s choice to have President Trump speak at the 2017 Jamboree. I’m eager to see if my own daughter will choose to participate in Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts, now that either option will be available to her. Most other countries have already combined their gender-divided scout programs.
In the end, Dez and Kit both find that the Ranger Scouts as they know it will never allow people to do more than just survive. The Compound’s goal of depriving people of the option to be their authentic selves prevents them from being their best self. If Kit is constantly hiding her femininity and Dez has to bottle up his sexuality, they expend more energy hiding who they are rather than providing for their loved ones. They know that when you let people be who they are, in all of our colors and shapes, we will thrive as a community. But they don’t overthrow the whole system. To help other people at all times, to keep oneself physically, mentally and morally strong is still a good value. There is strength in loving our differences and not hoarding resources. When we aren’t pitted against each other in a show of false competition, we all win.
At the end of the day, my feelings toward the BSA are as complicated as Kit’s. There’s no doubt the BSA has left a dirty mark on several facets of American culture and left countless youths scarred or traumatized. I loved Pepose’s hopeful tone. Because the BSA has been used for terrible things by bad people, but the BSA is also shaped by those who are trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent.
The BSA shaped my life philosophy more than any religion has. It’s guided every job I’ve had or interaction I’ve had with a stranger as I strove to embody the Scout Oath more than many males I’ve seen wear the uniform. It provided me with peers and advisers who taught me to be confident and brave and compassionate. I’ve friends for life who, though we may be separated by time or space, always pick back up where we left off in our friendship. Scouts gave me a stellar dad and a loving husband, and I have no doubt that should my daughter choose that life, it will bring her skills that will shape her into a good person.
We can combine our resources, see that our differences make us stronger and build a society or an organization based on hope, compassion and honor.
Cat Purcell is a Career Services Librarian, cosplayer, artist, and massive coffee consumer.
