I am grateful for my experience in the Boy Scouts and thankful I was able to make it all the way to Eagle Scout. While everything wasn’t perfect (like anything else), I learned invaluable lessons about leadership, teamwork, respect for nature, and survival skills. One of the recurrent themes involved in our outings, gatherings, and organization was “leave things better than you find them.” It applied to the wilderness, where we would try to leave any camping areas we used (or created) cleaner than we found them to minimize our footprint and environmental impact.