One of my main goals in my 2005 research is to create an Augmented Reality Game using handheld computers and GPS units. I'd like to meld the tradition of Flying Moose Lodge into this very high-tech medium -- it's the sort of thing that I suspect technologists Mr. Domi (who used film to document the camp in the 1920s) and Harrie III (who made records of the camp songs) would approve.
Here's an excerpt that I am using as the inspiration and foundation for this endeavor (from A Bad Case of Moosepox by Harrie B. Price III ©1986):
Mr. Domi continued those adventures in sleuthing and skullduggery; and as a result in my day as a young camper, we experienced what was known by all as, "The Mystery Trip." Towards the end of each summer, while the older boys were doing manly things on the Allagash or at Katahdin, we others took part in the wild pursuit of thieves, kidnappers, and other nefarious individuals.
That first summer of mine, quite unexpectedly, as we were about to set out on our regularly scheduled trips one Tuesday morning, we were all called together and the cold facts were put before us. Something terrible had happened; I am sure that I don't remember what. Plans had to be changed at the last moment, and all our energies were to be devoted to helping the local authorities, whoever they were, hunt down the criminals and bring them to justice. At the same time we would uphold the honor of the camp, and in all probability bring fame and fortune to ourselves and our counselors.
Assignments were quickly made. For the sake of expediency, the original trip groupings would be maintained, but we would travel unexpected paths. All of this had been well arranged beforehand; and I can visualize the counselors now constructing the complicated plot in the evenings after we had gone to bed. Now they were ready to play it out.
I can't remember much of that first Mystery Trip except that it rained. It rained all the time. The villains, whoever they were, had left clues and trails as they challenged us to track them down. Coded messages were found and deciphered. The net was slowly tightening. In tracking those undesirables, we learned more than we at the moment wanted to know about following trails in the woods. I clearly remember looking for stone cairns on the mountain side under what were certainly not the most favorable conditions.
As that first day in the rain wore on, we became more and more convinced that our counselor leader was lost. There we were, five or six eleven year olds, bulky blanket rolls strapped to our backs, peering around us from under dripping ponchos, looking for little piles of stones that seemed to have disappeared in the mists. Obviously the evil ones had done a poor job of trail making. The wetter we got the more determined we were to find our way back to camp, and leave this whole business up to the local authorities.
When our counselor realized that his troops had had about all they could take, he suddenly had an inspiration. He just happened to know a spot nearby where criminals might meet and exchange information, the kind of a spot where they might spend a night. Not very enthusiastically we trudged on. Sure enough, when we came to the spot for which our counselor was looking, there were the remains of a hastily made campsite, with last night's fire a sodden mass of charcoal. We all made a dive for the large tent that the robbers had lugged over the mountain for their own comfort. If we had had trouble penetrating the woods with our much smaller packs, picture them carrying a bulky l6xl6 Army tent as they beat a hasty retreat up the mountain. We were truly up against giants.
As you may recollect, we still use that type of Army tent at our camp base, and they are heavy, heavy, heavy; and you don't carry them very far up a mountain without difficulty. They were best moved in a wheelbarrow; and it is slow work at that. However, I knew none of that in 1928, for it wasn't until years later that I was to wheel those tents into place. The bulk of that tent, and the bulk of those who must have moved it, didn't bother us, for we had read enough Horatio Alger to know that size and age had nothing whatsoever to do with bringing criminals to justice.
The fugitives must have fled in a hurry, for they not only left their tent, but enough food (all stolen from the camp) to provide us with a hearty supper and a filling breakfast. The food and the tent were much appreciated by all of us that wet and rainy night.
Somehow or other we were all led to a remote spot to dig for treasure two days later on the final day of the trip. There had been codes and more codes to the point that we felt that none would ever be too much for us in the future. I don't think that I had ever bothered very much about codes before that Mystery Trip, but now I fancied myself an expert. It was the next winter that I was to read my first real adult book, a long account of German codes in World War II was one of the select; I knew what they were talking about.
Digging at the suspected spot began with anxious campers standing about. An inner circle of first year campers was allowed to form, and we were the first to dig. Those campers who had lived through previous mystery trips stood quietly in an outer circle waiting for the moment when the smallest boy in camp would unearth the treasure. At that point a great shout went up. We were all baffled at first by that, but were soon sharing the chocolate contents of a large iron pot with the rest of the camp. That pot was not filled with common ordinary chocolate bars, but with chocolate wrapped in gold foil to resemble pieces of eight. Mr. Domi never did things half way.
You might think that this denouement would have caused a great letdown, but that was not the case. We all trudged back to camp, exchanging stories of the hunt, and probably secretly in our own minds, looking forward to another summer when we would be in the know. It certainly worked out that way in my case.
Another summer, and as a somewhat older camper, I was one of those privileged few on the inside. Very early the Tuesday morning of that Mystery Trip, a group of us kidnapped a counselor and dragged him off to a secret place. We must have made demands, threats, and conditions; but they have all slipped my mind. What I do remember were three lazy days on nearby Long Pond. We sunbathed, we fished, we swam, we ate. Then, when Friday rolled around we packed up for what was to be the great capture. We were met at an appointed hour by John Masland to be driven to the top of Mason Mountain behind camp, where we were to tie up our captive in some gruesome way, only to be discovered by the rest of the camp at the crucial moment.
John, in recounting what had been going on, became so involved in clues, trails, and the gullibility of some campers. that he shot right by the turnoff for the mountain, and headed directly towards camp. We were not exactly sure where he was to take us, but just in the nick of time he realized what he had done, or rather what he had not done; and he quickly turned around and headed carefully up the mountain. We had come all too close to blowing the whole thing.
In due course we were discovered, just as we were about to do in our counselor. When it was all over the new campers were appropriately surprised, and the old campers were justly satisfied that they had done their part to carry on the old tradition.
As a counselor it later fell to my lot to establish the groundwork for additional mystery trips. It soon became quite obvious that not much was needed to get the juices running, so to speak. Boys do have fertile imaginations, and many a mystery trip started out with the barest of plot. It was never long before the much-needed details were supplied by the boys themselves. Some heard noises in the night. Others put together bits and pieces of what they had read in their comic books; and finally they made the short step between dream and reality, and all we needed to start another mystery trip was to say the word, "go." Once started, things unfolded on their own.
One summer as Mystery Trip time approached, a number of things were reported missing, a fishing rod here, a flashlight there; but nothing more than you would expect to be misplaced at a boys' camp during a busy summer. Jim Bathgate saw in all this the opportunity that those simple missing objects gave us; and shortly under his hand more and more things began to disappear. Truly, thieves were at work. As it got closer to Tuesday, Jim and the rest of us became bolder and bolder. If a boy should happen to make a delayed trip to the Brown Study after lights, a counselor would move in and whisk away something personal, a book, a toothbrush, or even a sleeping bag. The campers became concerned, and the loot began to take up more and more room in the camp store. Even the counselors feigned concern. Shortly, threatening messages were nailed to the Lodge door, and then Tuesday came along with coded messages and the rest of it. The chase soon followed.
The climax came quickly one day when unexpected voices and much chopping were heard at the other end of the lake. Actually, we had had no part in those voices, but they had providentially come at just the right moment, and were eagerly read into the script by the campers.
It just so happened that the night before the chopping and the voices, the purloined camping equipment had been carefully set up in a small abandoned cabin at the other end of the lake; and had been arranged to resemble a comfortable hideaway. Everything was set up for a dramatic finale. However, those voices and all that chopping had added something extra that we had not anticipated. Once the mysterious voices were heard, it was all we could do to restrain the campers. They insisted on investigating, and off they went with Jim Bathgate in tow. For all his involvement with the plot, he was soon to be in for a surprise. Try to imagine a long silent line of campers creeping towards that lone cabin, being careful not to make an unnecessary noise, not to break a single twig. Imagine also, Jim at the end of the line. Casually, he dropped back a bit to light a cigarette, and at the same moment the lead counselor flopped to the ground seeking cover just as if he had seen someone. Almost as one the campers dropped to the ground behind him. When Jim's cigarette was safely lit, he looked up, but no one was in sight. They had all disappeared in the brush. Jim was alone. When Jim and the campers were shortly reunited, the approach to the cabin was resumed, and Jim was allowed to recover his composure.
