What happens when exhausted scouts, a smelly tent, and teenage boy humor collide? The most disgusting bonding experience of our lives.

A Story from The Great American Eagle Hunt Universe

Author’s Note: Kyle Kelly is one character in the novel The Great American Eagle Hunt, releasing this year. This is his origin story. Please subscribe to be notified when the full novel releases.

Saturday Night: Olympic National Park: The Pacific Northwest: 1:00am 

We were supposed to be asleep. 

That was the plan, anyway, rest up, recharge, and prepare for day two of the All-District Scout Competition. Instead, the five of us, sweaty, bruised, half-starved from the day’s disasters, collapsed into our tent smelling like lake water, B.O. and, camp fire smoke and whatever Sawyer stepped in on the way back from the lake.  

We’d spent most of the night running from the search party hunting us after sneaking down to Lake Crescent for a midnight swim. (You can read about that adventure here.) If the adults caught us, we would surely be kicked out of the competition and dragged home by our ears. But we made it back. I told the guys we needed to stay put and stay quiet for the rest of the night, which is wildly optimistic knowing Sawyer and his never give in attitude.  

Our tent is a damp, sealed, swampy bubble of filth. It’s no help that we are trying to cram five guys me (Robbie), Sawyer, Alex, Arnaub and Adam into a four man tent. As usual, Sawyer and Adam start their daily wrestling match.  

“Dude,” I protested. “We’re trying to get changed.”

It’s bad enough we’re all crammed in here, now we have two maniacs in their tighty-whitey Fruit of the Looms (permanently stained from a day’s worth of dust, sweat and lake water) trying to wrestle out of each other’s head locks. But my protest was ignored. It’s part of being in this scout patrol of misfits. You just have to roll with it until someone passes out.  

The wrestling match ended the way it always did, with both of them crashing into the side of the tent, sending our stack of gear tumbling, and everyone scrambling to protect their stuff from the chaos. Once again, poor Adam, the smallest of the groups was crushed by the avalanche of gear and bodies.  

Adam popped his head out from under a random back pack and scolded us. 
 
“Enough,” he scolded, then smiled.  “Let’s go to bed.  We have a big competition tomorrow.  And can someone please open a tent flap?  It stinks in here. I’ve been in submarine heads that smelled better than this.”  Adam, being the son of a career Navy officer, knew what he was talking about.  
 

He wasn’t wrong. Between the five of us, the tent had become a contained biohazard. Our dirty uniforms hung from the tent poles like surrender flags. Damp socks lay in corners like small dead animals. And the collective smell of teenage boys who’d spent the day competing, swimming, and running from adults had created something that could probably be classified as a biohazard. 

“It’s not that bad,” Sawyer protested, finally releasing Alex from his headlock. 

“Dude,” Arnaub’s voice came from the far corner, “I can taste it.” 

“That’s not the tent,” Adam wheezed, rubbing his neck. “That’s Alex’s massive Frankenstein feet.” 

“My feet are fine,” Alex shot back. Then, after a pause, “Okay, one of my boots is pretty bad, but…” 

We sat in miserable, stinking silence for about thirty seconds. Every single one of us was too tired to sit up and open a single flap. We were pathetic. 

That’s when Sawyer’s face split into that grin. The one that meant trouble. The one that had gotten us chased by an elk earlier that day. 

“You think it stinks now?” He unzipped his sleeping bag with theatrical flair. “Incoming!” 

What happened next violated every sense of decency, and probably a few rules of chemical warfare.   

The sound that exploded from Sawyer was less fart and more air siren. It echoed off the tent walls, sustained and impressive. 

“Jesus Christ!” Adam gagged, diving for his sleeping bag. You know it’s bad when Adam, the straight laced Navy officer’s kid, swears.  

“Oh my God!” Arnaub’s voice was muffled as he buried his face in his pillow. 

“I’m going to die!” Alex flailed, trying to get his legs inside the tent to zip it closed, then immediately reconsidering. 

I just stared at Sawyer, torn between horror and unwilling admiration. “Dude. What did you eat?” 

“Three Perfect Valley granola bars, half a jar of peanut butter, and whatever was in that food bomb we made.” He looked entirely too proud of himself. 

“That’s biological warfare,” I managed, my eyes watering. 

“That’s not even my best work,” Sawyer grinned. Then he looked around at our disgusted faces. “What? You guys act like you’ve never crop-dusted a tent before.” 

“Not in an enclosed space with four other people!” Adam’s voice cracked with outrage and something that might have been laughter. 

“I’ve got that beat,” Alex announced suddenly. 

We all turned to look at him. 

“No way,” Sawyer challenged. “Impossible.” 

“Watch and learn, grasshopper.” Alex shifted his weight, adjusted his position, and let loose. 

If Sawyer’s was a fog horn, Alex’s was a freight train. Low, rumbling, and somehow worse because of the injured ankle that meant he couldn’t escape his own blast radius. 

“DUDE!” We all screamed. 

But something had changed. We weren’t disgusted anymore. We were laughing. Actually laughing, the kind that makes your sides hurt and tears stream down your face. 

“My turn,” Arnaub said quietly. 

“No!” I protested, but I was laughing too hard to sound convincing. 

Arnaub, the quiet one, the sensible one, delivered a rapid-fire staccato that sounded like a motorcycle starting. 

We absolutely lost it. 

“Okay, okay,” Adam wheezed between laughs. “We need rules. We need… we need a contest.” 

“YES!” Sawyer bounced up and down, shaking the entire tent. “Categories! Loudest, longest, most toxic…” 

“The alphabet challenge,” Alex interrupted, his eyes gleaming with mischief. 

We all stared at him. 

“You have to recite the alphabet while maintaining a sustained… release.” 

“That’s impossible,” I said. 

“That’s disgusting,” Arnaub added. 

“That’s amazing,” Sawyer breathed. “I’m going first.” 

He positioned himself cross-legged in the center of the tent, took a deep breath, and began: 

“A-B-C-D-E-F!” 

He made it to F before running out of gas, literally. 

“Weak!” Alex taunted. “Watch a master.” 

Alex made it to K before collapsing in laughter. 

Arnaub shocked us all by making it to N, his face turning red with effort. 

Adam’s attempt ended at M, but he claimed it should count for extra points because of “quality over quantity.” 

Then it was my turn. 

I can’t fully explain what happened next. Maybe it was the terrible granola bars. Maybe it was the stress of the day releasing. Maybe it was just teenage boy biology at its finest. 

But I made it all the way to Z. 

The tent exploded in chaos. Sawyer fell backward, laughing so hard no sound came out. Alex was pounding the ground. Adam and Arnaub were literally crying. 

“THAT’S OUR LEADER!” Sawyer managed to choke out. “LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, PATROL LEADER ROBBIE MCDANIEL!”  

The tent became a battlefield, rank, humid, tragic, and so hilariously disgusting that we were laughing so hard we couldn’t breathe. Tears streamed down faces. Someone rolled off their pad. 

“Oh God,” I gasped, laughing and at once regretting my life choices. “Open the vents. OPEN EVERYTHING.” 

We scrambled for the zippers, desperate for oxygen that didn’t taste like death. Fresh night air rushed in, and we all stuck our heads out like dogs in a car window. 

From somewhere across the camp, we heard a voice: “WILL YOU IDIOTS SHUT UP?” 

That was definitely Kyle. 

Which only made us laugh harder.  

Adam kept squeaking, “I hate all of you!” between cackles. 

I turned my back to the chaos and tried to close my eyes. But, no amount of shifting on my pillow could produce a cool spot that didn’t smell like dirty socks and mildew. 

Eventually things settled down and we collapsed there in silence for a minute, all of us staring at the ceiling of the tent. This day was insane. The lake. The confrontation. Getting caught. Almost getting caught. We’re exhausted, embarrassed, relieved, and wired.  

“We’re lucky we didn’t get busted,” Adam mutters, rolling over in his sleeping bag.  

I thought they had us trapped at the trail head,” Alex laughs.  

“If Kyle caught us,” Arnaub says, “we’d be doing chores until retirement.”  

The activities of the day, getting sweaty battling it out in the competition, not showering all day, and now smelling of dirty lake water, our tent is a ripe hot box of stench. It’s like a swamp. We’re sweaty, sticky, and everything reeks. I lay back, trying to find a cool spot on my pillow that didn’t reek.   

 I admit, it’s gross. It’s disgusting. It’s immature. So why the hell were we laughing so hard we can’t breathe in a tent that smells like something crawled in and died? And a very puzzling thought occurs to me. Why is farting contagious?   

Like I said, it’s gross. It’s immature. And I never laughed so hard in years. I flip my sleeping position over and have my head sticking out the tent door to escape the toxic cloud of funk and land right next to Alex’s smelly, disgusting feet. I can’t win. 

As I roll over onto my back, I look straight up into that beautiful clear night sky packed with shimmering stars. It’s overwhelming how stunning it is. It’s so overwhelming, yet so peaceful to just lay there and stare into…infinity. I wonder and hope I will see the silhouette of the eagle that flew over the lake fly over our camp. I stay awake as long as I can look for it. But as my eyes grow heavy, I think to myself, today was one of the worst days of my life.  

But it was also the one of the best.  

Because somewhere between the sweat, the stink, the terror, the competition, and the stupid, stupid fart war, something clicked. 

These weren’t just random kids in a tent. 

These were my guys. 

My tribe. 

My dad, when he was a scout, had his crew once, his patrol, and somehow, unbelievably, I was starting to find mine. 

As the others drifted to sleep, I kept my head outside the tent flap, breathing in the cold fresh air and instead of the biological waste site we created. The night felt big and quiet and safe, like the kind of silence that makes you think about things you’ve been avoiding for a long time. 

In the morning, we’d compete again. We’d get dirty again. We’d probably screw up again. But right then, under that sky, in that tent full of idiots, something settled inside me. 

Yeah, it was gross. 

Yeah, it was immature. 

Yeah, it was wildly irresponsible. 

But it was ours. 

And for the first time in a long, long time,  

I didn’t feel alone anymore.