Wolves, Bulls, Ravens: The Boy Scout movement’s unlikely start and intrepid founder

The Boy Scout movement began 110 years ago on a tiny island just off the southern coast of England, where Robert Baden-Powell, a legendary cavalry officer with eyes “as keen as the hawk’s,” as one historian put it, took 22 inquisitive boys to scamper in the woods he had explored as a child.

To the boys, Baden-Powell was like the Steve Jobs of the outdoors. While he was off at war, boys in England obsessively read and role-played his book “Aids to Scouting,” a handbook for soldiers on tracking, hiding and reconnaissance.

“Scouts can go unseen where parties would attract attention,” Baden-Powell wrote. “One pair of trained eyes is as good as a dozen pairs untrained. Scouts have the most important duties that can fall to individual men in wartime, and they have the best chances of distinguishing themselves in the field.”