For a current project, Buffalo Trace, my family appropriated scouting as a tribal play frame. Scouting contains a multi-tiered system of rites of passage, from learning social code and simple survival skills, to lifesaving and independent leadership, and even onwards to Order of the Arrow, which is comparable to a spiritual coming of age rite. In our collaboration, my aim has been to reference scouting traditions while allowing my family to become a divergent tribe of scouts that seeks to understand its own limitations in relating to each other, to the natural world, and to the divine.
-Zack Bent