The gathering time has been set for 4 a.m. at our Scout hut at Morningside Baptist Church. We arrive one-by-one dressed in spic-and-span Class A uniforms: our Scout uniform shirts, shorts and long socks. Beneath the shirt, we are also wearing our own crew t-shirt so that once we reach base camp we can quickly get comfortable while also maintaining a uniform appearance.

It's hard to tell who's more excited this morning - the three crew members who participated in our 1987 expedition to Philmont and who are making a return trip this year, or the seven crew members who are about to see Philmont for the first time. The veterans have been talking about the 1987 trek for many months now, so expectations are running high for 1988.

Like last year's crew, our 1988 team is composed entirely of Scouts and advisors from Troop 455. We could have chosen to make our own travel arrangements to Philmont, but instead chose to become part of the Atlanta Area Council's annual contingent, as we did last year. Thus, when we reach the airport this morning our crew of 10 will become one of 16 such crews, collectively numbering about 160 people, heading for the Great Southwest.

As we wait for all the crew members to arrive, we gratefully devour pastries brought by Mrs. Palmer, mother of our crew leader, Richard Palmer. Richard, who also was our crew leader last year, is one of our three veterans this year.The others are Eagle Scout Tim Crimmins and me, Richard Pettys, the Scoutmaster.

There are a couple of things to do before we head for the airport. One is to collect any health forms not previously collected. Philmont is very strict on health matters. The other thing we must do is to distribute the Atlanta Area Council caps. For the 12 days we will be at Philmont, it will be easy to recognize Atlanta Scouts because of the black caps with Philmont's 50^th anniversary logo embossed on them.

At last we're ready to go. Backpacks and passengers are loaded into two vehicles, final goodbyes are said, and we're off through the night to Atlanta-Hartsfield International Airport. We have the freeway almost to ourselves at this time of the morning, so this leg of the journey is accomplished in short order. There's little traffic at the airport, so we are able to pull up curbside in front of the Delta entrance. It's not quite 5 a.m. We're here about a half-hour early, just as we had planned. We don't see any other Scouts but - what's this? A sleek, stretch limo has just pulled up and out step three men in Scout uniform. They turn out to be Tom Bowers, Tom Carter and Hank Wittle, all Scout leaders in North Atlanta District, of which Troop 455 is a part. Mr. Bowers, in fact, is the new district chairman and Mr. Carter was a member of the same Wood Badge patrol as Troop 455's assistant Scoutmaster, Ted McMahan. What a way to stage an arrival for the Philmont trek!

Inside the airport now, we move to the baggage check-in counter, fill out tags for our backpacks and then wrap them with strapping tape so the shoulder straps and hip belts don't get caught in the conveyor belt. Once we see those "ABQ" tags go on our backpacks, we know they are bound for Albuquerque airport so we now can get ourselves ready for the flight. We've previously made sure that our knives are in the backpacks, not on us, so we have no difficulty passing through the x-ray machines. (We are, of course, careful to make sure that cameras and film bags are hand-inspected rather than being x-rayed.) A short trip down to Concourse A and then a long walk to a special Delta waiting room puts us where we are supposed to be.

Now we can relax a bit, visit the juice bar in the room and fill out the Philmont trip-planner cards. Each crew member must fill out two, name-address-phone number-etc., cards for use by various divisions of the Philmont camp staff. Then, we must fill out a master roster. By the time we complete the paperwork, the room has begun to fill. Everyone seems in high spirits. Before long we are given our boarding passes and we move from the waiting room to the gate where the chartered Delta 727 is being fueled, loaded and packed with the food we will consume on board.

It's 6 a.m. now and the sky is beginning to lighten a bit as we board the sleek airliner, bigger by far than last year's chartered 737. This year's council expedition is bigger than last year's so we've got a bigger jet. Our seats have been pre-assigned with Scouts on the inside seats and advisors on the aisles. As we're settling in, two visitors walk down the aisles greeting Scouts: John Stembler, the council's High Adventure program chairman who also is running for Congress this year, and Hollis Harris, the president of Delta Air Lines. They shake hands all around, wish us a great trip and hop off the plane just before the crew makes final preparations for the departure.

Finally we feel the bump as the tractor begins pushing the big jet away from the loading bay. Then the engines wind up to give us taxiing power and we start rolling toward the end of the runway. We hold for just a minute or two and then the jet engines roar to full takeoff power, sending our aircraft racing down the runway and then soaring into the morning sky. Soon, we'll be at 31,000 feet, cruising across America at 300 knots. It's a little after 6:30 a.m. and we are right on time.

The Southeast is overcast this morning, even though the summer has been remarkably hot and dry so far. So we initially see little of the landscape we are crossing. Delta has given us decks of cards and packs of peanuts, so the Scouts pretty quickly turned their attention to those items. Somewhere between Atlanta and Little Rock, Ark., the attendants served a welcome breakfast. Then it was back to card games, chatter and occasional nodding-off. A few Scouts, Richard among them, brought tape players with earphones to help pass the time.

The skies clear a bit as we cross into Oklahoma, so we can see a bit of the landscape below us. And now we're flying over the Texas panhandle, according to the pilot, who has been telling us where we are during the flight. At one point, he invited Scouts who wished to do so to come forward to view the cockpit. That, of course, was a big hit.

Now, the pilot tells us, we are flying over New Mexico. Maybe it's only my imagination, but suddenly the landscape seems far more interesting and we are able to pick out sun-lit mountains, shadowy gorges and steep-sided mesas. Below us, the pilot says, lies Philmont! Many noses are pressed to windows now as Scouts strain to pick out the features, but we're actually too high to see much more than the rugged, folded mountains. Our plane turns south now, covering the 200 miles to Albuquerque in what seems only minutes. We sense the plane descending and feel the slowing effect as the pilot lowers flaps. Now the landing gear rumble into position and we fly in low and slow over a mesa, lining up precisely with the runway and touch down firmly on the asphalt. The engines roar with reverse thrust to cut our speed and now we are taxiing gently to the airport.

It is now 7:10 a.m. Mountain Daylight Time. It has taken just 2½ hours for our 1,100 mile flight. That works out to an airspeed of 440 miles per hour.

Albuquerque's airport is quite different from Atlanta's. For one thing, the plane parks on the tarmac and ground crews roll the steps out to it. Ah, but so what? Stepping out into the bright sunshine, we inhale western air that isn't humid and soggy and see a land painted in hues of red, tan, brown and orange and just occasionally green. The sky is a deep, deep blue. No, this definitely isn't the Southern Piedmont! We are in the desert southwest, not far at all from the fabled Rio Grande, the historic Santa Fe Trail and Billy the Kid country.

We cross the hot tarmac to the air-conditioned terminal, where we are directed to our chartered buses. Construction is underway all around us. That's good to see because Albuquerque is a vibrant, growing city, as the veterans among us saw last year.

The buses first drive us around the airport to a special holding area where our bags and packs are waiting for us. We collect those, but then we discover that somehow there isn't enough room. We've got three buses and a van, but we can't quite get everybody and everything aboard. After a quick call to the charter company and a half-hour delay, a yellow school bus comes chugging up the road to replace the van. Switch accomplished, we get underway for real now, making our way over to Interstate 25 and the freedom of the open highway.

Now we can really see this unique and fascinating land. Under a dazzling sky, our bus rolls north through a wide, flat valley rimmed on the west by the Albuquerque volcanoes and on the east by the bold Sandia Mountains. This is a land of juniper and sagebrush, mesquite and mesas. And the cars whizzing by on the interstate almost look out of place. This is the West. There should be cattle and horses and cowboys out here rather than cars and buses.

Aboard the bus it is hot despite the air conditioning. There is quiet chatter, but some of the Scouts and a few of the adults have chosen to catch a few winks to make up for the morning's early start.

Two hours out of Albuquerque, the interstate begins gaining altitude as it curves around the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and skirts Santa Fe, New Mexico's historic Capitol. Unfortunately, we get only a glimpse of the outskirts of Santa Fe, one of the oldest cities in the United States. The only real landmarks we can observe are "The Downs" racetrack to our left and the state prison to our right. The prison figured prominently in our return trip last year. En route back to Albuquerque from Philmont, our bus was stopped at a road-block manned by shotgun-totin' lawmen seeking seven prisoners who had just escaped. No such excitement this time, however.

We head a bit to the northeast now, following the original route of the Santa Fe Trail, which, like this modern-day highway, had to veer to the east to avoid the mountain range. Far toward the western horizon, snow-capped mountains appear as slightly bluer wisps against the sky. Bob Smallwood, a veteran Philmonter, points out one as Mount Wheeler, New Mexico's highest peak.

We're all getting a bit restless now. It is hot, the trip has been a long one, our stomachs are growling and it is now past noon. We are afraid the Philmont dining hall will close before we get there for lunch. Ah, but what's this? The Springer turnoff!

We leave the Interstate and turn west on Highway 58. Slowly the Philmont peaks begin revealing themselves as we travel the 20 miles or so to Cimarron.

At Left: Approaching Philmont, where the Rockies meet the High Plains

As the features gradually become more distinct, Mr. Smallwood at last is able to point out the Tooth of Time, Philmont's famous landmark. When seen from the South, this prominent outcropping of granite (actually, Dacite Porphyry) really does look like a tooth. When pioneers spotted it from the Santa Fe Trail, they knew they were only a seven-day journey from Santa Fe. Thus the name, "Tooth of Time." Or so they say.

And now, at last, we are in Cimarron. This was an honest-to-goodness Wild West town that once played host to the likes of Billy the Kid, Bob Ford, Clay Allison and a locally notorious badman called Black Jack Ketchum. The Las Vegas Gazette once said of the town: "Things are quiet in Cimarron. Nobody has been killed in three days." Today, Cimarron is a quiet little town that serves nearby ranches and does a brisk tourist trade. One of the tourist draws is the St. James Hotel, where, it is said, Buffalo Bill initiated his Wild West Shows. We pass the St. James as we turn south on Highway 21.

Minutes later we are on Philmont land. To the right, a wide meadow serves as Philmont's buffalo pasture. To the left a bit further on, we see Villa Philmonte, the rambling, Mediterranean-style summer home built by Oklahoma oilman and philanthropist Waite Phillips, who would eventually donate the land that is Philmont to the Boy Scouts of America.

And now we are turning into the Philmont gateway and pulling up to the welcome center with its sign welcoming all to the ranch. What sight to see! We are here and it is a little before 1 p.m. We've still got lots to do today, but first a pause for lunch.

We unload our backpacks from the bus and rack them against a post. We'll do that a lot for now on. It is Philmont's way of keeping Scouts from slinging their gear every which way but loose when they "unsaddle" for breaks.

We make our way through the welcome center complex with its maze of administrative offices and head toward the dining hall, passing the bronze statue of a hiking Scout dressed in the uniform of an earlier day. The statue is called "Scouting - Road to Manhood," and it evokes memories of the thousands of Scouts who have hiked these trails before us.

At Left: Off The Bus and Heading For Chow

There is no line outside the dining hall when we arrive, but Richard stops us at the entrance, asks that we remove our hats and then leads us in the Philmont Grace:

Lunch, served cafeteria-style in the cavernous dining hall, features fajitas. It is good and it is filling, and it's nice to be sitting in a chair with leg room after the 2½-hour plane ride and the 4-hour bus ride.

Finally, though, we realize we've got to leave the table and commence the check-in process. So off we go, most of us now having tucked our uniform shirts away to save them for campfires and other formal occasions.

The first step is to link up with our ranger, a Philmont summer staffer assigned to each crew to guide them through check-in and accompany them on the trail for the first few days of a trek. This in part is to instruct them in the Philmont way of doing things and to ensure that their camping practices will cause minimal harm to this fragile environment. Though I have never heard this directly, I suspect a ranger's job also is to observe the crew and satisfy himself it has the necessary organization and leadership to successfully complete the trek it has chosen for itself. Our ranger was Jeff Hamilton, a New Jersey Scout who quickly won the friendship of the crew.

We steal a minute or two from the afternoon's agenda to take some crew snapshots of our own, then saddle-up with our backpacks and head for our assigned tents in the "incoming" section of tent city. Hiking down the well-used and dusty path between the clusters of tents, we see Urraca Mesa looming to the south. The word "urraca" is Spanish for "magpie," the bird that in some legends is supposed to be the harbinger of evil. Several ghost stories are woven around Urraca Mesa, one of the gateways to Philmont's South Country. The most prominent feature of base camp, however, is Tooth Ridge. Looking up at it from base camp, Tooth Ridge appears to be an easy climb through light vegetation. We'll get to know it a lot better later in the trek, since we will be hiking back into camp over Tooth Ridge on the last day of our journey. Meanwhile, the afternoon sky is becoming overcast, but so far there is no rain.

We settle quickly into our two-man, canvas tents, erected over wooden pallets which serve as floors. Each tent has two cots with mattresses and springs. There are no trees to speak of in tent city, so the tents get more than a little warm in the daytime.

Next, Richard and I head for the logistics office to finalize the details of our trip while Jeff takes the other crew members over to the trading post.

The trading post is a Scouting supermarket, loaded with Philmont t-shirts, sweatshirts, coffee mugs, hat pins, neckerchiefs and postcards, either with or without the 50^th anniversary logo. You can also buy vital articles for the trail there: soap, toothpaste, bug lotion and, very importantly, moleskin for blisters.

But the critical stop for today is logistics. That's where all the details of our life on the trail for the next 12 days will be ironed out. Our crew has previously chosen _ and Philmont has confirmed for us _ Trek 10, which will take us in a 61-mile loop through the rugged, mountainous Central Country and the stream-cut canyons of the South Country; from the rarefied air where aspen grow to the sandy, sagebrush plains. There are 24 pre-planned itineraries from which a crew may choose, each offering its own combination of distance, difficulty and activity.

We spent a good deal of time in pre-trip meetings selecting our itinerary. Ultimately, Trek 10 was the pick because it offered a number of fishing opportunities, routed us through Apache Springs for the sweat lodge program there, and took us over 11,700-foot Mount Phillips, Philmont's second-highest peak. It also offered black-powder rifle shooting at Clear Creek Camp, and .30-06 rifle-firing and cartridge reloading at Sawmille Camp. Another plus was that it offered an overnight stop at beautiful Beaubien Camp, the western lore camp for South Country.

At logistics, Richard and I work with a scheduler to go over the itinerary. On a Philmont topographic map, the scheduler charts our route, showing Richard which trails are open and which to avoid. He also schedules us for horse rides at Beaubien. There is a brief moment of alarm when he tells us that all of the available horse riding slots are filled on the day we will reach Beaubien. But a re-check finds there are just enough slots to accomodate us.

That done, Richard and I find the other members of the 621-D-7 and we all head over for medical re-checks.

Our crew number, by the way, comes from the fact that we arrive at Philmont on June 21, or 6-21, as part of contingent D, the letter assigned to the entire group from the Atlanta Area Council. Thus, everybody on the plane with us was part of the 621D contingent, but because the group was so large, each crew within that group was given a number. Ours was 7. That's why we were known as 6-21-D-7.

At medical re-check, a technician simply looks over the Scouts' forms and sends them on their way. The adult advisors have to go through a blood pressure check. Yep. They pass.

It is now too late to have our official crew picture taken in fron of Tooth Ridge because the sun is at the wrong angle. But there will be plenty of time for that tomorrow, since we found out at logistics that we won't be scheduled to leave base camp until 1 p.m.

All that's left now is to check out tents and a dining fly, draw our cooking gear and pick up our first three days' supply of food.

Before we sign out the sturdy, two-man, A-frame tents, we must check them for rips and tears. That is done by unfolding them and suspending them between hooks at designated places at the services building. After the tent is examined, the fly must also be hung up and checked. Then the tent can be re-rolled and signed out. The same process is followed for the dining fly.

Richard opts to check out billie pots for cooking our meals. These are nesting pots which are rounder than the typical patrol cook kit. We also draw cooking utensils and a clean-up kit, which includes HTH tablets for disinfecting dishes, scouring pads, CampSuds, a metal strainer (more on this later) and a supply of ultra-thin plastic trash bags. In addition, we draw our two bear bags _ croaker sacks, really _ and 100 feet of rope to hang them.

The last stop is at food supply. Since we don't have backpacks with us, we load the food into the bear bags. Then we haul everything back to our tents for re-distribution later.

At Left: Headin' Down To Tent City

The food supply is heavy. It comes bundled in packages with enough food for four persons, meaning that for each meal, we must carry three packages to feed 10 people. At three meals a day, that is nine packages of food per day. A three-day supply totals 27 packages, all of which must be carried in our backpacks.

We have a little time left before dinner, so we hit the trading post one more time, then get dressed again in our Class A's.

First-night dinners are a bit different from other meals at Philmont. Advisors eat with advisors; crew leaders eat with crew leaders; crew members, accompanied by their rangers, eat with other crew members. Afterwards, all of the advisors meet with the Philmont staff directors for a last-minute briefing on any problems in the back-country or any changes in procedures. The meeting proves to be routine, with no problems or changes to be reported. But making attendance quite worthwhile is the fact that advisors are given an opportunity to draw as many one-serving rations of instant coffee as they think they will need on the trail.

Just before twilight, religious services are offered for Scouts and advisors. And then there is a little time to send postcards home, telling our families we have arrived. There will be no telephones for the next 12 days, so this is our last chance to communicate with the outside world. (We can mail postcards from several back-country camps, but chances are that we'll be home before that mail arrives.)

Tooth Ridge is bathed in cool, blue shadow now as we join other crews in camp for a short hike across the high to the opening night campfire arena.

Our weary legs carry us to the campfire seats and we find seats on the wooden benches. Then costumed Philmont staffers perform a pageant designed to provide us all with an understanding and appreciation of this beautiful but hard and sometimes dangerous land. We see the Spanish conquistador, the Jicarilla Apache, the settler, the rancher, the trader, the outlaw. Then we hear Waite Phillips' words dedicating this land to Scouting.

Finally, the cast sings the "Philmont Hymn," whose simple tune and majestic words will come to mean so much to us before this trek is done. Now, with "star-lit skies above" us, we head back across the highway to tent city.

The lights in the shower houses will blaze all night long, but that's okay. Some of us are plenty tired, and that won't bother us a bit.

We're in the sack by about 9:30 p.m. MDT, which is 11:30 p.m. EDT. For a while, we can hear people walking back and forth to the showers, chatting animatedly among themselves. Then it gradually becomes still and we can feel the western breeze carrying soft, lilting whispers from the beckoning back country. For most of us this has been a 20-hour day.