I Blame the Boy Scouts
Fifty years ago, as a Boy Scout, I climbed my first mountain, or rather what passes for a mountain in West Texas. Our troop was camping at Moss Creek Lake near Big Spring, Texas. Off in the distance, rising above the remnants of the Edwards Plateau, stood Signal Peak, a solitary, pyramid-shaped formation squared off at the top by what looked, to us kids, like a hundred-foot-tall limestone cap. Growing up 80 miles away in Midland, we were surrounded by a flat, featureless landscape. Seeing this monolith looming on the horizon 2,667 feet above sea level proved an irresistible temptation to us 12-, 13-, and 14-year-old boys out for a weekend of adventure and exploration.