MELITA ISLAND -- In the August heat of 1956, Butte-born Jack Sherick saw his very first waves here on the shores of Melita Island, and was quite happily battered and beaten by an icy cold surf during his first-ever foray into Flathead Lake.

Now he's back, a half-century later, introducing yet another generation of kids to their first waves, their first camp-out, their first boat ride, their first island adventure.

"It's the sort of place where firsts happen every day," Sherick said. "Year after year after year."

But not all of life's summer-camp firsts happen here; there are no girls, after all, at this historic Boy Scout camp.

"Nope," he said, "just us guys."

And here's the thing -- the guys Sherick camped with back in '56, they're pretty much the same as the guys he's camping with today.

"I've been working as an adult with Boy Scouts for more than 40 years," the camp director said, "and in all that time I can honestly say I haven't seen any real change in the kids, at least here in this environment."

That's because island time is a time all its own, a Neverland where boys are forever boys and video games are a world of water away.

"They're the same as ever," Sherick said of the troops. "They still want to poke a stick into the fire and stir the coals."

Melita Island

Melita Island smells like a campfire, except near the outhouse, where it doesn't.

The 64-acre island, a mile off shore in waters north of Polson, is shaded by soaring ponderosa pines, its dry soil a thin skin over solid bedrock.

Deer step quietly through downfall here, and squirrels chatter an incessant reproach at the campers.

And everywhere the voices of boys, laughing, shouting, calling out for one another. The solid thunk of ax on wood, the hammer of bare feet on a forest path, the hushed preteen murmur from inside a canvas tent, one short and very surprised cry followed swiftly by a splash.

These are the sights and smells and sounds of 2008, or 1956, here on Melita Island.

"The Boy Scouts have been involved on this island for at least 60 years," Sherick said. And the Scouts of old, he said, would easily recognize today's camp -- the historic lodge, built in the 1920s, ringed by rigid canvas tents, brown and green like some Army MASH unit.

The young Scouts are pitched in a kaleidoscope of little tents down by water's edge, grouped by troop but constantly flowing from one to the next. The teenage counselors are higher up on the hill, in their canvas city above the lodge, bunks strewn with the debris of adolescence.

And in between are the adults -- men with wrinkly knees poking out beneath stiff, green Scout shorts. Their tents are bigger, neater, too, but still smell like a campfire.

"Not much has changed," Sherick says.

Except, of course, that nothing has been the same since 2005.

Momentous purchase

That's the year the Scouts bought this island.

They had been here since at least the 1940s, back when Melita was "owned by the Knights Templar, out of Kalispell," Sherick said. "They invited the Boy Scouts to camp here each summer and to use their lodge."

It's a big, old lodge of wood and timber, the kind that used to dot the shores of Flathead Lake until replaced by trophy homes.

In the 1970s, the Masons put their island up for sale, but the Scouts couldn't scratch up the necessary $300,000. So for decades Melita moved from owner to owner, while the Scouts watched from the mainland. They did not return, Sherick said, until 1998.

By then Melita was owned by Fred Cox, who had done himself quite well in telecommunications. A couple of former camp counselors called Cox up, asked if they could visit the island.

And so on Saturday, Oct. 17, 1998, Boy Scouts kindled a fire in the lodge hearth for the first time in a full quarter-century.

By Christmas, talks were under way to return Boy Scout camps to Melita, and in 2005 Cox sold the island to the Scouts for $1.5 million, a fraction of its actual value. It was high drama right to the end, Sherick said, with an anonymous and last-minute donation of $1 million to put them over the top.

Since then, they've cleared downfall and dead snags, milling much of the lumber on a portable sawmill. They've built a beautiful new dock, more a mini-marina, really, with room for a dozen boats and they're hard at work on an outdoor amphitheater.

They have a new well, and new water lines, and they've strung up solar-powered harbor lights and even carved out a new swimming area on the far side of the island.

Rowboats, sailboats and fishing boats share the shore with canoes and kayaks and a fleet of new sailboards. Scouts choose from about 30 adventures -- swimming and boating and first aid and wilderness survival, nature studies and emergency preparedness and wood carving, archery and environmental science and GPS navigation.

From flags-up at 7:45 a.m. to lights-out at 11 p.m., these kids are busy tying ropes and building shelters and hiking trails.

Unique opportunities

"This is my first camp-out away from my parents," admits 11-year-old Ben Cornwell.

His face is a bit glum. "Yeah, I miss my mom."

Then Ben brightens. "But I totally forgot my sister! That's cool!"

Ben's not too sure about the water, but he's getting there, willing to try, at least, which is all anyone asks.

"That's what this camp is all about, is the lake," says sailing instructor Larry Shadow. "This is the only island camp the Boy Scouts own anywhere in the nation."

And it quickly is becoming one of the most popular, among the Scouts' most premier summer camps.

Snorkels hang at the ready near a pile of flippers and masks, shorts hang drying on every lakeside branch, shoes squish against the floor at lunchtime.

"The kids are on the water or in the water pretty much full time," Shadow said.

The trick, in Sherick's view, is not to outlaw risk, but to teach boys how to manage it.

"Teach them properly," he said, "and you don't need a lot of rules prohibiting everything."

In fact, there are only two rules here: the Scout oath and the Scout law.

The oath emphasizes honor and duty and service and moral living. The law is all about trustworthiness, loyalty, friendship, kindness and reverence.

"I just call it character," Sherick said. "For me, it all comes down to how they're going to grow up."

And make no mistake -- this is a growing-up place.

"They leave with some new skills," he said. "They leave with a better understanding of nature. They leave with a few new friends, and a better appreciation for cooperation."

They leave with skinned knees and mosquito bites and sunburn. They leave smelling of smoke and bug dope and sunblock. They leave with a much improved stone-skipping technique, and a safer grip on their pocket knives.

They leave, just as Sherick did in 1956, "with big, big smiles on their faces and lots of stories to tell."

The difference is, now that Scouts finally own the island, they also leave knowing they can come back, that this is a home, of sorts; that no matter how far afield they find themselves, they'll always be welcome on the island.

"It's important that they have this kind of experience," Sherick said. "It's important for young people, just to get them to make one right decision, for the right reason, sometime in their life. From there, they can go anywhere."

From one first to the next, he said, because that's how life works, whether you're on the island or off.