Physician gets scouting nod for sharing outdoor adventures with youth

By Kathleen Phalen Tomaselli, The County Staff

PATTEN — A Patten physician has been awarded the 2025 Wallace H. “Bud” Jeffrey Award for distinguished service to youth through his work with the Maine High Adventure Program, part of the Katahdin Area Council of Scouting America.

Ron Blum, who first came to Patten in 1975 as a rural health program physician, has been connected to the Maine High Adventure Program at Baxter State Park since the 1970s. He first came on as a local doctor who occasionally treated scout injuries from the program base. 

The Maine High Adventure base in Matagamon, created by Bud Jeffrey, is at the north gate of Baxter State Park and has been outfitting unique scouting adventures since 1971 on land once owned by the legendary Chub and Fran Foster, who lived off the land in a lodge there. 

“Chub and Fran lived their whole lives with no electricity, no running water, and we went out by snowmobile to visit them,” Blum said Monday. 

Many people know Blum for “expertly presiding” for years over steaks cooked on coals at Moose Feed, said Barry Burgason, Maine High Altitude advisory committee secretary during the November award presentation. 

“But his contributions to MHA are so much more than that,” Burgason said.

Bergason said Maine High Adventure could not function without Blum’s leadership on its Health and Safety Committee and, as a physician, he has helped the program navigate various health and safety issues and regulations over many years. 

“During the COVID pandemic, he played a key role in advising MHA on how to maintain the program, keep crews safe, keep staff safe,” he said. “He also offered suggestions for crews to follow while they were en route, so that everyone could be healthy and the program could operate.”

Initially part of the Boy Scouts of America National Council, the adventure program more recently became part of the Katahdin Area Council of Boy Scouts of America, now a co-ed program called Scouting America. 

The award honors Jeffrey, who was hired by the National Council of the Boy Scouts of America to develop and direct the Maine National High Adventure Area in northern Maine, according to his 2009 obituary.

“During the next 15 years he, with the assistance and support of his wife, Pat, brought 19,000 older Scouts from all over the country and world to canoe, hike and camp in Maine’s wonderful woods and waters.” the obituary said. 

According to Blum, the Fosters ended up selling their land and buildings to the Boy Scouts. The lodge and some of the base buildings are the original buildings that Chub Foster had built, he said. 

The Fosters lived on the Matagamon land well into their 90s without any modern conveniences like indoor plumbing and they heated their home through all those Maine winters with wood, Blum said. 

During his first winters in Maine, Blum and his wife first experienced the Matagamon base with a handful of the program’s winter staff and the Fosters over Thanksgiving dinner cooked on a wood stove at the remote base. 

“We had five Thanksgivings there,” Blum said Monday. “They used to go out and climb Horse Mountain, take blueberries and she’d make blueberry pie. They just lived in the woods, and it was just incredible.”

Blum, who has been on the MHA advisory committee for many years, served as a scoutmaster for more than a decade. When the Patten troop disbanded, he worked with the adventure program and has taken groups of New England scouts to two World Scout Jamborees in both Holland and Chile. He frequently helps during work weekends on base, Burgason said.

As a boy living in Reading, Pennsylvania, he was interested in scouting but was not involved until his son, Jed, became a cub scout when he was eight and Blum was the cubmaster. 

“We stuck with it for a dozen years, all the way up till he was 18,” Blum said. “He was the first Eagle Scout that ever came out of Patten’s troop.”

The Maine High Adventure experience is not like traditional adventure scout camps because each trek is customized to the troop, Blum said. 

When a scout troop arrives at base camp, they spread their gear out on the lawn before they plan their adventure in the map room, poring over maps and potential water or land treks.

On the first day the kids make up their itinerary and they are assigned a guide before they head out for six days or so. The first lesson is to go over their gear and the guide helps them decide what they will need and the rest is locked in storage until they return.

“They carry all their food and cook it all themselves, and it’s a really unique experience for the scouts and adults,” Blum said. 

The Bud Jeffrey award came as a total surprise to Blum, who never imagined he had the experience of others involved in the high adventure program, he said.