Burnham #1-The Smell of a Toddler's Urine

By David Wrolson

Continuing the theme that while Patton saw his past lives "Through a Glass Darkly" some may sense these lives through the sense of smell.

This post is about the smell of a toddler's urine and the idea that this urine might belong to the famous scout Frederick Russell Burnham.

I first learned of Burnham when I opened his autobiography "Scouting on Two Continents" at age 43 in the fall of 2009. I had never heard of him before, but within a few pages, I was struck with the overwhelming sense that I had been him in a previous life. I have never had this sensation in any other book I read before or since.

The sensation lasted a few minutes and then went away, but I always wonder a little bit if it meant anything.

A toddler's urine is the smell that I associate with the Burnham campfire in my journey of smelling a thousand campfires.

There is one episode in his adventurous life that makes a lot more sense if he had lived lives of danger before and smelled a lot of campfires along the way.

As a young child, his family lived in Minnesota during the 1862 Dakota Sioux Uprising.

One evening, his mother saw a war party of Sioux approaching and realized she could not get away with him. She hid him in a shock of green corn as that would be too green to burn and told him to stay there and remain silent.

The Sioux burned her cabin, but Burnham remained safe and quiet in the corn all night. His mother returned the next morning with armed neighbors and found him safe. Sometimes, I can smell toddler's urine when I think of Burnham and his (my?) night in the corn shock.

How does a toddler know that danger is around him and he has to remain quiet. Given his later life, it is no surprise, but as a 15-month old he performed a feat of survival that many adults could not, simply by remaining patient.

I think prior to being Burnham; he was Jumping Bull, the father of Sitting Bull. Therefore, the danger of enemy indians was ingrained within him.

In addition to the sense I had when I opened "Scouting." I share a love of Rhodesia with him. Burnham was instrumental in the early days of Rhodesia. While Rhodesia is gone now and it is the basket case known as Zimbabwe, I was there on a hunting trip in 2013 and I felt at home there, as if I had been there before.