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Scout officials warned the former Boy Scouts only a few reminders of their old camp survive. They include the stone water fountain from which only members of the Order of the Arrow could sip.

“It doesn’t work anymore, but it’s still here,’’ the official said.

“Like a lot of us,” one former Scout mumbled to himself.

The Old North State Council of Boy Scouts invited about 20 long-ago Scouts to return to old Camp Graystone in southern Guilford County. The Boy Scouts gave up the camp in 1947. It’s now a Girl Scout camp.

“Sacrilege,’’ snarled one former Boy Scout of the sex change.

The Girl Scouts renamed the property Camp Douglas Long. After a man, of course? Sorry guys, Douglas Long was a woman, a longtime Girl Scout leader often called “Lady Long.”

R.D. Douglas Jr., laughed when he overheard a former Scout say, “Why, I’m 78 years old!” as if that were old. Douglas was already 18 and an Eagle Scout at Camp Graystone when the man was born.

Lyle Lynch, Camp Douglas Long ranger, greeted the men. He told them he wanted to hear them reminisce because the girls ask about the camp’s history.

The former Boy Scouts told Lynch the mess hall wasn’t where it is now. The flag pole across the camp road differs also. The Boys Scout had their pole on the opposite side. The men looked for old troop cabins, but they were gone, except one. They tried to figure out where the cabins stood.

The present swimming pool sure wasn’t there for Boy Scouts. The boys swam in a lake. They wanted to see it or what was left of it. They hiked a half mile through the woods, with 96-year-old Douglas in the middle of the double-file procession. At the site, they looked disoriented. The old rock dam remains, but a new lake stretches on the other side. On the opposite side, the Boy Scout lake is now forest.

“They moved the water from one side of the dam to the other,’’ said engineer Ben Smith, son of the namesake of Ben L. Smith High School.

Area farmers built the new lake and let the old silt-filled scout lake dry up.

The men speculated about when the sturdy dam was built. Douglas knew exactly. In 1925, he and all Greensboro Boy Scouts went downtown on a Saturday to move merchandise from Meyer’s Department Store to a new Meyer’s store nearby. In return, owner W.D. Meyer donated $3,000 for the camp’s dam.

The former Scouts later visited the massive graystone slab that gave the camp its name. A chimney next to the rock once warmed a now-demolished troop cabin. The men then went up the hill to the only troop cabin left from Camp Graystone, a large log structure with rafters and a stone fireplace.

The Girl Scouts now use the cabin. Abbreviations and names pepper the rafters, including “Joe + Doris.” Candles burned the letters into the wood. The men didn’t recognize any of the writings as their own.

They returned to the Girl Scout mess hall. A Scout leader, Ed Koehler, had peach cobbler he had cooked in Dutch ovens waiting. The men sat and listened as council Executive Director John Meeks and board member Barry Smith stressed scouting’s importance and that national scouting’s 100th birthday looms in 2010.

All then stood, raised three fingers and recited the Scout oath, “On my honor. ...”

After 60, 70 and, in Douglas’ case, nearly 80 years, the words were not forgotten.

Contact Jim Schlosser at 601-9879 or beale1@clearwire.net