Camp

Eight years ago, I hopped in a van full of middle school kids and drove to a camp in Pennsylvania for a week of adventure.  I'm trying to remember now why exactly I agreed to go; I had spent the previous year leading a group of 6th grade girls in a Wednesday night small group/service experience, constantly wondering what actually qualified me to be in charge.  I loved them, don't get me wrong.  We had fun talking about Polly Pocket and High School Musical and why boys are gross (except sometimes not...?) while we visited sick people at the hospital and organized clothes at the Salvation Army.  We even had some deep, meaningful talks about baptism and prayer and what it means to follow Jesus.  Maybe the girls talked me into it, telling me about all the fun stuff we would do.  Maybe the youth pastor really needed another woman to chaperone.  Maybe I thought I would have fun, remembering my own time at summer camp on the cusp of adolescence.  We arrived, settled into our dorms, met the camp staff, and had a meal together.  It wasn't until the next morning that I realized what the week would really be.  It was way more than campfire discussions and silly games, trust falls and hiking in the woods.  It was an Adventure Camp with a thousand foot zip line and high ropes course and mountain biking and white water rafting, each morning and afternoon a different extreme activity planned.  And I was supposed to lead.  And participate.  And I am deathly afraid of heights.

  

Do you see those two young girls working their way up the rock wall?  Do you understand how high it was?  As I stood on the ground, I knew I couldn't just be a spectator.  If I was going to lead, I needed to strap into a harness and give it my best shot.

 

This is Bob (the other adult leader of our group, and father of half of the girls we brought) and myself making our way up the wall.  I included this photo partly because of how fabulous my backside looks...I like to pretend it still looks that way, that the past almost-decade and children haven't changed it one bit, and since its my back, I can believe this pretty easily.  I climbed that wall, and constantly looked down.  I saw how far away the ground became; it was hot and the stress and exertion were making me sweat.  I wanted to give up, I didn't care about reaching the top.  And then I heard from below, sweet little Allison (pictured above in purple) yell out, "Keep going Rachel!  You're almost there!"  And I finally looked up, ahead, and realized she was right.  I only had to make my way up a few more feet and I could say I DID IT.  I could go to dinner with bragging rights and maybe even the respect of my girls, many of whom did not reach the top that day.  And so I kept at it, and I made it.  And that night I told Allison how her voice carried up to me, how her encouragement was the push I needed to finish.

 

 

 Here is another of our "fun-tivities".  Bob is standing at the base of a tree with the dude who hooked us into our harnesses and led us around in the woods.  I can't remember his name, probably because I spent the whole week trying to get the girls to nickname him "Hanson" because he resembled Taylor Hanson.  They just got confused, thinking I was saying "handsome", and I realized they didn't know who Hanson was.  I'm old.  Anyway, if you look up, and I mean UP above Bob, you can see a little perch in the tree.  This time, we climbed the tree, using hooks that were attached to the trunk, and jumped off the perch in an attempt to grab a trapeze bar that is suspended like five feet away. 

This is me, pretending not to be terrified.  Seeing the faces of 8 girls looking up at me, some cheering, some laughing, and that trapeze bar seeming a million miles away.  In the end, I just jumped off rather than turn into Gregory Peck in Vertigo; how could I not, when the girls each took their turn, completely trusting that harness to ease their return to earth.

Here I am again, swinging through the trees, the girls and Bob on the other end of the rope that kept me in the air.

 See that platform?  Yeah, the next day, we each climbed up the tree, strapped into a harness, and went down the thousand foot zip line.  That was the hardest activity for me, even though I had seen many of our group climb, jump, and zip to the bottom of the hill safely.  I just couldn't make my brain believe that I wouldn't come crashing down and break every limb of my body.  I don't know if it was a good experience for the girls to see a 24 year old woman crying

Before white water rafting

I still remember each day of camp, nearly 8 years later.  The girls are high school graduates, off at college and working, falling in love and so very different from the people they were during that week.  In many ways, I'm different too.  The week after I got back, I peed on a stick and found out I would become a mom.  Now there are four little people who call me that.  I no longer lead a group of teenage girls.  Recently, my husband and I have been given the task of leading other adults at our church.  It feels a lot like that zip line.  I don't see how we won't crash and make a mess of things.  But when I think back to that week, I realize that was when I first became a leader.  That was when I spoke and people listened.  I climbed and young girls followed.  I was aware that I was only a few steps ahead of them on the journey of life.  When I look at other adults, I think probably I am a few steps behind everyone else.  And yet, they call me a leader.