It was almost pitch black when I first woke up that Friday morning. For a moment, I didn’t recognize where I was, assuming at first that I was in a different room in the house. It was completely quiet and still, only but the faint sound of a singing cricket outside. I was able to see faintly with my sleepy eyes silhouettes of bunk beds that were against the walls. Then it struck me: I was in Girls Camp in Camp Whittier almost for a week. Slowly and steadily, the light of the morning sun started creeping in through the windows. It’s finally here, I thought excitingly. Friday- day of activities. The day we get to do whatever we want, I thought, smiling at this. But then another fact came to my mind: it was also rock climbing day and everyone had to participate in it. I was disappointed with this because I really didn’t do much but pull the rope for other people who wanted to do it. No matter. I’m not going to let this ruin my day, I thought.
This was my fourth year going to this camp. Though in the past three years it was set in the same campgrounds, it was filled with many memories and built strong friendships there. Never would have I imagined in all my years of living that my fourth year, that specific Friday day would end up to be the most impacting event that I ever experienced.
All the girls in camp and some adults went to the cafeteria to eat breakfast. The room was filled with noise of chatter, laughter, and singing all around. The room was warm and welcoming. I watched a large queue of people waiting for their turn to get food. The chef, named Phabio, was there smiling as he watched everyone eat his masterpiece. He was dressed in his usual white chef attire and had on his white chef’s hat on his head.
As we were eating, Sister Barlow, who was a large woman that had brown, wavy hair, who always had a smile on her face and was the one woman who made this camp possible for us, stood up with a speaker and announced, “Okay, girls, I just wanted to make a quick reminder that those who are morning rock climbers must go to the area as soon as you’re done. You will receive some information from the instructor before you start the activity. Make sure you stay in your group. And as for you, afternoon climbers, after you’re finished, you may go to the activities that we have prepared for you. Remember to have a buddy…” Yes, I know the drills, I thought and gave out a sigh as I ate the warm, delicious pancakes covered with strawberries and honey on top. I checked my schedule and saw that they placed me in the afternoon for that activity. I smiled and could not wait to go to these activities.
When my group and I were finished and cleaned up our mess, they started buddy-ing up with each other. As for me, I went with my sister, Jacky, who was also an afternoon climber. She had long, dark brown hair and was short at the time. She and I had similar eyes and almost the same nose but what made her different was our two age difference (I was around fifteen at the time) and the color of our skin, she having a darker skin and I paler which made some of our friends think that we weren’t sisters at all.
We went on a nature walk, played volleyball, made some round pins in the Arts and Crafts building, and met some of her new buddies that she made. Activity after activity, time passed by like water and soon enough it became the afternoon. As Jacky and I were walking slowly to the rock climbing area, she began to ask me, “Tayde, are you going to jump the zip line this year?”
I stopped walking and asked, “Why do you say that?”
“Just wondering,” she answered.
Is she having amnesia or something? I thought. She knows what a scardy cat I was, yet she was still asking. Wondering and feeling a bit uneasy, I replied, “I don’t know.” Raising my eyebrow, I asked her the same question.
As soon as I finished the sentence, her eyes sparkled and exclaimed, “Yeah! I’m totally going to do it!” I smiled as I watched her jumping with excitement. She then spoke abruptly, “ You should do it, too!”
“What?” I laughed in disbelief.
“Come on, please?” she pleaded.
The more she pleaded, the more I felt nervous about the thought. Sure, I’ve seen other people do it and looked like they were having fun and were having a good time, which sounded a bit tempting, but-
“I don’t know, Jacky. Well, I’ve always wanted to try it out, honestly,” I began slowly, feeling quite surprised by my confession, “ but- well, you know, I’m a coward.”
“Just try it out! It’s going to be awesome!” After this conversation ended, we began to walk to our destination once again.
Do I really want to rock climb all the way up and jump the zip line, or am I just going to pull the rope like I’ve always done in the past three years? Many questions started to flood in my mind all at once, not knowing what to do. As we were getting nearer and nearer to the area, my legs felt like it was getting heavier every step I was making. I was feeling a bit queasy and though I have never thrown up in my life, the sensation was horrible.
Then I saw it: the outdoor rock climbing building. Never in the past three years have I had the slightest hint of curiosity to stop and observe this monstrous thing. It was about the size of the Administration Building in Oxnard College, but only more taller. The wood was thick, yet very old looking. Even with a small, gentle breeze that passed by shook this giant building. With this, my mind started to play horrible scenarios of many possible accidents, most of them lethal, that could happen.
All the afternoon girl climbers were present and while we listened to the instructor about safety and on what we had to do, my head was throbbing hard for not coming up with a decision. When he finished, we started to gear up which were only the hard, yellow helmets and the black harnesses. We had to tighten a bit the harness around our waste and legs. It was uncomfortable for a while but then I got used to it.
Geez, I don’t have to do this! I can always do it next year. Yeah, that sounds good, I thought. With this, it convinced me and so I want straight toward the people pulling the rope. It was easy and it was worry free. We were doing this about an hour or so; as I was concentrating doing my part of the job with this group, a girl in the back of me asked me suddenly, “Hey, isn’t that your sister up there?”
My head shot up to see what she was talking about, and sure enough it was her already connected to the zip line. She looked down, smiled and later waved at me. I waved back, feeling so small inside. Everyone cheered as she was getting ready to jump, including myself as soon as our climber finished her way up. A few minutes later, she threw herself out to the air, looking as if she were about to fly to the clear blue sky, which really took my breath away. She zipped down with fast speed and as she got close to the tree, she slowed down and then zipped back and forward at the end. When the Brothers got her down the zip line, she looked like a champion having won the greatest medal. Man, how much I wanted to be in her shoes, feeling incredible. Shaking away the thought, I tried to concentrate on what I was doing, but as I watched others jumping that zip line, I was getting restless. Seeing them having all the fun made me have this great desire to do it.
That’s it, I thought finally. If you think that you’ll do it next year, you’ll just chicken out. It’s now or never, I concluded. So, with a bit courage, I went to the other side of the building to finally climb up and go to that zip line. The reason I went to the other side was because I heard the instructor said that it was easier than the one in front, which was the actual rock climbing. The one I was going to climb looked like a ladder, but they were just steeled stakes that were stuck in the side of the big, hard wood. When a few of my friends saw me, they went up to me and gave me high-fives and gave me the “You-can-do-it” speech. There was a line in front of me so I had to wait, patiently. With all the waiting, I was getting anxious… and excited at the same time. This was the first time where no one had to push me into stuff and I felt quite proud of that. As the line got shorter every ten to twenty minutes, my heart was racing and felt out of breath with all
the nervousness.
The moment had arrived. I stepped forward and the instructor clipped something to my harness in order for the people, my team, to pull me up. I went towards the steeled stakes and shouted, “Climbing!”
“Climb on!” my team responded, which meant that they were ready.
“On belay,” I later said.
“On belay,” they repeated, and so I commenced to climb. As I climbed, my group pulled the rope at the same time which gave me a little boost. The harness felt weird when it was pulled by the rope, but I will not go into details on how it felt like. Trust me.
It felt easy in the beginning and wondered why I was getting worked up all this time, but then somewhere below half was where and when it became challenging. I really wasn’t well conditioned for these things, for one thing. Second, my legs were big and felt that all the weight of my body was there, unable to climb much.
Don’t look down, Tayde. Don’t you dare look down! I kept on climbing. My heart was pounding like a thousand miles per minute and my legs felt shaky and wobbly like jello. Beads of sweat were running down my forehead to my neck; my lips were chapped
and clenched my teeth tightly. When I went further than half, I began regretting for doing this and said to myself things like “You’re an idiot” or “You’re crazy; you shouldn’t be doing this”, etc.
When I looked up, I saw this big log that was shooting out horizontally from the building. I planned to sit on it and rest for a while. As I got closer to the log, I saw that I was going to have trouble going up the log and the only way to get on was by slightly pulling yourself and jump on it. I started to do so, but I didn’t know how to do it. I got the concept, but couldn’t do it; it felt wrong each time I tried in different ways. While I tried to grab hold on the log, I must have been not careful that time because my foot slipped from the stake and started to fall for a second. I yelped when I felt I was falling, but luckily my team was watching over me so I was hanging there and got myself to grab hold to the stakes and soon enough I had my feet on them as well.
I was glad that they had my back, but even with their help, I no longer felt safe no matter how well “protected” I was. I was shaking all over when I heard one of the girls shouted, “Don’t get scared! You’re almost there! Don’t turn back!”
The instructor chimed in, “ Pull yourself up harder to the log, okay, hon.?”
I put my forehead against the wood, bit my lower lip and wanted to cry badly, feeling extremely discourage. How could I be so stupid, thinking that I was actually going to make it, I thought, blaming myself for doing this. I really wanted to give up, but a part of me wanted to finish this up.
“Climbing,” I finally shouted.
“Climb on,” they answered.
“On belay!”
“On belay!” I climbed up until I was at the log again. I did as my instructor said and finally I was on the log.
“Off belay!” I said, meaning that I was safe and was going to rest for a bit. They went to the side, making the rope at a ninety degree level so they wouldn’t risk me falling down.
While I was catching my breath, I closed my eyes and felt the soft breeze caressing my face. It’s a very warm and nice day, I realized. I saw some birds dancing in the air and leaves moving with the wind. I could almost see the whole camp from up there: green trees all around, the meadow in the middle of the campground, the little pool area next to the meadow on the right, the flagpole area on the left side where we gather ourselves at night around the campfire and hear devotionals from the Brothers and Sisters, the Arts and Craft building, and many hills filled with green. It felt peaceful. Though I wanted to stay there a bit longer, I knew there were other girls wanting to get up so I stood up and shouted, “On belay!” and said all the phrases like in the beginning.
When I looked up, I was only a couple feet away from the top. My heart leaped with joy and hope. I climbed and stopped and repeated this a few times when finally, and miraculously, I pulled myself with all my strength and had a helping hand from an older instructor that was up there. I was finally at the top! Up there, two other girls that I didn’t know well were waiting their turn. The old instructor, whom we called Brother (I didn’t know his last name), clipped me to another rope that prevented me from falling down to the sides.
One of the girls jumped down the zip line and felt the building wobbling side to side. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling at all. The second girl went next and while she went zipping to the line, another girl just arrived on top with me and the Brother. Now looking at the zip line, my fear grew ten times worse than when I was climbing. I grabbed the edge of the wood hard and my heart was pounding harder than before. The Brother, a skinny tall man with some wrinkles on his face that had on a red plaid shirt, a pale-ish yellow woven cowboy’s hat, beige shorts, and some brown army boots, I believe, smiled at me and asked, kindheartedly, “Are you ready?” I shook my head slowly and he laughed softly. “Just let yourself go. That’s all you have to do.”
Easy for you to say, I thought. He then clipped my harness to the zip line. I looked down and saw hundreds of girls looking at me and cheering for me even the girls, which were practically most of them, who didn’t know me. My throat felt dry and my heart was racing again. From there to the ground, it looked like it was hundreds of miles away from below. I thought I was going to die young. I squeezed my eyes shut and said out loud, “I can’t do this! I can’t jump!”
“If you don’t want to jump, you could just sit down and let yourself go. It’s almost the same but I guess it won’t feel that bad,” the old man said. Thinking that it was a good idea, I did so, but the fear was still there.
As I panicked, I remembered something very important that I learned that year’s camp. That year, the theme was based on a scripture from the Old Testament, which was “Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord, thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest”(found in Joshua 1:9). All that week we were learning how to have courage whenever we faced difficult situations or when we were facing trials. I was touched by each devotional that I attended that week, but never have I thought that this applied to my daily life. I felt quite embarrassed that moment because that meant that I didn’t take it seriously.
Although I felt a mix of emotions during that time, I felt comforted with this scripture. I prayed inside my head, asking God to give me courage enough to “jump” the zip line. When I finished, I grabbed the cord tightly with both hands, closed my eyes shut, and breathed out. This is it. This is the great finale you’ve worked and waited for, I thought.
Slowly, I let myself slip down and soon enough, after I was only down by two to three feet in the air, my shin hit something hard that I cried out in pain. Everything went by me too fast. Ignoring the pain, I felt the adrenaline all over my body as I zipped in the air. It did feel like flying and was the most amazing thing I have ever felt as the air was going through my hair. When I got close to the tree on the other side, I touched the leaves barely and the cord attached to me slowed down. I was going back and forward a few times until finally, I stayed in the middle hanging in the air. Some Brothers came with a ladder and unclipped the rope from my harness. As I climbed down the ladder to the grassy meadow, my sister and a couple of her friends rushed towards me. Jacky, still amazed of what I did, said, “ You actually did it!” I smiled, feeling shaky inside and outside as well. Though I injured my shin along the way, I was in triumph.
Through this event, it showed me not only that I was brave enough to take this challenge but it has taught me a type of a life lesson, taking it in deep reflection. One cannot be a coward forever in life. Staying as a coward would just steal away all the opportunities that one can gain and experience. It’s like having a dream that one wants to fulfill but does nothing for it because of the fears that holds one back. Just like rock climbing, one has to take risks in life in order to reach the main goal at the top. It’s not going to be easy in this journey, but once one goes through the “zip line”, or the reward that one has earned, one will say at the end, “Hey, it was all worth it.”
