In the last ten days of July, I was at Lasallian Volunteer (LV) Orientation. Before Orientation, I had only met a couple of other LVs besides Whitney and Megan, who also live in Chicago. I was glad to finally meet all of the other LVs.
On our first full day of Orientation, we headed north to Covenant Harbor, a Christian camp and retreat center located on the shore of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, where we spent the day. At Covenant Harbor, they have ziplining, ropes courses and other challenging physical activities, sometimes which require participants to strategize with each other to be able to reach the goals. Thus, we went to Covenant Harbor, among other reasons, to help us to learn to work as a team.
Once we arrived at Covenant Harbor, in the morning, all of us LVs were split into teams. Each team headed off on its own with a staff member from Covenant Harbor, who directed us on which activities to do and who also supervised us while we were doing them. At first on my team, we spent time learning each others' names. Then the staff member asked us what our ground rules would be while we were working together on the activities. We noted that we wanted to continue working on learning each others' names. We established that everyone had to listen to all suggestions which were made. We said that we also wanted to make sure that we all were having fun!
Having set the ground rules for our group, we set off to begin the activities. We finished some of the activities; others we didn't successfully complete. One of them involved balancing the group of the dozen of us on what essentially was an oversized see saw, so that neither end of the see saw touched the ground. This task we completed fairly quickly, without much difficulty.
At another point, we were brought to three wooden platforms, each of them only slightly above the ground. The first platform was one yard square. The second platform was slightly smaller than the first. The third platform was a bit smaller than the second. The first platform was about ten feet from the second platform. On another side of the second platform, the third platform was ten feet away. We had to get onto the first platform all at the same time. We were given two wooden boards, each about six feet long, about five inches wide, and about two inches deep. We had to bridge our way from one platform to the next without our bodies or either of the boards touching the ground. If our bodies or either platform touched the ground, we had to start over from the beginning. We were given 15 minutes to complete the task. It was a bit crowded on each platform, so we had to coordinate our movements very carefully and deliberately. Nevertheless, we finished in less than 15 minutes!
After these team-building exercises, we took a break for lunch. The LV staff had arranged lunch for us, which we ate at picnic tables on the lakeshore, a break which was a welcome respite from some difficult activities!
After lunch, we were told that we had spent the morning coming together as individuals and working together as a group. We were next told that in the afternoon, we would be watching in groups while we cheered on individuals taking on physical feats. It was at this point that we were introduced to the high ropes course. On the ropes course, there are several tall round poles, about the width of telephone poles, and which are perhaps one and a half times the height of telephone poles, and which have spikes in them for climbing on them, just as telephone poles have. In between the poles, at their tops, were strung ropes. Alternatively, between two poles there was a wooden beam, perhaps four inches wide.
Staff securely tightened harnesses around us, and securely attached the latches at the ends of the ropes into the harnesses around us. The ropes attached to us ran up to pulleys overhead. From there the ropes ran down to staff members on the ground. Thus when someone is ready to come down, they can be let down slowly since the rope is fed through a pulley, by which one can adjust the speed the rope is being used. Once we had been secured with the harnesses and the ropes, we started climbing up the telephone poles to tackle some physical challenges at some higher elevations.
Between the tops of two particular poles was strung a rope, perhaps twenty feet off of the ground. Hanging from that horizontal rope were a half dozen ropes, each of them tied to a tire. Once one had reached the top of the pole, one stepped onto the first tire, then made one's way to the next tire, and the next, all the way to the other pole, then turned around and headed back.
More than challenges such as that one, what I really wanted to do on the ropes course was to take the Leap Of Faith, which entails leaping off of a platform and catching a metal bar, ideally with two hands. I had been waiting to do it, since the staff members hadn't yet opened it to us, since they had been staffing other stations on the course. Finally they said that they would start letting people try to take the Leap Of Faith. I made my way over to that station. I got the special harness put on me. We got the latches on the ends of the ropes clicked into the harness which was already on me.
Then I began climbing the pole, trying not to think about how high I was going up off of the ground. Finally I reached the small platform, perhaps two feet long by two feet wide, which was probably between 20 to 30 feet off the ground. I slowly stood up on the platform and as I looked down, I began to think that I was quite high above the ground. I rather nervously and thus gingerly made my way to the edge of the platform. I looked from the edge of the platform at a horizontal metal bar hanging about five feet away from the platform. I thought of Indiana Jones, near the end of the film "Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade," as he looks across a deep and wide chasm, and mumbles out loud, "This is insane! Nobody can jump this!" From somewhere below which seemed far away, but which was much closer than it seemed, I heard some of my fellow LVs shouting cheers of encouragement to me. Something shifted in my spirit. I stopped worrying, and instead, in a more focused way, I started preparing to leap with enough energy to hopefully help me to reach the bar. I squinted at the bar and bent my knees a few times in a row. Then I leaped off of the platform. I caught the bar with two hands. My fellow LVs were cheering on the ground as I swung from the bar by my hands.
Once the cheers had subsided, the staff member directed me to let go of the bar. To do so was to defy everything that my instincts were telling me. I was hanging from a metal bar 25 feet above the ground. My animal instincts told me that if I let go, I would fall to the ground. The staff member repeated that I had to let go of the bar. I let go of the bar, and of course I did not fall. I was hanging in mid-air, at first staying a constant height above the ground, kept in place by the rope which was tied to me and which was slung through the pulley above me. Before I let go of the metal bar, had I resorted to logic, I would have reasoned that I was secured by a rope, made taut over the pulley, and further secured at the ground, and thus did not need to worry about falling. Since I had let go of the bar, the staff member slowly let me down by the rope down to the ground.
After taking the Leap Of Faith, I tackled another challenge on the ropes course. I climbed to the top of one of the poles. From there started a walkway of sorts. Between that pole and another pole stretched two horizontal ropes which were analogous to hand railings which one held as one walked on wooden slats hanging from those hand railings. However, this path was made a bit tricky because the wooden slats were not tied to each other. Therefore, they could, and often did, swing away from LVs who were trying to walk on them. I managed to walk slowly on the slats from one pole to the other, then slowly turned around and walked back to the first pole.
Aside from taking the Leap Of Faith, I also had really been wanting to zipline. When you zipline, you're secured to a cable which is horizontally suspended about 20 feet above the ground. When you're about to start ziplining away from the ziplining tower, the cable stretches horizontally away from you for a few hundred feet. When you step off of a platform, you whisk away down the cable. So I made my way over to the zipline. I found out that in this location, you have to climb to the top of the ziplining tower. Secured with a harness and ropes latched to me, I set off up the tower, a square tower with three flat walls with things like rocks sticking out of the wall every couple of feet in every direction, which one either grabs or on which one steps to climb the wall. I'd done rock climbing while similarly secured years earlier. Yet this time when I got about halfway up the climbing tower, I ran out of strength. Fortunately the height wasn't bothering me, perhaps partly because the climbing wall was in front of me, and thus I wasn't looking at the ground, but primarily at the wall in front of me. In the end, I ascended the upper half of the climbing tower largely because the staff member holding the rope on the ground helped by pulling on the rope, feeding it through the pulley at the top of the tower. I was glad to be at the top of the tower, about 30 to 40 feet off the ground.
At the top of the tower, there were a few other LVs already up there who were in line to zipline. When it got to be my turn, the staff member hooked me into the apparatus which connected to the cable. He instructed me not to dive or do anything drastic; he told me to merely step off. I stepped off of the tower. I first thought, rather than traveling horizontally across the cable, "Um... I'm falling... toward the ground..." Since I had been standing, and thus had stepped off of the tower, I did plunge a bit toward the ground. If I had been sitting on the tower, I would've merely leaned forward and fallen off of the tower, which I think may have been a more gentle start, in which case I believe I would've had a smoother trajectory, and thus would've felt a bit more assured that all was well. Nevertheless, soon my trajectory smoothed out, and I was more horizontally zooming through the forest clearing toward the other end of the zipline path. Once I got going horizontally, I enjoyed ziplining: it was a fun ride!
My fellow LVs and I enjoyed our time at Covenant Harbor. We got to know each other better, we worked together as teams, and we had fun all at the same time!
On our first full day of Orientation, we headed north to Covenant Harbor, a Christian camp and retreat center located on the shore of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, where we spent the day. At Covenant Harbor, they have ziplining, ropes courses and other challenging physical activities, sometimes which require participants to strategize with each other to be able to reach the goals. Thus, we went to Covenant Harbor, among other reasons, to help us to learn to work as a team.
Once we arrived at Covenant Harbor, in the morning, all of us LVs were split into teams. Each team headed off on its own with a staff member from Covenant Harbor, who directed us on which activities to do and who also supervised us while we were doing them. At first on my team, we spent time learning each others' names. Then the staff member asked us what our ground rules would be while we were working together on the activities. We noted that we wanted to continue working on learning each others' names. We established that everyone had to listen to all suggestions which were made. We said that we also wanted to make sure that we all were having fun!
Having set the ground rules for our group, we set off to begin the activities. We finished some of the activities; others we didn't successfully complete. One of them involved balancing the group of the dozen of us on what essentially was an oversized see saw, so that neither end of the see saw touched the ground. This task we completed fairly quickly, without much difficulty.
At another point, we were brought to three wooden platforms, each of them only slightly above the ground. The first platform was one yard square. The second platform was slightly smaller than the first. The third platform was a bit smaller than the second. The first platform was about ten feet from the second platform. On another side of the second platform, the third platform was ten feet away. We had to get onto the first platform all at the same time. We were given two wooden boards, each about six feet long, about five inches wide, and about two inches deep. We had to bridge our way from one platform to the next without our bodies or either of the boards touching the ground. If our bodies or either platform touched the ground, we had to start over from the beginning. We were given 15 minutes to complete the task. It was a bit crowded on each platform, so we had to coordinate our movements very carefully and deliberately. Nevertheless, we finished in less than 15 minutes!
After these team-building exercises, we took a break for lunch. The LV staff had arranged lunch for us, which we ate at picnic tables on the lakeshore, a break which was a welcome respite from some difficult activities!
After lunch, we were told that we had spent the morning coming together as individuals and working together as a group. We were next told that in the afternoon, we would be watching in groups while we cheered on individuals taking on physical feats. It was at this point that we were introduced to the high ropes course. On the ropes course, there are several tall round poles, about the width of telephone poles, and which are perhaps one and a half times the height of telephone poles, and which have spikes in them for climbing on them, just as telephone poles have. In between the poles, at their tops, were strung ropes. Alternatively, between two poles there was a wooden beam, perhaps four inches wide.
Staff securely tightened harnesses around us, and securely attached the latches at the ends of the ropes into the harnesses around us. The ropes attached to us ran up to pulleys overhead. From there the ropes ran down to staff members on the ground. Thus when someone is ready to come down, they can be let down slowly since the rope is fed through a pulley, by which one can adjust the speed the rope is being used. Once we had been secured with the harnesses and the ropes, we started climbing up the telephone poles to tackle some physical challenges at some higher elevations.
Between the tops of two particular poles was strung a rope, perhaps twenty feet off of the ground. Hanging from that horizontal rope were a half dozen ropes, each of them tied to a tire. Once one had reached the top of the pole, one stepped onto the first tire, then made one's way to the next tire, and the next, all the way to the other pole, then turned around and headed back.
More than challenges such as that one, what I really wanted to do on the ropes course was to take the Leap Of Faith, which entails leaping off of a platform and catching a metal bar, ideally with two hands. I had been waiting to do it, since the staff members hadn't yet opened it to us, since they had been staffing other stations on the course. Finally they said that they would start letting people try to take the Leap Of Faith. I made my way over to that station. I got the special harness put on me. We got the latches on the ends of the ropes clicked into the harness which was already on me.
Then I began climbing the pole, trying not to think about how high I was going up off of the ground. Finally I reached the small platform, perhaps two feet long by two feet wide, which was probably between 20 to 30 feet off the ground. I slowly stood up on the platform and as I looked down, I began to think that I was quite high above the ground. I rather nervously and thus gingerly made my way to the edge of the platform. I looked from the edge of the platform at a horizontal metal bar hanging about five feet away from the platform. I thought of Indiana Jones, near the end of the film "Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade," as he looks across a deep and wide chasm, and mumbles out loud, "This is insane! Nobody can jump this!" From somewhere below which seemed far away, but which was much closer than it seemed, I heard some of my fellow LVs shouting cheers of encouragement to me. Something shifted in my spirit. I stopped worrying, and instead, in a more focused way, I started preparing to leap with enough energy to hopefully help me to reach the bar. I squinted at the bar and bent my knees a few times in a row. Then I leaped off of the platform. I caught the bar with two hands. My fellow LVs were cheering on the ground as I swung from the bar by my hands.
Once the cheers had subsided, the staff member directed me to let go of the bar. To do so was to defy everything that my instincts were telling me. I was hanging from a metal bar 25 feet above the ground. My animal instincts told me that if I let go, I would fall to the ground. The staff member repeated that I had to let go of the bar. I let go of the bar, and of course I did not fall. I was hanging in mid-air, at first staying a constant height above the ground, kept in place by the rope which was tied to me and which was slung through the pulley above me. Before I let go of the metal bar, had I resorted to logic, I would have reasoned that I was secured by a rope, made taut over the pulley, and further secured at the ground, and thus did not need to worry about falling. Since I had let go of the bar, the staff member slowly let me down by the rope down to the ground.
After taking the Leap Of Faith, I tackled another challenge on the ropes course. I climbed to the top of one of the poles. From there started a walkway of sorts. Between that pole and another pole stretched two horizontal ropes which were analogous to hand railings which one held as one walked on wooden slats hanging from those hand railings. However, this path was made a bit tricky because the wooden slats were not tied to each other. Therefore, they could, and often did, swing away from LVs who were trying to walk on them. I managed to walk slowly on the slats from one pole to the other, then slowly turned around and walked back to the first pole.
Aside from taking the Leap Of Faith, I also had really been wanting to zipline. When you zipline, you're secured to a cable which is horizontally suspended about 20 feet above the ground. When you're about to start ziplining away from the ziplining tower, the cable stretches horizontally away from you for a few hundred feet. When you step off of a platform, you whisk away down the cable. So I made my way over to the zipline. I found out that in this location, you have to climb to the top of the ziplining tower. Secured with a harness and ropes latched to me, I set off up the tower, a square tower with three flat walls with things like rocks sticking out of the wall every couple of feet in every direction, which one either grabs or on which one steps to climb the wall. I'd done rock climbing while similarly secured years earlier. Yet this time when I got about halfway up the climbing tower, I ran out of strength. Fortunately the height wasn't bothering me, perhaps partly because the climbing wall was in front of me, and thus I wasn't looking at the ground, but primarily at the wall in front of me. In the end, I ascended the upper half of the climbing tower largely because the staff member holding the rope on the ground helped by pulling on the rope, feeding it through the pulley at the top of the tower. I was glad to be at the top of the tower, about 30 to 40 feet off the ground.
At the top of the tower, there were a few other LVs already up there who were in line to zipline. When it got to be my turn, the staff member hooked me into the apparatus which connected to the cable. He instructed me not to dive or do anything drastic; he told me to merely step off. I stepped off of the tower. I first thought, rather than traveling horizontally across the cable, "Um... I'm falling... toward the ground..." Since I had been standing, and thus had stepped off of the tower, I did plunge a bit toward the ground. If I had been sitting on the tower, I would've merely leaned forward and fallen off of the tower, which I think may have been a more gentle start, in which case I believe I would've had a smoother trajectory, and thus would've felt a bit more assured that all was well. Nevertheless, soon my trajectory smoothed out, and I was more horizontally zooming through the forest clearing toward the other end of the zipline path. Once I got going horizontally, I enjoyed ziplining: it was a fun ride!
My fellow LVs and I enjoyed our time at Covenant Harbor. We got to know each other better, we worked together as teams, and we had fun all at the same time!
No comments:
Post a Comment