Taking it Right to the Edge

Thursday morning was fairly uneventful.  At staff meeting, Rocky explained the arrangement they had setup for Brandon, so at least everyone else was back on the same page, to a degree.  Breakfast and gazebo went as usual.  Brandon graced us with his presence during our cabin huddle, and managed to limit his distracting comments and negative remarks to one single continuous stream.  The total loss of that whole scheduled time every morning for any direct teaching was only one of the wonderful contributions that Brandon generously made to the rest of the members of the cabin. I am sure they learned things, but those things were more related to life lessons about patience than anything from Bible readings.

Mouth joined us for Paintball during our morning activity period, and we ended up using him for target practice, since Paladin had setup specific exercises to run through for Mega-week.  Then we divided into groups for a while and switched off instructors on different courses.  When we reconvened at the end, I looked over at Mouth and asked, “So, where’s Brandon?”  There was a nice silence as we looked around, and couldn’t see him.  It turned out that Paladin had sent a couple campers down to the command post, but I never really understood the full story as to why.  We found him down there and everything was fine, but it’s humorous that between the two of us he still managed to disappear during the first activity period under the new plan.

We had lunch, and headed off to the ropes course for the last time that week, and most of my guys still had yet to even attempt the MVP.  I assumed that Mouth would want to do the MVP with Brandon, since he was sort of ‘his’ counselor, but I was kind of okay with that.  I am always looking for any legitimate excuse to climb things on the ropes course, but the idea of being alone in close proximity with an unstable individual, in what could be a very stressful environment for him, was not particularly appealing to me.

We were able to get everyone who wanted to go, a chance to go up the MVP.  Once everyone else had gone, I asked Mouth if he wanted to go up with Brandon.  He declined, but suggested that I should go up with Brandon instead.  I was hesitant, but I really never could turn down a chance to go up the MVP.  For once in my life, I was NOT tempted to try it blindfolded.  I discussed a couple of loose contingency plans with Joy and Maggie, who would be belaying.  I wanted to make sure that we were taking full advantage of the fact that the belayer has a significant level of control during a climb.

After getting clipped in and looking up at the element, I turned to Brandon and reached out my hand.  He shook it, and I said something like “All the way to top.”  And with that we were off.  As we climbed up, and the general pattern was that I would assist Brandon up the next obstacle and then he would try to push forward, totally ignoring me behind him.  Luckily I am well capable of climbing without his assistance, but it was humorous how blatant his lack of consideration and teamwork was.  I felt no need to call him on it, especially since I was doing fine without his help.  We make it all the way to the top in less than 10 minutes, so we did well in that regard.  He didn’t seem too bothered by being high up, but I never gave him time to think about it anyway.  Once we were standing on top of the tire, we shook hands again.  “Good job, welcome to the top.”

He rappelled down first, and I unhooked the caterpillar rope on my way down, but still made it to the ground fairly quickly.  Maggie was still unhooking him as I touched down, and it was right about then that I heard Brandon’s first positive statement of the week.  Maggie was giving him some type of congratulating encouragement, “Nice job, you guys got up there pretty fast.”

“Yeah, I couldn’t have made it all the way to the top without BullsEye’s help.”

He didn’t say it to me, but he obviously knew I could hear him.  It was a start I guess.

Once that was done, we let a few people take a second attempt, until the activity period was over.  At that point, Maggie took the two girls up to canteen, to rendezvous with the rest of their cabin, and I kept my cabin at the ropes course to give a couple of my guys a bit more practice.  Mouth stuck around, but he was keeping busy tearing down the other elements for the day.  Rocky showed up, since he and Joy had agreed to belay the MVP, for Indy and Buffalo, who wanted to attempt it on their time off that afternoon.  While they were waiting, they were sending a few of my kids up the MVP and Leap, and I took Mike and James over to the Catwalk.  Over the next half hour or so I sent them both up repeatedly, and got Mike to a point where he would lean off or jump off, and was getting more comfortable.  At that point the only other elements setup, were the Leap and the MVP.  I saw an opportunity, and began to formulate a plan, which took advantage of the fact that we had so many staff members available.  Mike had mastered the Catwalk, and I wanted to push him farther, but I was well aware that I was running the risk that he would freak out if we raised the height.  But I also had a backup plan that to deal with the problem if that situation arose.  I am a big believer in pushing people to their limit, so I decided to give it a shot.  I brought Mike over to the Leap of Faith, and harnessed him up.  I made sure I had a harness on as well.  Two of my campers, Ryan and Garrett were almost to the top of the MVP, belayed by Rocky and Joy, as I hooked Mike in.  He was a bit apprehensive, but like I said before, he had an amazingly good attitude about these things.

“I don’t know about this.”

“Oh, don’t worry, you will do great. I’ve got you, all the way,” I told him as I picked him up by the belay rope, to test it.

With that, I headed over to the belay post, we said our commands, and he started climbing.  He did great all the way to the hook, and then a little past that, he paused.  Garrett had made it to the top of the MVP, and was rappelling down, right about then.  I had Rocky let him stop, and Garrett swung onto the bridge, and climbed over next to Mike.  Garrett proceeded to do a great job of talking Mike up the next twenty feet or so, staying parallel with him by climbing up the log ladder on the MVP side of the tree.  Once Mike made the curve away from there, Garrett finished belaying back to the ground, and Ryan started down.  Mike had made it up very close to the top by then, since the staples are well positioned in that section, but he was having trouble getting up onto the platform.  Ryan stopped at the cable that the rope swing hangs from, and talked Mike the rest of the way onto the platform.  Mike had been doing great all the way up.  He had slowed down at points, but with a little well planned encouragement, he hadn’t stopped anywhere for long.  I figure that he made it to the top in about ten minutes.  As soon as he swung his leg over, and straddled the platform, facing the tree, that all changed.  I guess he figured he was safe temporarily, and dropped his guard, emotionally.  All of a sudden, I could tell that he had totally freaked out.  He totally froze, and Ryan was trying to calm him down from his position over on the MVP.  I could see that Mike was really freaking out, and I knew from the experience a few days earlier, that it was only going to get worse.