High ropes

The eyes of fifteen-year-old Taylor Grant told the story.

Bent over precariously on the Indiana Jones bridge, fifty feet above the ground, she struggled to maintain her balance, while at the same time, struggled to control the mixture of fear and adrenaline that anyone of her friends could see as evident from her wide-open eyes.

With her arms spread out to her side like a low-flying bird struggling against the pull of gravity, she was determined to make it across the bridge for the first time without snatching ahold of the rope tying her to the cable running above her head.

She was directly in the middle of the bridge now, a series of planks spread out over varying distances covering a total span of about 35 feet. The place her feet stopped was on the last plank short of the largest empty chasm of planks, a yawning 3 1/2 to 4 foot span, that would force her to nearly jump to the next plank.

As she weighed her options and gathered to compose herself, a friend began to countdown for her, three seconds of a do or die stretch to the next plank.

"Count slower," gasped Taylor.

Then, while her friend restarted a slower count, Taylor breathed with every second, and then threw her weight forward and stretched for the plank, landing lightly on it, a move that carried her toward the end of the challenging element at the Camp Bighorn high ropes course.

Afterwards, she got a chance to explain her plan that helped her cross the bridge.

"I wanted to take a deep breath every time she counted. One, two, three. Because a deep breath calms people down and I wanted to try it," says Grant.

The struggle for serenity atop a series of tiny platforms and swaying ropes was something I could identify with after my initial venture on the high ropes course a few hours prior to Taylor's jaunt across the bridge.

After starting the course with the brazen foolishness of a person who does not realize that objects appear shorter when standing on solid earth, I soon found myself standing in the middle of the Indiana Jones bridge with only the fierce desire of wanting to be on the far side of the bridge to accompany my racing heart beat.

The bridge was the third element, or obstacle, of the high ropes course, and the first one that really gave me time to concentrate on how high I was above the ground. It was also the third of five different emotional rollercoasters that I would experience from each obstacle in the course, a process of personal growth that would teach me about trust and control according to Josh Vandermeer, a senior staff member of the camp that was running the course.

I started off the course by climbing through a tube net, a circular rope ladder that enveloped me starting off only a couple feet wide at the bottom and widening a little bit towards the top. In an interesting form of reverse psychology, the net was claustaphobic and awkward enough to get me to strive for an escape even if it meant it was a platform 50 feet above the Earth.

The second challenge was very similar to the first, a mess of ropes making me work hard enough to forget any fear that I would have.

The next three challenges, starting off with the Indiana Jones bridge, were different. The lack of ropes was now something I sorely missed and the little amount of substance between me and the ground was growing more and more worrisome.

After the bridge, I then crossed a tight rope holding onto a single parrallel rope that crisscrossed with another rope at the middle of the bridge. The rope started off hanging at eye level and then crisscrossed at shoe level.

The idea was to hold the rope out in front of you creating tension and by the middle of the obstacle you would nearly be lying flat on the ground making it difficult to stare at anything but the ground far below you.

By this time, I had a mixture of adrenaline, fear and relief coursing through my body, a cocktail of emotions that were delicately balanced just in time for the zip line. The trust that Vandermeer mentioned was seriously in question for this element as you were forced to take that treacherous step off the platform upon which you plummet for two seconds before the line catches you and swings you mercifully away from the ground.

"It does have a lot to do with trust, and you can really see when people are up there how much they do trust the system up there to hold them up," says Vandermeer. "A lot of times people that fall down or let themselves fall down do have the trust."

It's a challenging course and Vandermeer says everything you learn up there translates once you're back on solid ground.

"I've actually learned some huge lessons up there just in terms of all that has helped me learn how to live differently down here. Every time I jump off the zip line platform I need to remind myself ‘Josh let go'," laughs Vandermeer.

By jumping off the platform, he has to trust, trust the ropes and trust the people that built them.