#mostly i feel good at snippets of stuff whee

[daftpatience]

hypothetically. if i had sketched up a lil chapter one intro thingy for my ocs Nate & Dr. Salt and i knew it wasnt gonna really get any more finished cus i just wanna have fun and not make it into anything super serious,,,, would it be fun if i posted it?

[gdmli]

On and Off the Wall

As I was preparing to write about my own experiences last week at Camp Dodge for our Off The Wall Leadership session, my mind kept wandering to my class members and how much being a part of or witness to their experiences meant to me. As I was still sorting out my own reflections, I reached out to Nichole Aksamit Purcell and thanked her for sharing her story on facebook about her unique rappelling experience in such a positive, thoughtful way. I asked Nichole if I could feature her reflection in the blog post I was working on. She kindly said “yes” and responded with this amazing story, which I believe is a post of it’s own. I will work on my story too, although the bar has been set very high. 

-Brooke

From Nichole Aksamit Purcell: What I Learned On and Off the Wall

On the phone to my sister in Denver last week, I confided that I was dreading our upcoming “off the wall” leadership class. Based on the Camp Dodge location, Amy’s cryptic notes, and the ominous waivers, I’d surmised that all manner of physical horrors might be awaiting me: obstacle courses, escape rooms, sky diving, rappelling. 

 “Ooh, rappelling! How fun!” she cooed, without a hint of sarcasm. “I LOVE rappelling!” 

 My baby sister, whom I helped raise and who is now a high school math teacher, got all the “fearless adventurer” genes. She’ll gladly zip line across a canyon, go whitewater rafting, and stand-up paddle-board across a lake on a dare. I am afraid of heights. I get claustrophobic putting on a turtleneck. And rappelling to me is something you do not for fun but only if absolutely necessary to help you escape some other peril—like, say, death by mauling at the claw-studded hands of a grizzly bear. 

 “What exactly about rappelling is fun for you?” I asked. 

 “Once you’re over the edge, you’re free,” she said. “You just kind of float down between push-offs, and it’s just exhilarating!” she said. “Plus there’s math and physics and stuff.”

 “OK, you sweet freak,” I said. “I’ll try to channel your joy before I plummet to my death.”

 Fast forward to me at the top of the rappel  tower at Camp Dodge last Thursday. Helmet on. Shirt tucked. Harness clipped in. Back turned to the edge. Still slightly out of breath from climbing six flights. Saying “right hand, brake hand!” Worrying about that sudden, unnerving flash of pain that hits me behind the knees when I’m at any substantial height without a railing.

 “Step back to the edge, please,” the Army captain says. “This is not the edge?” I say, gulping air. Oh, boy. I shuffle backward toward my fate. The arches of my feet hug the rounded metal lip of the roof. My gloved hands clutch the ropes. Suddenly I am very aware that I do not know what I am doing. At all. 

 “Wait! Are the ropes supposed to be twisted like that? What am I supposed to do with my legs again?” Is the carabiner secure? I don’t know how to tie a bowline knot! I don’t want to die!

 “It’s OK,” The captain says, reading my panic and setting it aside with his calm instructions. “Lean back, keep your legs straight, and don’t step until I tell you to.”

 My toes dig in in protest but eventually surrender to backward momentum as I lean back on my heels. The rope tightens but miraculously holds, and the captain tells me to step. “Woo! You got this!” someone cheers from below as I take a few baby steps backward down the wall. 

 I decide that I will be OK as long as I don’t look down. I will look at the wall, I will look up at the sky, I will NOT look down, and I will try somehow in all of this to find the joy. 

 I raise my brake hand and push off, one nice little bound. The rope whizzes by. My feet land reassuringly a few yards lower down the wall. There are whoops from below. OK. Woo! That wasn’t so bad. 

 I do it again. Whee! More cheers. Some clapping. OK, maybe that WAS a little fun.

 Just a couple more and I...oh, no. The rope catches and I feel a tug at my side.  I look at the rigging and my heart sinks. This is bad. I shout to the captain: “My shirt’s caught in the rope!” 

I wiggle but don’t have a way to pull it free. If I raise my brake hand, more of my shirt will be sucked into the twisted mess in front of me. I can’t take my left hand off the guide rope or I’ll tip over. I think for a moment about wriggling out of my shirt and unclipping the harness, but I can tell from the voices below (“You’re doing great! Hang in there!”) that I’m still too high up for that to be a good idea. I sense movement above and it dawns on me: Someone is going to come for me. 

 I’m breathing heavily now and my face is hot and I realize that I’m listing backward, almost upside down now because my shirt’s jacked up and my guide arm is shaking. I need help. I cannot let go. I cannot move myself up or down. And I cannot look down. I focus on the wall and the sky and the rope and the purple fabric tangled in it. Breathe. Breathe. Don’t let go. Don’t look down. 

 The Army captain is now coming down a parallel set of ropes. He swings over like an acrobat to support me, tells me to let go of the ropes now, (I am being supported from below but didn’t even realize it), and tugs at the caught shirt. He can’t get it loose either and hollers to the ground for a knife. There’s a slow motion toss and a miss and a toss and a miss and another toss before he catches the pocketknife. It feels surreal, like something from an action adventure movie. But he then flips the blade open and carefully and cleanly cuts the bottom front of my shirt off and lowers me down as if this is an ordinary and everyday occurrence. 

 On the ground, there are cheers and smiles and applause, and Brad is kindly waiting for me with an extra shirt. I am so relieved to be on the ground and too eager to be free of the harness to be worried about modesty or to be properly mortified about having had my shirt cut off in front of 30 people I’m still getting to know. I joke: “If I’d have known, I’d have worn a more exciting bra for you guys. Hahaha!”

 With my head pounding, I pull on my overshirt, wipe my face, and text my husband and my sister: “I did it! I rappelled and lived! ... My shirt also got stuck in the rope, and they had to cut me out of it in midair. But the headline here is: I lived!”

 The lessons of the day are still crystallizing for me, but so far I have landed on these:

1. Sometimes you just gotta hang in there. I am typically pretty self reliant and often impatient. But in that moment I was utterly stuck. I didn’t know enough about how to get myself unstuck safely. All I could do was hold on and wait. One part of leadership is recognizing your limitations, accepting and waiting for help, and trusting others to come through for you. 

2. We all need emotional belaying at times—and we each have in us the power to lift others up. I’m a mostly green-orange with gold tendencies and the teensiest dash of blue, which is to say I tend to be more logical, creative, and capable than sensitive. But dangling there, having overcome one fear only to be jerked straight into another, I can’t tell you how much it meant to me to hear words of encouragement from the ground. I felt the power of others’ support—and I cheered even harder for everyone who had to rappel after me. 

3. It’s not enough to feel grateful. It’s important to say and show thanks in tangible ways. The morning after this class it dawned on me: I didn’t know the names of the two men who helped me down. I wasn’t even sure if I’d thanked them. I emailed Lt. Col. Turner to get their addresses and have since sent them each a thank you card with a purple heart: a heart-shaped snippet of my torn purple shirt.

 In the end, I do not regret stepping backwards off a rappel tower. Even if it didn’t go perfectly, I am proud that I pushed past my own fear and briefly felt my sister’s joy. I’m even glad for the minor catastrophe, which showed me I can keep calm in a crisis and also taught me to be more trusting of, grateful for, and supportive of others. And, though I lost part of my shirt, I feel lucky to have gained a tribe of support, a new nickname (yes, you may call me Crop Top!), and one heckuva story. 

 Nichole

 PS: One last little lesson about proper attire for rappelling: Don’t wear any top that’s too thin or too loose. Be sure to tuck it in. And if you’re not sure it’ll stay clear of the rope? Take it off! ;)