Learning the Ropes
February 8, 2020

     In the spring of my senior year in high school, I took a course to become certified as an instructor at a local ropes course.  A consortium of the Native American tribes in my area – there are eight tribes headquartered in my county, thanks to the U.S. government‛s 19th century relocation program – had received a grant to build the ropes course (or perhaps they appropriated gaming income, I'm not sure).  One of the tribes, the Eastern Shawnees, donated the land, and the principal purpose of the course was youth development, particularly tribal youth development – a form of mitigation, you could say, of the lingering generational effects of the U.S. government‛s 19th century relocation program.

     But the ropes course served all comers, teenagers and adults, tribal or no – business groups, community groups, school groups, church groups.  And they needed instructors and facilitators.  At eighteen, I was the youngest person to be certified as an instructor in those early years, but I was used to hanging out with people who had at least a decade on me.  Blame it on my old soul.  I think that initial certification course took two or three days, and I maintained my certification through annual day-long workshops for the next four or five years.  Once I graduated from high school, I probably only facilitated about six to eight groups a year on average (and always as a supporting instructor, never as the lead), during the brief periods when I was home from college or the camp where I worked as a horseback riding instructor  in the summers.  But even with so few total facilitation days,  I took some of the most memorable lessons of my young life from the ropes course.  It was good training ground.

     The first half of the day for every group was devoted to team-building and skill development – the groundwork.  Every group would have its gunners who wanted to get more or less straight to the high elements, who weren‛t very interested in the warm-up games, the trust falls, the cooperation challenges.  About an hour and a half before lunch, we would usually take the groups up the hill onto the low-element part of the course, to test whether the participants were really internalizing our guidance and beginning to mesh together as a group in a way that would ensure their safety and maximize their experience on the high elements after lunch.

     We almost always did the swinging log.  This low-element used a log, about 18 inches in diameter and 12 feet in length, that was hung by cables between two large trees.  It was suspended about 12 to 18 inches off the ground and was strung loosely enough that it could swing back and forth by a few feet.  It could, but the point of the swinging log was not to swing.  We would divide the group, half on one side of the log, half of the other, and then alternate having a participant from each side step up on the log at one end and walk its length.  Simple enough, but there was a catch: each walker had to take help from each and every person standing on the ground, all of whom had been instructed in how to stand in a strong supportive stance (feet wide, knees bent, strong hands up).  If you tried to act the show off and walk the log by yourself, you were asked to step off (gently, taking a hand for assistance, so as to not accidentally hurt your comrades with your antics).  Let the next person go, we‛d say, and you can try again when you‛re ready to take help.  A ropes course is no place for loners, show-offs, and daredevils.    

     Nor is it a place for space cadets.  We likewise emphasized that the job of the participants on the ground – those giving help – was essential.  If you weren't paying attention to the person walking the log, you could miss your chance to walk the log yourself.  This was team effort, and we could not dispense with either giving or taking help.  And if you can‛t do both when you or your teammate is 18 inches off the ground, why should we trust you to take care of your responsibilities when you or your teammate is 25 or 30 feet off the ground?