Whitewater Learning

I spent the entire week outside of Cleveland, TN on a Boy Scout Venture Crew summer camp. We spent Monday driving the 8 hours to our camp location with a stop at Wal-Mart to pick up our groceries. Grocery shopping with eight 16-18 year olds was a very interesting experience! Our first day we mountain biked 8 1/2 miles on an intermediate mountain bike trail and most of the boys crashed, with one boy crashing 6 times. This day we learned the importance of choosing a path and sticking to it, which we applied to life and enduring through trials. The second day we learned some map reading skills and got in our kayaks and split up into teams of two to see who could navigate the 9 points we were given and return. It was fun watching the boys learn from their mistakes and have fun out on the water. We learned the importance of having a plan and a road map in our life's journey and talk about how our spiritual map is the scriptures and we can check our spiritual compass through prayer to make sure we are on the right path. The third day was spent riding the Ocoee River in rafts with a guide. We had a lot of fun on the rapids and learned that sometimes life can be calm and at others it can be very rough, but sometimes the rough times in life can be fun. The fourth day we got a chance to become the guide on the river and practice some white water swimming, rescuing, flipping the rafts, and we all got multiple turns as guide on the river. We all eventually guided down a class 4 rapid successfully. This experience we related to how we first learn how to navigate our own lives and then we can help others navigate the waters of life. I got some good runs in during the quiet morning hours to stay on my training plan and we played a lot of volleyball, some ultimate frisbee, and there was a lot of swimming after the daily activities. I had a lot of fun and learned a lot, but the best part for me was watching the boys gain some confidence, overcome some of their fears and come together as a team. I saw some great examples of Hardy attitudes this week and it kept the reading I was doing in the forefront of my mind.