Courage

“I know it sounds cheesy, but I’d sorta like to be a hero,” confided Leroy as we talked about our hopes and fears for the upcoming trip to Snow Mountain Ranch.

That’s nice, I thought. I’d just like to survive with my faculties intact.

I agreed to go on this camping trip with my friends, Julie and Marcie, and six high-risk boys from the Glendale neighborhood. All the boys were smart, resourceful and outgoing. They were also rebellious and basically unmotivated.  But, most of all, they were endearing. 

To summarize four days into a few short paragraph, the camping trip was a lesson in courage. For four days and three nights we hiked trails and climbed cliffs. We rode horses, a white-water raft, and an alpine slide. We swam and roller-skated and told ghost stories around the campfire. We encountered problems and we solved them. We laughed a lot and did push-ups when we cussed.

Because we ALL agreed to challenge ourselves, I rode a horse (a very TALL horse) in cold, rainy weather over a treacherous, slippery trail for an hour while monitoring my breathing every second of the way.

So, I learned about courage by being courageous. I learned much more about courage, however, by watching the boys conquer activities they firmly believed were impossible for them.

Marquis jumped off a five foot cliff, into an icy river, ever though he is very afraid of water. B.J., who was terrified of heights, climbed to the top of a fifty-foot lodge-pole pine. Jonathon occasionally discarded his armor of bravado, stopped fantasizing about greed and violence, and talked honestly about missing his mother. Ben, who stubbornly believed that he is important only when he was in control, finally agreed to do what he was told.

And my most vivid memory? The one that come to mind whenever I shut my eyes and remember those four days, is Leroy, inching along the challenge course, fifty feet in the air, in the rain. It took him an hour to finish the course because his legs trembled violently with every step he took.

Leroy had never been able to balance his six-foot, skinny frame on a beam flat on the ground. And yet, he found the courage to successfully navigate walking on a wire, high in the air, one shaky step at a time.

Leroy got his wish. He was a hero.