Growing Up

We live at a camp, you know.

It's really cool.

And a little surreal.

Kevin and I brought his first youth group, Chalybeate Springs Baptist Church, to Look Up Lodge about twelve years ago. I think we brought two boys. Seriously. And, you know, as I recall, it was in planning that very first summer camp adventure that Kevin and I had our first major marital spat. Oh, I should really call it a fight, because that is what it was.

But that's not my point.

Back in the day, when we were new campers at Look Up we fell in love with a little feature of the camp called the zipline. It was big stuff then. Sure, this was before paintball, before the giant swing and before the climbing wall. Early days, my friends.

Back then, the zipline was the Thing To Do. Jumping off the deck perched high in the trees, careening across first woods and then the lake. Wild stuff.

Then, we were two ridiculously young youth leaders with barely any life experience under our thinner belts. (Well, my thinner belt - I should only speak for myself here.)

Fast forward a handful of years.

Now we live here. (That's the surreal part.)

And to our small children (that's another surreal part) the zipline is a Really Big Deal.

So after lunch yesterday when Dan lightly suggested that today would be a fun day for the kids to try out the zipline, a mild ruckus followed.

After chit chat back and forth all afternoon I think I finally gave in. Or something like that. I told London and Mosely and Bergen that we would go over to the zipline and we would look at it and then we would decide.

Call me silly, but I genuinely believed that standing up so high above the trees and wearing a small belt around their hips would cause all of these children, wild man Hawkeye included, to tremble a bit in fear and to ask to go back to the car.

We climbed the steps. We watched a few campers make the leap. And then I turned to three little upturned faces and I knew right away.

I was wrong.

These kids were ready to face The Zipline.

So now I was a little freaked out. (Maybe more than a little.)

Each at their turn appeared a bit cautious, but more than anxious for me to push them right off the edge. And that is what I really had to do to let them ride. Push them right off the edge.

I could not believe that I was watching my four year old soar across the lake attached to a cable strung from two poles. What in the world? Bergen thought he was a superhero. He declared, "I flew right over the deepness."

They rode it twice. London even managed to sneak in a third ride.

I think we may have created little Zipline Monsters. (Thanks Dan.)

If the zipline at Look Up doesn't say growing up, then I don't know what does.

(Sadly, there are no pictures of this milestone. The camera is somewhere near the Dead Sea.)