Leadership Retreat, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

This past weekend I went to the Leadership Class retreat that I mentioned here in an earlier post.  It got off to a rocky start for me because I was battling a cold that wouldn't quit, and it was raining and quite chilly when I arrived at the 4-H camp where the retreat was being held.  (Although I took the camera with me, I didn't have the opportunity to use it, so the pictures in this post are not mine.)

I dosed up on cold medicine to help me make it through the day.  Although the rain was coming down when I first arrived, it eventually stopped.  The sun never really came out much to warm us up, but we muddled our way through the activities just the same under a cloudy sky. Our hoodies and jeans kept us warm enough, but they couldn't take the damp, clammy feel out of the air around us.

Upon arriving, we were each given a slip of paper with an area of the camp that was our responsibility to clean before we left the next day.  Our first assignment was to get our beds made up with the bedding we had been told to bring with us.  

There were twelve of us in our group, eight women and four men with our ages ranging from early twenties to the sixties.  The women were in one cabin and the men in another.

After we had our beds made and our bags stored, we met outside for some icebreakers and activities which were designed to help us learn each other's names and start to get to know one another.  From there we moved on to several team-building activities.  These activities were like puzzles that we had to work together to solve as a team.  If you have ever watched those reality shows where one team is pitted against another while trying to solve some sort of a physical and/or mental challenge, and the only way for the team to succeed is if all the members of it work together, then you have an idea of what the activities were like.  The only difference being that we weren't pitted against another team. It was just the twelve of us. We faced challenges that we had to solve by working together to find the answers.

I felt a little out of my element, and as one of the older members of the group, felt that my age added an extra challenge for me that not all of the team members had to struggle with.  We stuck it out and made it through the day.  They fed us a lovely spaghetti dinner that night and then it was right back to more activities. We also had a short course that evening where we studied some chapters from a book on leadership followed by a discussion of the main points of the book.  We finished out the night with a bonfire before we headed to our bunks for the night.

Unfortunately, I didn't sleep at all well that night.  The air still felt clammy.  I was too warm with my blanket over me and too cold with it off of me.  My head was stopped up, and I was sneezing and coughing intermittently.  I was in the cabin with seven other women, of course, and several of them were snoring loudly. 

I have to take a water pill for the high blood pressure I have that I inherited from my Mom, and it seemed to be working overtime that night making it necessary for me to don shoes and a jacket and arm myself with a flashlight several times during the night to leave the cabin and follow the dark trail back to the recreation building where the restrooms were located.  To say that it was not a restful night for me is an understatement.  The bed was not comfortable for me at all.  Am I the only one who doesn't sleep well when not in my own familiar bed at home?

The next morning I got up so stiff I could barely move.  Although I am only fifty-two years old, I have arthritis in my spine, my hips, my knees and my hands.  Most days I can keep the pain under control with medication, but relief wasn't coming for me that day.  There were too many factors working against me: the dampness in the air, the chilly temperatures, the strenuous activities of the previous day, the sleepless night, the strange, uncomfortable bed, and the fact that I was still struggling to fight off that head cold and that my immune system was not functioning as well as it could.  All these things contributed to making the pain that I had worse than it normally would be.

I got dressed and went to the dining hall where we were served french toast and fresh fruit and yogurt with granola for our breakfast.  The food we were served for all three of the meals that we had there was quite good, and it was nice that I didn't have to do any cooking those two days.  

After breakfast, we had to get geared up in mountain climbing harnesses and helmets and then headed out to the high ropes course there at the camp.  I told the director of our program about the pain I was in and told him I was not going to be able to do the course. He had no problem with that and told me I could cheer on the others from the ground.  One other lady, who is in her sixties, also declined the chance to do the ropes course.  I was glad I wasn't the only one sitting it out. She has knee problems and had recovered from a heart attack from some time in her past, so she was wise to forego the adventure too, in my opinion. Clint Eastwood's scene from Dirty Harry came to my mind.  

A man's got to know his limitations, and a woman needs to know hers too.  That ropes course was definitely beyond my limitations that day.

I still had to wear the gear and learn the techniques and the safety warnings with the others, but I didn't have to climb the ladder up twenty feet off the ground and balance on cables suspended between the trees or climb and swing from the ropes and such.  The high ropes course, although part of the Leadership class, is done totally by choice, so anyone who didn't feel comfortable with it could watch from the ground while the rest "took to the trees," literally.  

This video is of a high ropes course similar to the one at the camp. It is a little different but much of it is the same.  It gives you an idea of what the course was like, at least.  For some reason this video begins with the ride on the zip line which was actually the finishing up point on the course at the camp where we were, but if you keep watching, you will see more of the ropes course up in the treetops.

After the ropes course, we met again for a final discussion of the things we had learned during the retreat.  Then we were served tacos and salad for our lunch.  After lunch we had to pack up our belongings and then clean up the areas we had been assigned when we first arrived at the camp.  We met one final time for a quick reminder about our next meeting before we all headed out on our separate ways.

Although there were some definite down sides to this retreat, I still thought it was a positive experience for me.   I learned quite a bit, I met some interesting people from a cross section of our community, and I made some new friends.  I'm looking forward to the once a month all-day classes that I'll be attending with this group of people for the next nine months.  I'm wondering what experiences I will have and what I will learn.  I hope I am able to grow from this class and learn some useful leadership skills.  Stay tuned.  I'll let you know more about it as time goes by.