Epilogue: Little Chief Returns

August. 1983. Ridgecrest, North Carolina. I am dead asleep in my bunk. Other campers are sleeping around me, and as I recall it, they stay asleep as the counselors rouse me and we slip out into the night.

In that way that is unique to 15-year-olds, it is an honor to be awakened in the middle of the night for this particular purpose. It means I am eligible to attain the rank of “Little Chief,” the equivalent of an Eagle Scout at Camp Ridgecrest for Boys.

But there is a test. After a ceremonial pep talk from the counselors, we few candidates are placed under a vow of silence and led into the mountains where we must gather wood, start a fire and keep it going all night. If we succeed, we must complete a trail run up the side of a mountain, eat in solitude, and prepare the ceremonial camp fire for the next evening--all in complete silence.

The trail run is approximately a mile, switchback after switchback. Repeatedly, you think you see the top, but it is only a false summit. Each one sucks the determination out of you. Walk or become overtaken by the counselor in the rear and you fail.

But the run hurts. With no warm up, with no breakfast, you take off running, you almost always start too fast, and it hurts. All you can think is “walk and you can breathe again. Walk and the pain will stop.” At least your brain tells you this. The truth is otherwise.

Walk and the pain is just beginning.

I walked. Twice. Once in 1983 and again in 1984 after determining that I would not again fail. I walked anyway. I did not like myself because I walked. I walked because I did not like myself. What a trap.

It’s not as if I lived in a depression for the last quarter century. I’ve been really happy and have been wondrously blessed. But it still gnawed at me. I felt like a quitter. That feeling probably was a good thing. After all, it is our dissatisfaction that makes us work to improve. My dissatisfaction probably motivated me to overachieve academically and professionally.

All that is fine, but guys feel the judgment of society on their athleticism, probably in much the same was that girls suffer judgment about their weight or their looks. I know I should probably have turned the page a long time ago, but as time creeps up on us, we guys start to wonder, “is this all there is? Is this all I’m going to be?” My question also asked, “are you still a quitter?”

Every time I finish one of these events, and every time I improve to do something I could never do before, I get to answer that question the way I want. I am not a quitter. I am not just the shy, studious one. When I was a teenager, I walked when I should have run. Now, I am old enough to simply waddle around the golf course with my colleagues. But I don’t. I swim. I bike. I run. I don’t quit. I finish. I compete because I like myself, and I like myself because I compete. It may be 25 years late, but the Little Chief has returned.