‘We’re here for you’

Of course there’s the fear of falling.

The ropes can’t possibly hold you. The wire’s too thin and wobbly. And from 20 feet in the air, the muddy, rain-soaked ground looks awfully far away.

Then there’s the fear of failing.

Before God and everyone. The cool cadre of Outward Bound instructors, lithe as cats, running this tangle of wire, rope and timber called a high ropes course. The Benson High ROTC teacher, his camera and voice aimed at you. The 34 others in this Benson High summer program for incoming ninth-graders, especially the four others in your group.

There’s Jeff, the tall, lanky sophomore mentor with a deep voice; Jessica, the alleged scaredy-cat now leaning upside down off the platform; Seth, the glasses-wearing, grinning football player; and Liz, with braces, green heart earrings, an identical twin and a family tradition of attending Benson High.

It was 9:45 on this once-rainy, now-sunny morning and the fifth group member, Elizabeth “Liz” Dietz, watched them.

Jessica Consolver, 14, went first. She had slipped off the wire and, held only by her harness, dangled like a spider. She clambered back onto the wire and made it across. The accomplishment emboldened her, so she sat on the platform and leaned all the way back, her curly black hair spilling down, her giggles filling the morning air.

Liz Dietz grew pale. She started to breathe fast. She didn’t think she could do this.

“You’re not going to die,” the other Liz, Elizabeth Green, told her. “Trust me.”

There was that word again. Trust is a cornerstone of Outward Bound, one of the country’s best-known, most far-reaching outdoor education nonprofits. It has roots that stretch back to World War II and a new location in north Omaha.

Outward Bound has built a high ropes course on the eastern edge of the Omaha Home for Boys campus to teach teamwork, confidence and trust. These students are among the first to use it.

Last week with the Benson kids, the Outward Bound instructors practiced the art of falling into each other’s arms and hoisting each other shoulder high while horizontal.

They all did it but Liz Dietz. She crossed her arms and allowed herself to fall back into this circle of new friends. But she didn’t quite trust them to hoist her up and wouldn’t let herself be lifted.

How safe that seemed now.

“I have a severe fear of heights,” she told them on the swaying wood platform.

“I’ll be there all the way,” Jeff Lechner said. He had crossed rather gracefully for someone who, at 6-foot-5 and 160 pounds, had the most challenging center of gravity for this kind of experiment. He had half-joked about whether the knots in his harness would hold. They did.

Dietz frowned. She tried to take a step onto the wire and then withdrew her black Nike sneaker.

“It’s like pulling my stomach,” she said. “I can’t do it.”

A third Liz, 28-year-old Outward Bound program manager Liz Cornish, cheered her from the platform.

“Let’s go, Liz,” she said. “You got this.”

“Come on, Dietz!” Jeff shouted from the other side.

Dietz stood her ground: “I don’t want to do it.”

Jeff again: “I’m right here for you, Dietz! You got this! You got this, Dietz! It’s all you! You have to do this!”

Dietz planted herself on the platform and put a hand on her hip. Never had a first step seemed so hard.

Never, to the others, had it seemed so necessary.

“Right now, Liz, you’re letting your fear take over,” Cornish said.

Dietz stuck her left foot into the air and tentatively placed her foot onto the wire, then pulled it back to the safety of the platform.

“I can’t do it. I can’t.”

“Come on, Liz!” called Seth Lucht, age 14.

“Come on, Liz!” called Jeff, the only 15-year-old in the group.

Dietz sighed. She started to breathe hard. Tears filled her gray-green eyes and began to roll under her glasses, down her cheeks.

Liz Green wrapped an arm around her and told her it’s OK.

“You can do it,” Green said. “It’s fine. No one’s going to let anything happen to you.”

Green pointed to Seth, who had reached the middle of the wire and did a look-mom-no-hands pose.

“Doesn’t that look like fun?”

“Seth looks like he’s sitting on a couch watching TV, he’s so relaxed,” Cornish said.

Turning to Dietz, she asked: “What do you need right now?”

“To get off this!”

Cornish was calm. She, too, had been a scared, frustrated 14-year-old. It had taken her forever to scale a climbing wall that her peers had nearly flown up. At the top, she felt shame — not glory. She had collapsed in tears and told the instructor she was tired and weak. She wasn’t strong like her peers.

“You don’t understand what strength means,” the instructor told her. Cornish got the message. It wasn’t what she couldn’t do. It’s what she could do. She joined Outward Bound and got two college degrees in outdoor education.

A Tulsa, Okla., native, she’s in Omaha to run Outward Bound’s latest venture.

“This is how this stuff works,” Cornish said. “The fear makes tears well up, it makes the heart beat faster. That feeling of accomplishment is going to quiet that fear.”

Green stepped off the platform onto the wire.

“Oh, geez,” she said, looking down. “This is far!”

She trucked across, leaving the two other Lizzes, Dietz and Cornish, on the other side.

“Dietz!” the others called from across the wire. “We’re here for you.”

Minutes ticked past.

At 10:03 a.m. three of the course’s challenges awaited Dietz. Another group was on the way up.

“Let’s go, quick and easy,” Cornish said. “You’re not going to fall.”

Dietz again stuck out a foot. Her left arm clung to a rope slippery from rain and sweat.

She inched across the wire slowly, legs wobbling, arms shaking.

“That’s it! That’s it! You got this!” cried the others.

She made it to the center, where the wire intersected like an X with another wire and more rope. She needed to step over the rope she clung to, swing her legs over and pivot her body back to the first wire.

Done. And done.

Step by step, those black Nikes with their pink anklet socks moved closer to sweet relief.

She leaned back like a pro and pulled herself up to the second platform.

She exhaled. Deeply.

Jessica, Seth, Jeff and Liz the friend exploded into cheers and applause.

Now the other challenges flew. The parallel wires with wood platforms spaced intermittently. The two logs that formed a letter V. The parallel wires without wood platforms or a rope to cling to.

Liz the instructor called to Liz the champion.

“You’re cruisin’! You’re cruisin’!”

On the ground, students who had completed the course headed for water and a snack.

Jessica glowed. Heck, yeah, she’d do this again. Seth glowed. He felt awesome. Jeff glowed. He’d done ropes courses before but this one was the most challenging “by far.” Liz Green glowed. She was nervous, but it got easier.

And Liz Dietz?

She was as cautious with her self-assessment as she was with those first steps. She wasn’t sure she’d do it again.

What made her do it this time?

“I didn’t want to go back down the rope and have people saying, ‘Why didn’t you?’”

The fear of failing trumped the fear of falling.

This Liz wanted to succeed.

That’s the magic that happens on the ropes course, said Cornish, who believes so much in this lesson she had it tattooed on her arm in Latin.

“Audentis fortuna iuvat,” reads the thick black letters.

“Fortune,” she said, translating from “The Aeneid,” “favors the bold.”

Contact the writer:

444-1136, erin.grace@owh.com

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