Let’s be clear. I am not really an “outdoors” kind of girl. I appreciate nature. I love my garden. I run. I bike with my kids, but given the choice of camping and staying indoors I’m very happy to hang out in air conditioning. Colleen and I work opposite shifts so we never see each other. I figured with her sense of humor, we could make this assignment bearable. And to tell the truth, I DO like a challenge. My goal was to show them that not only am I not a “princess” but I could easily handle every challenge and survive a day on the mountain.

We had a wonderful group to “survive” with … members of the NASCAR Women’s Auxiliary welcomed Colleen and me, our photographers and more importantly our cameras. There were plenty of laughs and jokes at the beginning and if you have to hang out in the woods on a miserably hot day you want to have some people who are … dare I say it … ”fun”.

After introductions, our leader Terry Vaughn from High Intensity Team Building asked for volunteers for the first activity. I figured that I’d get my volunteering out of the way early so I agreed to be one of the first “victims”. Bad idea … especially when you don’t know what you are volunteering to do.

Terry’s first goal was to teach us what to do if we should ever become trapped in a car underwater. He wanted to simulate the stress our bodies would feel after an accident and a plunge. So the volunteer would have to do a series of jumping jacks, dunk their head in a cooler full of water and then hold their breath for as long as possible.

I heard the instructions and stood there. Thank goodness for John Gray. He’s one of our photographers and he’s the one who nixed my participation right away. No way was he going to have me with a head full of wet hair at the BEGINNING of the shoot. Thanks John. I was already going without make-up for this assignment … did I really need to have awful hair too?

For the next several hours … we hiked, talked about how to get out of critical situations and in general learned to try and prepare for the unexpected in life. I don’t think I’ll ever put myself in a situation where I might get lost in the wilderness and have to use some of what I learned in the camp … but you never know. I realize as I think back over the day that the most important lessons that we learned are ones that will help you not just survive in the woods but also thrive in life. Don’t over analyze, yet learn to think about situations in different, non-traditional ways. Make use of your “community”, everyone has something to offer and it might just be what you need to pull you through. And finally learn to laugh and dare I say it? In any situation … ”Have fun with it!”

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