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The challenges offered by the Heard Museum’s new ropes course test more minds than muscle.
By Danny Gallagher, McKinney Courier-Gazette
The team power pole, a large wooden pole topped off with a platform that’s barely wider than a pair of size 12 shoes, looks easy from the ground.
But once you’re standing on top of the 40-foot obstacle looking down and have to jump to a metal trapeze rail that’s dangling from two metal springs and just out of arm’s reach, the task turns the easiest thing in the world into the longest two-and-a-half seconds of your life.
Angela Merola of Dallas scurried up the obstacle at the Heard Natural Science Museum and Wildlife Sanctuary’s new ropes course like a squirrel evading a predator unaccustomed to climb trees. But when she reaches the top, it takes her a whole two minutes just to get the nerve to stand on her own two feet.
She clutches the wooden platform and slowly leans forward to get one knee up, then the other. Her knees shake as the platform wobbles a few centimeters and she tries to maintain her balance. She takes a look down the progress she made and utters “Oh crap!” and a couple of other choice words that aren’t fit for publication.
She doesn’t move for a whole minute, except to put her face in her hands.
Heard volunteer Chuck Kawlow tried to ease her fears.
“The easy part’s done,” Kazlow said as he slacks out the rope tethered to Merola’s harness. “Just take your time…but we don’t serve supper up there.”
She musters enough courage to announce she’s going to count to three and jump for the bar. She counts, 1-2-3, leaps off the platform and reaches for the bar. Her hands wrap around the trapeze, then slip off just as fast leaving her dangling by the rope that Kazlow has threaded through a ground pole.
Merola wasn’t disappointed that she didn’t grab the trapeze. She’s just pleased she forced herself to give it a try, she said.
Marcy Freiburg, the Heard Museum’s ropes and outreach coordinator, said the 14-part rope course has been designed to use the elements to test the nerves and strength of the people who dare to tackle them, regardless of their age.
The course that opened to the public last Saturday also featured a 500 foot zip line that runs the entire length of the course and a rock climbing wall that runs 110 feet up a 250-year-old Bur Oak tree that twists and turns to the very top.
“It adds another element to team building and communication,” Freiburg said. “People have different reactions when it’s in nature. Compared to just a straight pole, any tree adds more character to it. It’s mind blowing.”
The events and obstacles are designed to test and strengthen team building and trust within various groups. Freiberg said the advantages to holding the course in a natural setting aren’t just the extra challenges they provide.
“Whether they realize it or not, people have this connection in nature,” she said. “It’s hard to describe but they are building teams in nature, as opposed to an unnatural, manmade setting.”
The obstacles also present different challenges to different challengers, like Merola who said she wanted to tackle the course to test her faith.
“It’s really about realizing things are going to be OK when everything looks like it’s not going to be OK,” she said.
Contact Danny Gallagher at dgallagher@acnpapers.com.
