What do you need to get across your high ropes course?

The teenager looked at it me through tears streaming down her face. Her helmet sat cockeyed on her head and she looked pink from a day on the river earlier. It was Day #4 of her wilderness adventure experience. She had climbed a 40-foot tower and now shook and cried while hanging on to a set of ropes that she needed in order to get over to the other side of the high ropes course at this wilderness adventure setting in the Ozarks of Missouri.

“Barb, I can’t do this. I can’t do it,” she sobbed.

Meanwhile, I found myself – someone who is afraid of heights, mind you – standing on a cable 40 feet above ground, about 10 feet away from her. I inched my way back to the platform. She kept falling apart. The only answer it appeared, and the guides waited to see if this needed to be done, was to get the rescue rope and team and take her down from the course if she decided not to do it.

I tried all the pep talks I knew in the world. You know: “Sure you can do it. You made it up to the stand, right?” And, “Aw come on, it’s fun out here!”

She wasn’t buying it.

Finally, the mom-of-four, the long-distance athlete in me from high school track and the wife of a former military guy who was never home and left me with teenage boys to raise said, “OK. Now, look at me, look at me. I want you to reach down in that pit inside you and pull up whatever it was that got you up here in the first place. Use that to step down here to me and I’ll help you across.”

Two hours later, and after a long rest on the middle platform taking deep breaths (her, not me – by this time I was spotting the water tower in the nearby town and thinking about what it would be like to be a turkey vulture), we zip lined down to the ground. She was smiling, and my biggest reward came when she looked at me, all dry-eyed on the ground, and said, “Thanks, Barb.”

That makes me think that this Women’s Outdoor Media Association is like a big high ropes course. There are lots of ways to achieve your goals and some of us have different methods than others, but all of us working together can help each other get through it and maybe even fly down the zip line of life to experience the joy of success. For too long, it’s been too intimidating for many women in the outdoor media – and not only because of some men who think that women should not be allowed in the good ole boys’ club, but also because some women out there clawed their way to the top or were born into the business, and are not inclined to help others.

Take a look at the links section here. If you’re not in there, why not? Do you have a website or blog yet?

Find other members and reach out to them. You’ll be surprised at the caliber of men and women in our ranks with the mission to focus on what’s being done for and about women in the outdoors.

Also, remember, within our ranks are some prestigious athletes who would skip across the ropes course of life, and they are accessible to you as members of The Women’s Outdoor Media Association. Fly fishing guides, Olympic athletes, professional shooters, a videographer, photographers, writers, editors and the list goes on and there’s a reason they’re here: they understand the mission.

If you’re standing on the platform up high and need someone to help you across the course, let us know. That’s why we started this association and we’re not to the zip line yet.