Lessons Learned Carrying a Log Down Pearl Street Wearing No Shoes
by Drew Holmes
As Boomer Music’s Educational Representative for the Thompson School District, I have been helping my teachers get ready for the upcoming school year. It has been awesome to see the kids at band camp and everyone’s faces lighting up at the promise of resuming music making activities together.
Together.
That is a word that has taken on much meaning over the last year and a half. As any musician can tell you, shared struggles will unite us in ways that nothing else can. When we focus on the ensemble rather than ourselves the results are incredible.
Years ago, I committed to getting into better shape and being healthier. As part of my motivation, I signed up to do what was then a little-known event, the GORUCK Challenge. Based on Special Forces training, the Challenge is led from start to finish by a Special Forces Cadre. His job is to test your limits, push you beyond them, and build your class into a team. The class participants each wear weighted rucksacks throughout the challenge (which can last twelve or more hours) as well as carrying a 25-pound team weight amongst the entire class. Our class had Bert Kuntz, a veteran combat medic, leading us.
Our Challenge started at 1:00 am in Chataqua Park, Boulder, at the foot of the Flatirons. Throughout the night we hiked up the Flatirons carrying additional weights and figuring out how to do it as a team. The lesson Bert repeated to us over and over again was “It could always be worse.”
This was on display after sunrise when we walked down Pearl Street carrying the American flag, an empty keg, most of a dozen eggs (don’t ask), our 25-pound kettlebell team weight, and one gargantuan log. Bert had instructed us to stay no more than an arm’s length apart and, having failed at that, he made it worse for us by telling us to remove our right shoe. We promptly messed up our spacing again and he instructed us to remove our right shoe. Someone (okay, me) made the ill-advised mistake of pointing out that we had already done that, so now we had to take off our left shoe.
So, there we were in just socks, walking down Pearl Street, having spent the last eight hours doing strenuous physical activity, carrying some random stuff while all the passerby’s looked at us with an enthusiasm usually reserved for observing a stray chain gang. Bert was right. This was worse.
There were two thoughts that kept running through my head:
1. This is not the weirdest thing the people on Pearl Street will see today
2. We got this.
I was no longer thinking of myself, but rather for the person to the left and right of me. The weight of what I was carrying mattered far less than helping shoulder their burden. Yes, it was a self-imposed challenge that had minimal real-world consequences, but the struggle was real, and the feeling of team was impossible to ignore. After that night I knew what I had always suspected: we are all capable of so much more than we think. The body can be beaten, but the mind is unconquerable.
We have all been through a massive, shared struggle. I have heard it said that we are not all in the same boat, but we are in the same storm. During the global crisis we have had many ups and downs, many times when “It could always be worse” became “It is worse.” But as I start to see things return to a normal closer to 2019 than 2020, I feel like we are all part of a larger team and are working together in ways we never have before.
Even as we weather the inevitable storms that will come our way, I know we can do it as a team. Together.