The Knot

I didn’t know the girl, nor did I know her friend.  But in those skinny-legged, stringy-haired young bodies, I knew myself.

The fifteen of us adult Scout leaders going through the Powder Horn training course waited in the small patch of shade cast by a pine tree.  Stunted as it was here in the high desert, the tree didn’t give a whole lot of relief from the July sun.  We would have been blessed with the shade from the seventy-five-foot climbing tower if it had been any time other than noon, but such was not our luck.  The course’s director wiped the droplets of sweat off his pudgy neck with a constellation-guide handkerchief.  The rest of us fidgeted uncomfortably in our dark green uniforms and wished things would move along a little faster.  I played absentmindedly with a piece of rope sticking out of my breast pocket.  An instructor of an earlier class had passed it out to demonstrate the Friendship Circle.  I pulled out the rope and started a turk’s head knot to keep myself busy.  A turk’s head is one of the most useless knots known to man, but I love tying them because they’re so complex.  When it’s finished, the rope curves around itself in an endless braid. 

***

“No, you’ve got your ends twisted.  It’s across-under-over,” my crew’s Advisor, or adult leader, had explained at my first meeting.  We were preparing for the knot relay, a knot-tying race in which my crew would be competing at the upcoming summer camp.  Though it was only a very insignificant part of the camp, the points we earned would count toward our total, and the crew with the most points at the week’s end would receive special uniform patches.  I would soon learn that true Scouts will do anything for a small bit of cloth or a few colorful beads.  “The way you’ve tied it makes a granny knot, not a square knot.”
I sighed and wiped my forehead with the back of my hand.  It was hot in the back room of the old Lutheran church.  “I’m never going to get these knots down.”
“Sure you will.  You keep working on it while I go check on some of the other kids.”  He rose from his kneeling position beside my folding metal chair. Across the room, three boys had apparently become bored with the knots and had begun to wrestle with each other.  I watched the Advisor walk towards them for a second before turning back to the business at hand.
Burgundy cord curled round my fingers, I began again with determination.  Across, over, under.  Not like that.  Untie it.  Across, over, under.  Pull it tight.  Like that!  I couldn’t help but grin.
And then I started on the next knot.  I was hooked.

***

The girl with the French braids poking out from the Caltrans-orange helmet was trying to untangle one climbing harness from its mates.  Meanwhile, her brunette partner explained the belaying commands to one of my fellow Scout-Leaders-in-Training, who seemed to be rather nervous.  Part of our training was supposed to include hands-on experience with the high-adventure activities we would be teaching our youth, but that didn’t mean any of us were eager to put our lives in the hands of a couple of sixteen-year-old girls, safety latches and climbing director present or not.  I smiled to myself, wondering if my adult leaders had felt this way fifteen years ago when I was the girl.

***

I bounded through the front door in a way that would have made my late grandmother tell me to open the door before I came through it.  “Hey, Mom, Dad—can I join the Boy Scouts?” I slung my backpack across the dining room floor and bounced into a chair next to my mom.  My motion caused little eddies of air to ruffle the stacks of receipts that were strewn over the tabletop.
My mom looked at my dad.  Dad looked up from the checkbook and his calculations and raised an eyebrow.  “What?” he asked, distractedly.
“Erm…the Boy Scouts,” I repeated, squirming.  He always made me uncomfortable when he looked at me like that.  “Some kids came to my class this afternoon and told us about this cool new thing called Venturing where girls can join the Boy Scouts now and do all the outdoors adventure stuff like Brad does, except for teenagers.”  I sucked in air.  My younger brother had joined a Boy Scout troop two years ago, and ever since he had, I’d been hearing stories about his fabulous hikes, canoeing trips, and rock-climbing adventures.  He went camping on the weekend.  I did homework.  “Please, Daddy, can I join?  It’s only ten dollars.”
Mom chuckled, running her hand through my limp brown hair.  “Let her do it, Charlie.  You know what a tomboy she is.  It’d be good for her to get out more.”
I suspect now that my dad had reservations about exposing his fourteen-year-old girl to a bunch of rowdy teenage boys, but he said nothing more about it.  I filled out my application the next day.

***

The girl with the braids had finally managed to pull a harness from the bin.  She walked over to help the nervous leader put it on.
“Step through it like this…no, wait, that’s the waist strap.  This is a leg here. I think it’s the right leg—no, that would be backwards…” As she pulled on one of the straps, it came apart.  She giggled nervously, glancing at the climbing director.  “I think I screwed up.”
I heard an exasperated sigh from somewhere behind me as the climbing director explained step-by-step how to put the harness back together and put it on.  “Come on, Mel, just fix the stupid thing for her,” whispered a raspy male voice.  And then, as if confiding in someone with shared views, “I don’t know why they made Venturing co-ed.  I mean, it’s part of the Boy Scouts, for crying out loud.”
If my face could have gotten any hotter or redder than the California summer had already made it, it would have.  I clenched my fists and did a sudden about-face.  “What are you trying to say, Brandon?” I hissed between my teeth.  I knew it was him.  His machismo had been grating on me all week.  “That a boy wouldn’t get confused trying to do something complicated?  That girls are stupid?  Or just that we’re incompetent?”
Brandon blinked and looked at me with wide eyes.  He turned a deep cranberry.  “Uh—no…no, that’s not what I meant…I mean—I got nothing against girls—um…”  He whispered to his friend, “What’s ‘uncompetent’ mean?”
I cut him off.  “I know what you meant.  All week I’ve been overhearing your complaints about having to modify the program because there are women in it now.  What is it you strong men do that we don’t?  Wrestle with each other until someone’s broken something?  Chase each other around in the dark hours of the morning in winter playing Capture the Flag?  Oh, oh, maybe we don’t pull enough stupid pranks on people, huh?” I paused and looked at him.  He was too flustered to give me an answer.  “Let me tell you something.  You have no idea how hard it is to work to—to get somewhere and then have someone—some guy—put you down because you’re—you’re female.” I felt my throat starting to close up and I swallowed hard.  I hate crying when I’m angry.  “That—that girl up there deserves to—to get everything she—everything she can out of this program and you have no right to do anything but sup—support her.”  A silence had fallen over the group.  I snorted.  I turned around sharply and walked away so no one could see me fighting back memories.

***

Preparing for summer camp was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me.  My dad and I spent hours in the sporting goods store after school, looking at compasses and constellation guides and those tiny, retina-burning LED flashlights; drooling over thousand-dollar GPS units behind their glass barrier; going through all of the freeze-dried backpacker’s meals to see who could find the most repulsive one.  (I think the idea of reconstituted Teryaki Chicken with Noodles and Mushrooms has biased me against Eastern cuisine to this day.)  I would sit on the edge of my bed at night with my new compass and an old map, tracing the wiggly brown contour lines with my finger, pretending I was a great explorer of the backcountry beating new trails through the bush before retiring from the day’s adventures in a tent beneath the stars.  I would fall asleep pretending the whiz of cars down the nearby thoroughfare was wind in the pine trees and the occasional siren or screech of tires was a coyote.
“WELCOME TO CAMP WICKAWANGA!  ARE YOU ALL READY TO HAVE FUN?” shouted the camp director two weeks later.  The three hundred teenagers gathered around the flagpoles roared back at him.  He told us about the exciting schedule we would have that week and led us all in a chorus of “Little Black Things” before dismissing us to our respective campgrounds.  The pine needles crunched under my feet, releasing an odor that air-freshener companies can only dream of.  The air was cool and had a crispness like jeans dried on a line.  I watched the sunlight coming through the treetops for a moment.  It caught the dust that hung heavy in the air, lighting up its swirling, slow descent to the ground, where it would soon be kicked up again.  
My crew split from the glob of bodies pushing toward their homes for the next week.  We had one hour in which to settle in.  For the remainder of the day, we were hustled from one activity to another.  We threw tomahawks, swam at the waterfront, saw the stables, and had a campfire program.  The day was a blur by the time I collapsed on my cot around eleven, too tired to be lonesome my first real time away from home.
I dreamed about ropes that night.  I dreamed I was so fast you couldn’t even see my fingers move, and my crew put me on their shoulders and cheered when I beat everyone.
The real competition was different from the one I had imagined.  A handful of us stood in a row, waiting for the judge to call out the name of the knot we were to tie.  I wiped my hands on my grey pants before accepting the four-foot piece of rope held out by the judge’s assistant, a boy who’d made the mistake of volunteering for a job before knowing what he was volunteering for.  The rope was blue with little sporadic white dots; the ends had been heat-fused.  It felt silky against my fingers.  I looked down at my dusty sneakers and took deep breaths.
“Nervous?” said an impish voice from my right side.  It was a dark-haired boy who looked to be about my age.
“Nah,” I said.  And then joking, “I already know I’m going to win.”
He snorted derisively.  “Sure you are.”
“Just watch,” I said, defensive now.
“Quiet!” called the judge.  “And now, gentlemen—and lady—give me a bowline on a bight!”
I hadn’t noticed I was the only girl in this group, but I was only half listening.  I was coiled so tight after all the anticipation and those last few remarks that all I could think about was speed—at the expense, I guess, of some of my skill.  Bowline-on-a-bight was one of the hardest knots I knew, and the silky rope kept slipping in ways I wasn’t used to.  I hadn’t even finished the knot when they called time.  I glanced at the boy out of the corner of my eye.  He grinned at me irritatingly.  I looked at the rope in my hands and got ready for the next knot.  I wasn’t going to let that happen again.
“Sheet bend!” cried the judge.
This time, I was ready.  The boy and I tied for first.
“That was an easy one,” he whispered.
“Nuh-uh,” was my clever reply.
“Taut-line hitch!” came the call to arms.  Then, “Regular bowline!” and “Fisherman’s knot!”  My hand kept going up first.  I felt my heart thumping in my chest and my crewmates kept chanting my name.  After three minutes, it was all over.  And when they announced the winner, I couldn’t repress jumping with delight.  The boys in my crew broke out into screams as they ran up and hugged me.  As I looked through them, I saw the dark-haired boy scowling at me.  I broke free of my crew and walked over to him.
“Sorry,” I said.  Our advisor had drilled the importance of sportsmanship to death, and I didn’t want to be accused of being a snobby winner.  “You were really fast.  I didn’t think I would be able to beat you.”
He was silent for a moment, then practically spit, “You’re a girl.”
I was confused.  “Yeah.”
“I’ve never lost to a girl before.”
One of his buddies came up and said to him, “Hey, don’t sweat it.  It’s just a knot relay.  She’s not really a Boy Scout, anyway.”
“I am too!” I exclaimed.  I couldn’t believe the conversation I’d just heard.  Of course I’m a Boy Scout!  And I’m just as good as any boy, anyway!
“I don’t care what she is.  She should go join the Girl Scouts and sell cookies or do something else girls do,” said the dark-haired boy angrily.  With that, he turned and stomped off.
I stood there for a moment.  My throat felt thick and my face stung.
My adult leader came looking for me after lunch when my absence was discovered.  He found me in our tent, crying on my cot.  He said some people just felt that way.  I had to learn to deal with things, he said.  He never did understand how much it hurt to be exposed without warning to something you’d been protected from all your life.

***

A polite cough broke my thoughts.  “You OK?”  The voice of the course director sounded hesitant.  I knew that though it was his job to patch things up, this situation must be causing him a little discomfort.
“I’ll be fine.”
“We’ve got the first two folks up the wall already; would you like to give it a go?  Might make you feel better.”
I opened my mouth to refuse, then thought better of it.  Why shouldn’t I go?  What the hell am I doing, anyway, sitting here pouting?  I didn’t do anything wrong!  I stood up.  “Thanks.  I’d love to.”
The group’s chatter quieted a bit as we approached them.  Brandon was standing apart from the rest of the group.  He glowered at me.  I gave him an icy stare, strapped on the helmet proffered by the climbing director, and stepped up to the wall.  The girl with the French braids held out a climbing harness.  “Here, put your right leg through that loop and your left leg through that other loop.”  She looked at me and smiled.  “I figured it out.”
“I knew you would,” I replied. I grabbed her shoulder to steady myself as I hopped on one foot, trying to get the harness on.
“And…”  She trailed off shyly.  “That was really great the way you told that guy off.  Thanks.”
I stopped mid-hop, one foot in the air, leaning on her shoulder, and looked at her in surprise.  I hadn’t realized that she’d overheard Brandon’s comment, nor my retaliation.  I felt I should say something; my mind raced.  “You just have to shrug off people like that.  Don’t let idiots like that put limits on you.  Prove them wrong instead.”
She smiled a half-smile.  “It’s hard, though, you know?  Like my crew is mostly boys, and they tease the girls a lot.  My Advisor tries to control them, but it never works for very long, and it seems like they tease me more every time I do good at something.  I want to quit almost every month, but we do such cool stuff that I don’t want to miss out.”
I patted her back.  “I know.  Hang in there; someday you’ll be glad you did.”
There was a pause as she and I both thought our own thoughts.  Then I cleared my throat and resumed preparation for climbing.  The girl explained the belaying commands and helped me “tie in” to the rope.  I grabbed the hard rubber handholds on the wall and began the determined struggling that had gotten me over so many barriers.
As I neared the top, my arms and legs began to wobble—a matter not helped by the decreasing size of the handholds.  My eyes swept back and forth over the wall above me, searching for the next grip.  I reached for a blue one shaped like a Gonzo nose, but it was too far away.   I lifted my foot to a small yellow hold, hoping to push off of it.  Something hard in my pocket pressed deep into my thigh.  I gasped, but managed to use the yellow hold anyway.  I was only about a foot away now.  With shaking arms, I pulled myself on to the top of the tower and panted.  I sat for a minute, absorbing the spectacular rugged mountains, hazy blue in the distance, before I was ready to rappel down the wall.  Almost as an afterthought, I reached into my hip pocket to remove the hard object for thedescent.  I laughed when I saw the turk’s head I had tied earlier.  I sat a moment, turningthe knot in my hands.  A turk’s head must be one of the most useless knots in the entire world, but it is a beautiful one.
I don’t remember what happened the rest of that day at Powder Horn.  But that night, my dreams were about a silky blue rope tangled around my fingers, while a boy laughed somewhere in the distance.