"Take A Risk"

(Local View from 4'2, Lake County Press, February 20, 2026)

A memory recently popped into my head about an experience I had at summer camp as a kid. Maybe it’s due to the brief reprieve of cold temps and a promise of warmer weather to come. Maybe because this time of year brings a deeply ingrained muscle memory of the start for planning for summer camp. 

As Sophia Petrillo would say “Picture this...”, it’s July in Minnesota at summer camp, it’s the 1980’s and I’m 13 years old. I was lucky to join an off-site experience where we camped at a nearby island. We were a small group of campers and camp counselors and were encouraged to do away with our watches allowing us to not be driven by time. Isn’t it funny to think that there was a time when watches were the big technology?

We worked together setting up tents, making food, and keeping the campfire. Time didn’t matter. We ate when hungry, went to sleep when the stars lulled us to dreamland and woke when the sun beckoned us out to play. 

One morning someone brought a boat with a bellyboard or a wakeboard to use. I was nervous but excited to try out this new adventure. I wasn’t physically able to kneel on the board or lie down on my stomach, so we adapted. Adapting at this camp was the name of the game! It was the 80’s and we didn’t have any fancy equipment, but the board was long enough for two of us to sit on. So, we tried it out - I sat towards the front and a counselor sat behind me. The boat pulled us up and we were on our way! 

It lasted 20 seconds before we dumped in the water. It was exhilarating and I was excited that we made it work! However, I wasn’t expecting the board to flip up and come down with a thump on my face. No broken bones, just a bruised nose. My first real battle scar.

At first, I was hurt and stunned, but then I realized I was actually okay. It was an ah-ha moment – I could risk trying something new, fall, get a bit bruised, and get back up again. With that came one of life’s biggest lessons. I gained a new level of confidence and sense of freedom that launched me into saying yes to many more experiences to come. Over the next handful of years, I found myself playing on a wheelchair basketball team in Duluth, downhill sit-skiing at Spirit Mountain, kayaking and sailing one-man boats in the harbor of Lake Superior. 

Every new experience was a building block, a steppingstone creating momentum that kept me moving forward. 

Sometimes I wonder what life would look like had I not had that one moment at camp. Allowing for choice of risk is vital as it shapes our perspectives and understanding of ourselves and the world around us. All too often, people specifically with disabilities are more sheltered and risk is avoided by people with very good intentions. 

We don’t want people to get hurt or to be uncomfortable, right? 

The thing is, through these experiences where we take a risk, we’re challenged and in turn, we learn. We learn to push past the boundaries originally set up for us whether they’re intentional or not. We innovate and adapt and realize what we’re really capable of. 

Look at the Olympian and Paralympian athletes, they are only where they are today because of the risks they took. Somewhere as a kid they said yes to getting on a pair of skis, a mono-ski or a snowboard and looked down the face of a big hill that led to a big mountain. Somewhere they said yes to getting on a luge sled which eventually led to luging at 70 miles an hour (which is so wild!). 

The point here is to take small risks one at a time, put your toes in the water, and then keep pushing. Take those experiences and find out who you are.  

As Richard Bach said in Jonathan Livingston Seagull “We can lift ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill.” 

Written by Jaime Head, a Disability Advocate and a Sr Training & Technical Assistance Associate for disability benefits counseling.