The First Challenge

• Grace Morgan, Grade 7
• Short Story
• 2017

With pounding hearts and shaking legs, the Yellow Team prepared to leave their comfort zone and face the survival shelter challenge head on. We knew that that is wasn’t a life and death situation, that it wasn’t our lives at stake, it was more than that, it was our pride.

We approached the clearing and scanned our surroundings. Initially it didn’t look like much. There was a life jacket, a tall paperbark tree, some worn ropes with frayed ends, a lot of palm leaves and a cracked bucket that was upside down on the muddy ground, not the best building materials but it was something.

First, we gathered the palm leaves and lay them against the framework of the tree. One of the boys had put on the life jacket, and was mucking around pretending to do some virtual swimming. The rest of the team dumped the bucket on his head, which surprisingly improved the situation quite a lot. Together we kept putting up more and more leaves until we couldn’t see one still one the ground. This provided all the insulation and protection we needed. The life jacket was taken off the swimming boy and used as the door to our shelter. We gave it one last check as we braced ourselves for the final test.
Together we huddled inside our fortress. Suddenly all hell broke loose. Water blasted powerfully against the fragile walls of our shelter, it was going to break any time soon. The noise was deafening, the shelter shook like a leaf in a storm as the water came down, hitting us fast with tsunami like power. The walls started to collapse on us, so together the Yellow Team stood up to secure the walls. We were now regretting placing so many leaves on top of it, it was too heavy to hold up. I was starting to feel defeated, it was just a game, right?

I looked around at my team mates, I was not going to give up, I was filled with something incredible, I was filled with determination. There was only three of us still standing, not only did we hold the shelter in our hands, but the hopes and dreams of the rest of the Yellow Team! It seemed like we were there forever holding up the shelter, but then suddenly the weight was gone, the water had stopped and there was a strange quiet peace.
We stepped outside cautiously on to the muddy ground, it seemed too good to be true, we had completed the challenge on our first go! We were all grinning like we owned the world! As we walked away from the challenge, I felt like we the Yellow Team, could take on all the challenges school camp would throw at us. Without a doubt, we could win them all. Even the hardest challenges wouldn’t stop us!

Of course, I was wrong, we lost almost every other one, but that’s history now.
=)