“On Discipline”
Set deep in the midst of Amish Country in Lycoming County, Pennsylvania is a curious amusement-park like establishment, known as Camp Woodward. According to the 2010 census, the township of Woodward’s population: 110. The extreme sports complex comes to life in the summer months, hailing talented athletes from the Northeast and beyond year after year. A former dairy farm, the bones of giant, old farmhouses comprise many of the facilities that have since been converted into topiary masterpieces of rubber, leather, foam, and plywood. Picture this: after completing some form of stunt, an athlete looks out of the giant farmhouse doors from their landing; they observe the expanse of the Appalachian mountains before their next run. The height of athletic excellence and natural prowess gloriously juxtaposed.
The first remembrance I have of arriving at the camp was the flutter of bonnets, like little white tails of fawns, rushing by on the heads of those riding peculiar bicycles. It took several moments, and a slower-paced proper horse and buggy, to register the phenomenon that was occurring: A community of Amish folk was heading to Church. Looking back, I wonder what those Amish folk must have thought of all those ripped jeans and BMX bikes and the hundreds of little girls running buck wild in leotards every summer. But on that Sunday afternoon I first arrived at Camp Woodward, the Amish I had observed riding alongside my mother’s metallic Cadillac SUV on the highway, were merely a mysterious backdrop to the even larger mystery that was about to unfold.
The allure of Woodward amongst me and my peers came not only from the passionate testimonials that some girls would carry back from camp and into the banter of our day to day conversations at our real gym, the serious gym, with a new strict Armenian coach seemingly at every turn, but especially from the glossy editions that USA Gymnastics published monthly, in which the camp advertised with prime placement. The camp’s sister, LakeOwen, which was also advertised, was legendary for its “big blob,” a massive inflatable airbag suspended upon water on which you could dive and be flung to a certain formidable height before gravity forced you down to an inevitable plunge into the surrounding lake. This camp, located in the Midwest, seemed a distant utopia for the girls in the Northeast and I wasn’t acquainted with anyone fashionable enough to have gone. The magazines also included interviews with the moment’s leading ladies, endorsements for acrobatic paraphernalia, and descriptions of upcoming competitions. In every edition, there must have been at least one promotion for chalk, simple magnesium carbonate, which gymnasts use to stifle the sweat that causes slippage while performing. These magazines were our social currency and the girls who were lacking in technical skill compensated for this with their topical choices of equipment, leotards, even their hair scrunchies. This was a signal that they were in-the-know.
To attend the camp was a means to get to know, in my case, gymnasts from other prominent gyms, even other regions. It was a way of scoping out potential competition at the national level, too. It is an understatement to say that the sphere of women’s competitive gymnastics in the United States is a niche. It is a niche, niche; a hairline fracture, not unlike those that many gymnasts receive invariably and indiscriminately from stress along their spines.
Because the world was so small, the hype of Woodward spread like a virus that ironically everyone wanted to catch. Particularly we wanted to catch a glimpse of one of the female Olympians that graced campers with their presence during a select few weeks of the summer program, thanks to the hefty salary the organization purportedly paid them to make an appearance and feign a sufficient level of coaching ability. All of this promotional build-up, some legitimate and some imaginary, swirled around my consciousness leading up to my first day of camp.
After unpacking my bags and saying my goodbyes to my family who had dropped me off, it was nearly time for the first event. They really kept those campers busy. As someone who had already become accustomed to a rigorous training schedule, which encompassed a daily routine back at home of sometimes up to six consecutive hours of practice, I recall the surprise at discovering that the schedule at summer camp would be even more intensive. I began dissecting the schedule and mentally plotting out at which intervals, if any, I would be able to relax my body and reintroduce some new energy before the next event.
I showed up to the introductions in my best leotard; I must have looked like a skinny watermelon in the fleshy magenta fabric with lime-colored lining. Much to my chagrin, the process that followed the introductions was one of sorting, a standard protocol of siphoning the campers into levels of competency, a procedure I was far too familiar with. There were some warm-ups and then the day of observation ensued. No sign yet of Nastia Liukin, I thought to myself, at least she isn’t some kind of judge in this operation.
The coaches brought us through each event, asking us to perform a variety of skills, pleading that we show them “our best stuff.” When it was over their gift to us was a declaration of “open gym,” which in gymnastics jargon meant that we had free reign over all of the gymnasium space, including the storied trampolines and foam pits which almost everyone flocked to.
Suspended over several of the pits, hanging from the rafters of the industrial ceiling, were climbing ropes, which carried with them the dual implication of both terror and beauty. The terror came when one was ordered to climb a rope, as quickly as possible, without the assistance of feet, as a conditioning practice; The joy came when a rope was deployed purely for the sake of swinging on, and then eventually releasing oneself into the foam pit, like a rope swing over a lake. If you have never had the pleasure of jumping into a foam pit, you really ought to, as it could very soon be named the eighth wonder of the world. Imagine proceeding with the certainty that any risk you take in life, however big or small, will result in a plush cradle of absolute comfort and security. This is the experience of rope-swinging into a foam pit.
Perhaps the incipient draw I had to the sport of gymnastics, was this: that which was embedded in its constitution was an inherent ethereality. Between the colossal mats shaped like cheese and the skateboarders just outside executing full twists on a halfpipe, there was a surrealist absurdity about the place.
The program I had registered for was about a week long. By the third day, I had become confident enough to roam around the perimeter of the gymnastics facilities, during which time I observed one of my first vivid infatuations: a boy flying at least thirty feet above the ground I was standing on, hovering piously above a skateboard. I watched awestruck at his dexterity, the lithe, latticed muscles of his stomach, his sun-bleached hair and tanned skin; I had never seen such a creature before, let alone a boy. I began to wonder: How does my ability even compare? What might he think of my aptitude and sport?
I sat alone on one of the benches at the brink of the skate park chewing on this question abstractly. I watched him, and several others who had added themselves into the mix, executing complex aerial tricks and moving their bodies in such a way that it seemed they were carving indelible impressions through the air which surrounded them. When all of the swiveling ceased for a break, I overheard one of the campers hastening towards the skate park from behind me proclaim: There he is! There’s Bobby Schwartz! This description piqued my interest, and so, I listened closer. After a few moments, I received the information I had been waiting for. He’s ranked 25th in the world and sponsored by RedBull! The boy behind me said. I could not believe that my estimation of him had been raised even higher. The newfound knowledge made me giddy, and in a flash of boldness, I garnered the courage to go up to this mystery man and introduce myself.
This risk paid off. For the rest of that week, I met Bobby around 1 p.m. at the place where I had first scouted him. We exchanged lessons. He would spend half of our time teaching me to ride on the mini ramps and by the end of the week, I could do an “ollie.” When it was my turn, I helped him master his standing back tuck. We shared a profound mutual respect for one another that was compounded by the gradual emergence of the amazement that each perceived by the subtlest of facial expressions. It was summer love at its purest.
Perhaps in the summer months, when the weather is typically clement, and timetables less constrained, we are at our most supple. It is as if the season lends us a unique opportunity to be molded. The sculpting that occurs within our soul is genial, quite unlike the experience of chasing a strict deadline of any kind in the thick of biting, dark winter. And yet, the summer sculpting appears to be the most lucid. Oh, how sweet, summer memories are the clearest.
The severity of a competitive gymnastics practice did not preclude the awakenings of summer, especially for an adolescent. Despite the solicited regulations of Camp Woodward and its staff, the camp’s wild mountainous atmosphere produced a primitive yearning for the hidden treasures that lay beyond the discipline of the known. This fact was something our coaches back at home intuited and was also part and parcel of their skeptic glances when any girl informed them that they would be headed to camp for the next several weeks. But alas, we were only children, and I suppose they reasoned that to rob us of our naiveté would be a larger injustice than the alternative.
In this very spirit of the provocations of summer, I decided to sign up for one of the illustrious sleepover trips in the Poconos mountains. None of the other girls I had allied myself with wanted to join. My virginal signature looked lonely on the sign-up sheet at the end of the list of unfamiliar names. I felt pangs of guilt for taking the weekend off from practice to go, presumably the reason many of my friends had declined my suggestion that we all give it a try (“try” being the substantive word for “go and endure it whether you like it or not”). I packed a small backpack with little more than an extra sweatshirt and started out of the log cabin dorm on a Saturday at noon.
I learned upon arrival that we would not be ascending to the top of the mountain on foot, but rather on horseback. I was astonished. I had never ridden on a horse save for the one time I had been hoisted onto one by my father for a five-second photo op at a local county fair. The trainer first lined up all of the participants in the group and explained the itinerary to us. She revealed that the horses were trained, although this was not enough information to quell my anxiety about the whole riding-a-horse-up-the-side-of-a-mountain-without-experience thing.
Next, the team of expedition leaders appointed a horse to every participant. For reasons beyond my understanding of basic power dynamics at the time, I was paired last, with the smallest and oldest horse. They called him “Sparkle.” Everyone received the proper gear: helmets, padding, the boots with the spurs. If considering the sum of the equipment at Camp Woodward apart from all else, the camp could be mistaken for a covert military base. The trainers started out first along the trail, and the group followed single-file. As natural logic would have it, riding the smallest and oldest horse was synonymous with riding last in line.
The journey ended up being about three hours to our summit. For the others this was three hours of uninterrupted wonder at the ability of the horses to accommodate unskilled riders in such tricky terrain as well as blissful uptake of the natural surroundings; For me, it was three hours of h-e-double toothpicks- a euphemism often used among my companions at the time. Sparkle was old, that was alright enough per se, but what was not okay, was that Sparkle’s old age, in particular, bred a new characteristic: obstinacy. Or maybe he had been stubborn all along. The point is that he was when I had to ride him and also that he had an unyielding desire to traverse the mountainside in intervals of five minutes. Perhaps before he was old, he had strode in twenty-minute intervals. The first time he stopped moving, five minutes into the trek, the trainers stopped the “train” so to speak, hopped off their horses, and came to my spot at the back, acting all surprised. They directed me to use the spurs on the side of my boots in order to incite Sparkle to move when he paused. Thinking this would be a quick fix, I gave a smile that persisted for the next five minutes until he stopped for the second time. And the third. And the fourth. And the 95th. And the 170th.
When we arrived at the top, my ankles were so swollen and bruised that when I peeled off my socks to inspect not just the pain but the visible proof, I immediately knew that there would be no more serious gymnastics training for me during the remaining half-week of camp. It got dark and we roasted marshmallows and were put to bed in mammoth-sized tepees that slept up to twenty people. As I laid on the cool ground, I felt a lightness enter my body, almost as if I were levitating above the cold earth, notwithstanding the throbbing denseness of my swollen ankles. It was like an early bodily concession, a surrender, to natural law. No matter how far one strays from the regimen of the familiar, discipline will follow. Summer charms us with her vibrancy, light, and luxury. She is benign, but She is not so innocent; there is a method to her magnificent madness. In every sailing trip that goes awry, every postponed chore, every summer love that sours, she beckons to us. The notion of freedom is a total illusion that is hatched in the young and persists in the old until they resign themselves to the way of her method. It is the kindling belief in her grand illusion that our gymnastics coaches feared. As the journey down the mountain the next afternoon came to a close, I was happy to have gone. It was one of my earliest tastes of freedom, and thus the least adulterated. Although it was costly to the remainder of my camp days, and to the competition at the end in which I was expected to place well, the expense to me at the time appeared worth it.
In hindsight, I can’t remember eating anything at all during that week at camp, barring the marshmallows in the Poconos. A memory of a cafeteria even escapes me. My disinclination towards food was partially self-imposed, but this is truly how it was for many gymnasts; you practice so much that there is not much free time even to eat. And when you do happen to have free time, the business of eating is not yet habitual. To think that I survived for so many years on so little food and so much exercise brings to mind Oscar Wilde and his punishment in Pentonville Prison, during which he was forced to walk on a treadmill with scant sustenance, as part of his hard labor sentence. It is intriguing to think about the Amish community that resided along the outskirts of the camp, mocking our freedoms, without having a clue of the level of discipline we endured.
On the day before I was to return home, the Olympic gymnast Nastia Liukin was hosting an autograph signing in one of the facilities. I was filled with such a breadth of nervous excitement about this affair that in my haste after checking my appearance in a dorm mirror, and before I was to leave for the autograph signing, I walked into a wall laden with jutting nails. Blood was gushing and I was rushed to a strange hospital in a strange land with strange counselors. My eyebrow was split open and I would need ten stitches. My sweet friend at the camp had managed to acquire a signed photo for me afterward. Ten years later I was enjoying a lemonade with a friend at an outdoor cafe on Newbury St. in Boston. It was summertime, the wind ruffled my dress amongst my newfound curves, and then I saw her: Nastia Liukin, the Olympian who I had so badly wanted an autograph from, that I had injured myself for, was strolling a few hundred feet away with her boyfriend. There was no buzz about her presence as far as I could crane my neck to see. She was just there, older now, but still young-looking. She looked serene, even after all those years of hard labor. As she passed the cafe, we exchanged a glance. It was the kind of glance that only two women who understand their natural limitations as a consequence of extreme discipline can share. It was luminous. This is how I remember women’s gymnastics.
