How a Team of Volunteers Changed My Life

The author on the summit of Mt. Hood, July 7, 2012.
Photo: Steve Deardorff

by Kristie Perry

It started with seven little words.

“Take Beecept, Kreestee. You vill love eeT.”

So proclaimed Ania Wiktorowicz, a relentlessly cheerful co-worker and one of the many awesome ambassadors for mountaineering that make the Mazamas such a terrific organization.

I wasn’t so sure about this BCEP thing. At that point in my life, I was about 18 months away from my last cigarette and about four years away from my last bottle of red wine. I had, at least, quit committing slow-motion suicide. But I was, at most, a recreational hiker and car camper with a head full of “I can’t.” Should I really do this BCEP thing?

I was quite convinced the answer was No. But every Monday morning, there was Ania, egging me on. “Take Beecept, Kreestee. You vill love eeT.”

So with high hopes and even higher anxiety, I enrolled in BCEP.
It was a life-changing experience.

There came a moment during the eight-week class when I fully realized that the massive undertaking that is BCEP is run entirely by volunteers. A lot of them: volunteers who are recent college grads, moms and dads, and grandmothers and grandfathers; volunteers with full time jobs as social workers, accountants, physicians, lawyers, engineers, and sales reps; volunteers who seem to have been born wearing crampons; and volunteers who only recently learned how to tie a butterfly knot.

That light bulb moment about BCEP came at the conclusion of Jodie Adams’ presentation on strength training exercises for budding mountaineers. Jodie is a Mazama member and physical therapist. She’d just had a baby. It was still very tiny. And yet Jodie hauled herself down to Jackson Middle School on a rainy Tuesday night in March 2013 to talk to a bunch of wannabe mountaineers about the proper body position for deep squats.

I felt tremendous gratitude for Jodie’s willingness to share her expertise with us. She did it for free. She did it with cheer. She did it even though as a new mother she was extraordinarily sleep deprived.
I experienced many moments like that during BCEP. There was Colleen Sinsky, who rescued me from a meltdown during knot-tying practice. There was Sue Giordano, who coaxed me up my first climb of the MMC rock wall. There was Kyle Heddy, who hugged me after I stemmed up the chimney at Horsethief, and Brian Anderson who made sure I did my BARK check correctly before rappelling back down. This chorus of “You got this, Kristie!” was conducted by BCEP Team 7 Leader Kevin Clark, who patiently instructed me—again—on how to plunge step after accepting me on his Mt. McLoughlin climb.

Volunteers. Every single one of them. Teaching me the skills of mountaineering. Doing it for free. Doing it because they wanted to. Doing it with a magical mix of patience and encouragement. Amazing.

Every single one of those volunteers played an important part in evicting that rat’s nest of “I can’t” that had been so thoroughly ensconced in my head for so long.

So I did the only thing I was really qualified to do for the Mazamas right after taking BCEP: I joined the Publications Committee. I got to geek out with other grammar nerds on the finer points of the Oxford comma. I got to apply my administrative and organizational skills to some process improvement projects. Eventually, I got to be chair of the committee.

And with every article I proofed and every meeting agenda I put together, I got to say thank you. Thank you to each and every Mazama volunteer that has come before me and made this organization what it is today: a welcoming place where even timid, middle-aged chicks with a head full of “I can’t” can learn to glissade with the best of them.

About the author: Kristie Perry is a three-year Mazama member and Director of Donor Relations at Central City Concern.