A typical week in wilderness therapy

We're in the middle of nowhere Arizona, and I'm carrying 80 pounds of food in a canvas bag. Walked up to 7 teenage boys screaming for food. They're overjoyed to have the food and you say "now this food has got to last you a week!" And they say they know, but they don't act like they know. They throw out their lentils because they're gross, dip their dirty finger in a bag of tang powder. Then they eat the whole bag of tang like that and then they're sick. Bless their little hearts.

The guides I'm replacing are exhausted. They say goodbye to the kids and the kids hug them and cry because they just had an incredible adventure. The guides gave them so much love and understanding and patience and now they have to build a new relationship with me and my coworkers. It's daunting to gain trust and get the whole band to the next food drop.

Then we hike. There are no trails though, I have a map, a compass and GPS coordinates. It's between 15-25 miles away and we have 5 days to get there. We climb over boulders, cross freezing creeks with water up to our knees. We bushwhack through manzanita and alder trees. Someone in the band is the slowest hiker, in a healthy band everyone walks at their pace, cracking jokes and play games (like 20 questions or the alphabet game). In an unhealthy band, the fast ones go and then wait for the straggler to catch up and yell at the poor slow kid and don't even let them have a break. The guides are intervening this whole time, saying "no we're a team and we walk together and we'll get there!" This is the majority of every day.

The hikes are hard, your sleeping bag, food, clothes and fire kit is on your back. We have no back-packs. We use a tarp and paracord and a canvas sleeping-bag cover to make a primitive pack. We'll find a little creek and set up camp near it, we collect wood and someone makes a fire with their bow-drill. Everytime the tinder bundle catches fire it's a miracle. Bow-drill is hard. After the coals build up we put a tin cup full of rice and chicken bouillon on the fire for dinner. If it looks like rain, we tie a tarp to some trees to cover the fire, once I had to use my long-sleeve shirt to tie the tarp to a tree. 

The kids say they're exhausted and it's time to set up camp. I'm exhausted too so I'm happy to have a quiet evening since all their energy is spent. But the kids were lying, they weren't exhausted, they're running around yelling and playing games and making a mess. They're bragging about all the drugs they used to sell and how many times they ran away from home. I just wanna eat my rice in peace yo. 

Each one of the guides pulls a kid aside for a good one-on-one chat. This is probably the most magical thing about the wilderness therapy programs I worked for. These kids have an adult who will listen to their problems and frustrations. Sometimes we give advice but most times we just say "I dunno dude that's crazy." A lot of life's pretenses don't exist when you're in the woods. You're covered in dirt, there's no phones, you're in the middle of nowhere and can't go anywhere else. You just accomplished an awesome hike together and you feel like a team. 

We mess up and say something offensive or push the kids too hard on the hike, sometimes make a wrong navigational move. Then we have to seek the kid's forgiveness. We're stuck together for the week and we have to get to the food-drop. These kids can sometimes be harsh, but forgiveness is real and building relationships after trust has been lost IS possible and worth it. 

Around the campfire we have a quick therapy group, where we ask an open-ended question and take turns answering it. Sometimes they were lighthearted like "what song or song lyric means a lot to you and why" other times it was more deep like, "what is the hardest thing you've ever had to do." The guides also answer these questions, and when I'd talk about the hard things I had to do the kids would give me a sympathetic ear and advice and I was so grateful for that. Those kids held my burdens for me.

I'd sing them lullabies. My favorite part of this job was singing every night. 

The desert is incredible, it can seem a little harsh, but you just have to work with it instead of against it. I loved the large rocks and mountains, juniper, mesquite, scrub oak, alder, sycamore, cottonwood, black walnut, saguaro, cat claw, manzanita, century plant, sotol, prickly pear, dirt, cow patties, wild onion, mugwort, sagebrush, creeks, sand, coyotes, skunks, birds, snakes, gila monsters, elk, sunsets, clouds, storms, and the sun.

On Tuesdays their therapists would visit the trail, and bring letters from home, those letters were always hard. The parents had these wild expectations of their kid and the kids felt like they never met those expectations. The kids are out there for 8 weeks, so the nurse would come out and take each kid aside and ask them if they were taking their meds and wiping after they poop. 

Wednesday was shift switch-out day. Every week I can't believe I made it through. Life on the trail is harsh and time seems so long. You're alone with your thoughts a lot, the kids are crying, your coworkers are crying because the kids are crying. No way out but through, and we're stronger than we think. 

The drive back to modern life is hours on a dirt road, we smell like campfire and dirt. I get my phone back and it won't shut up with hundreds of notifications and I'm so tempted to throw it out the window.