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What’s happens during a typical day?

In the Backcountry

Each day we typically:

• Backpack 3-12 miles
• Have solo journal time
• Engage in one on one dialogue with staff
• Participate in group (Truth Circle)
• Do daily chores
• Have fun.

Each day a different youth is selected to be leader for the day. When your child is leader for the day, the day begins with a staff member waking up him or her. The leader is then responsible for waking up all the other members of the group, meeting with staff, examining the maps and the itinerary, making a plan for the day, and then conveying that plan to the team. The leader is responsible for motivating and guiding the group through each step of the day and learns to take a role in supporting the physical and emotional safety of the entire group. This is a daunting task for anyone, and in the beginning weeks of the trip, the leaders receive a great deal of support and mentoring from staff in developing their own effective leadership style.

While occasionally the group will layover for a day or two in one spot, most days are spent hiking from one location to the next along a 100 + mile itinerary. An average day’s hike is around 5 miles, but some days can be much longer. Typically, the group will arrive in camp in early afternoon. Between arrival and dinner-time, the group (under the a youth’s leadership) will set up camp and complete all the chores related to setting up camp. Then we have free-time (because fun is important!), solo time for journaling, group activities, and time for personal hygiene.

Dinner takes some time to prepare: all our meals are cooked on fire, and all the fires are made by friction! In the early weeks, it can take the group a couple hours to get a fire, but by the end, after lots of hard work and persistence, fire making can take just a matter of minutes. We all cook and eat at the same time around the same fire. The students are divided into small cook groups of two or three people, and are responsible for their own rationing (and deciding what to eat tonight!), cooking and cleaning.

After dinner is the time for Truth Circle. This is an opportunity to engage in conversation on a much deeper level, a time for the teens to discuss their challenges, struggles, hopes, dreams, families, and histories. Staff support and guide this conversation, but it is the teens who ultimately make Truth Circle a time for real personal growth and discovery.

After circle, the group heads to bed and rests up for the next day's journey.

During the Community Homestead Time

Much of the routine of the backcountry is transferred to our time in the community: daily chores, solo time, one on one conversation with staff, and Truth Circle. Instead of hiking, however, we stay at a homestead site near town and engage in community service projects and interact with the community. Community service projects vary with the interests of each group, but often involve growing food for the local food bank, preparing and serving meals at the local homeless shelter, and running art and play groups for young children at a shelter for battered women. By engaging in service to others, youth find an opportunity to re-create their identities as positive members of society. Helping others is, in itself, healing.

The time at the homestead is a time where the youth begin to transfer the growth they made in the wilderness into living in a more normal setting. They are exposed to many of the triggers and stresses that they will find living at home, and learn how to cope with them in a healthy way. We work with the parents and youth together, and prepare for the transition home or to the next step of treatment.