Wilderness Therapy Quotes

Exploration, however, no longer seemed aimed at some outward discovery; rather, it was directed inward, to what guidebooks and brochures called “camping and wilderness therapy” and “personal growth through adventure.

It's one of these juvenile therapy scams,” he went on, sprinkling a pinch of the Golden Virginia tobacco along the rolling paper. “They advertise help for your troubled teen by staring at the stars and singing ‘Kumbaya’. Instead, it’s a bunch of bearded nutjobs left in charge of some of the craziest kids I’ve ever seen in my life—bulimics, nymphos, cutters trying to saw their wrists with the plastic spoons from lunch. You wouldn’t believe the shit that went on.” He shook his head. “Most of the kids had been so mentally screwed by their parents they needed more than twelve weeks of wilderness. They needed reincarnation. To die and just come back as a grasshopper, as a fucking weed. That’d be preferable to the agony they were in just by being alive.

On a winter’s day when a person’s spirits may be low and to behold thirty to one-hundred Evening Grosbeaks busily gorging themselves on bird seed and perched in a stand of pines with all of them creating a cacophony of sparrow like chirps, this is real therapy for me. It is an act of contagious optimism. It is at such times I realize that a bird can do more for me than a shrink.

Life in forest and wilderness should teach us the lesson. But we can regain the lost defense and healing power if we return as close as possible to the laws of nature as they are created.

Lacking the essential internal resources necessary for adult life: problem-solving, delayed gratification, internal motivation, resiliency, emotional regulation, and self-discipline. Many of these kids may even feel out of control. lily As soon as Lily, who’d just turned seventeen, stepped off the truck and into the wilderness-therapy program, she sat down on the side of the road: “I’m just going to wait until my mom and dad come to get me,” she said. “Because this must be a mistake. My parents would never send me to a wilderness

I can sit down for hours and read a book straight through; forgo sleep and even snacks if a romance book has the right balance of steam and anticipation for that happily ever after. And a great upside-down latte, or my new favorite, a Hungry Eye. Iced is always preferred. I can escape with caffeine and dirty words. It’s so simple and it can act as such a source of therapy for me.

Total immersion in the wilderness is the purest and most natural of all therapies, and best of all, you don't have to do anything except be there.