progiaesthetic

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some fucker: let’s all remember that children can abuse their parents uwu *gets 11,000 notes*

troubled teen industry: hey parents! tired of your out-of-control child? have us literally kidnap them to rural Utah and we’ll use Tough Love™ to control. also we probably won’t literally kill them like 

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Endless Highway, Crooked Creek Rd 1, Pryor Mountains Wilderness, MT

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Props to my nalgene for always being there for me. It’s been on some cool adventures.

I’m starting to run out of room for stickers tho.

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Fight of Your Life

When I was a wilderness therapy guide, I had a student who was really frustrated with his situation. He saw the writing on the wall: he was heading for a therapeutic boarding school, not home, upon completion of the program. He didn’t see why he should keep working. He started to just go through the motions. One day, after he received a letter from his mother that only seemed to confirm his fears, I pulled him aside.

“Look, you have no control over what your mom does, right? But you can control the effort you continue to put forth, and the investment that you demonstrate in your future, right?” I asked. He conceded that was true.

I knew he was a boxer. “When you’re in a fight, and maybe you’re overmatched or it looks like you’re losing, do you phone it in and go through the motions just to save face? Or do you give it your best shot, even if you get your ass kicked?” Of course he gave it his best shot. The kid was a fighter in the most noble sense; he had “heart.”

“Okay, so, you’re in the fight for your life here. Why are phoning it in?” Aha. Light bulb.

I drove past a new branch of that kid’s favorite wing restaurant yesterday, and that must have got me thinking about him. A few hours later, while running, I reflected on that short conversation. I thought about the training I’m doing for this marathon. I thought about the career I’m pursuing, and the effort I put forth at work every day to maximize my chances of getting to the Ranger Promised Land. (That’d be full-time-with-benefits permanent status!)

Every day is the fight of my life–and yours, too. Every training run, every shift worked, contributes positively or negatively to the Day of Reckoning–whether it’s a marathon, a job interview, or an active shooter. That’s the truth that came to me as I pushed through a terrible side stitch on the last half mile of a tempo run, thinking back to a big, terrified, heartbroken kid on a snowy hillside years ago.

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When I worked for the wilderness therapy program, there were certain things we did every day. In Morning Circle, each person drew an Angel Card. These are little cards, about the size of a fortune cookie fortune, that are printed with words describing characteristics or traits one might possess. Each card is illustrated with a little cartoon angel acting out that trait. Many students and guides ascribed to the idea that rather than choosing your daily angel, your angel chooses you. Students kept track of the angel cards they drew throughout the course of their program, and upon graduation often reflected on the angels that chose them most frequently.

I am something of a skeptic. Although I am open to the unknown machinations of the universe, I am usually blind to the unseen. I tracked my angel cards on the back cover of my field notebook, but didn’t see any arcing themes.

I am preparing for another cross-country move. While weeding through the plastic bins that contain the detritus of my life, I found the field notebook I used for my first year of working for the wilderness therapy program. I flipped through it, names and notes bringing fuzzy memories into sharp focus, and for the first time in years took a look at the angels scrawled on the inside of the back cover. One angel had more tally marks than any other: VISION.

Well there it is, a perfect metaphor for the transformative properties of wilderness therapy. Guides grow as surely as students, and growth continues years after leaving the program behind. Although I loved Vermont and was very happy there, I was also stuck. What I lacked, for the first time in my life, was VISION. I didn’t know what I wanted in the big picture, so I struggled. The angels were screaming it at me in their gentle, persistent way. Like Dorothy, I had the ability to get where I wanted to go, but I had to find it within myself.

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honestly as someone who was “gooned” when i was 17 (that’s where your family hires people to drag you out of bed and forcibly transport you to a residential or wilderness treatment program without any forewarning, that is a thing, it’s horribly traumatic, i’m serious) i want to say that if anyone ever does that to you you do not have to be grateful for it, you can be angry, you have a right to assert your opinion on your own mental health. it’s one thing to hospitalize a suicidal teen, it’s another to place a teen who is unstable but not in immediate danger in treatment without even telling them, let alone asking for their opinion. tough love can be a good thing but not like that. studies have provided shaky evidence that these programs work in the long term. i’ve seen people who spent months in these programs relapse into old behaviors within half that time. don’t let anyone tell you they know your needs better than you. mentally ill (but not actively suicidal or violent) teens deserve a say in their mental health care. they have a right to it. end of story.

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16 passenger van, no shoes, just staring outside in silence. 

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some of u: haha i am like a feral animal, sometimes i become hungry

me: haha i am like a feral animal, i am full of fear and agression from living in the forest for literal months, i have eaten sticks, caterpillars, and small pieces of rock, chanted monosyllabic words in eerie repetitive melody with my pack around our firepit, i have had my pride ripped away from me, repaired, and restored by the light of the moon over mad river glen, i have nested with luna moths, seen the ghost of the storms, and watched ancient oak trees fall to the ground, struck dead by lightning, at my feet, and yet still every day my heart tries to pull me back, to lose my catholic upbringing in the rotting leaves where now lies my soul. the concrete is a prison that knows no bounds.

me: and also sometimes i become hungry

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“Wilderness is balm for the tensions of the world”.

Sigurd F. Olson, Wilderness U.S.A