Why Wilderness Therapy Is Wrong
Part Two: the truth
Like most humans, there are things from my past that I’d rather forget.
Working as a wilderness therapy guide for a few months in North Carolina is one of them.
I had good intentions. I wanted to be outside hiking and helping people with mental health issues. I just had no idea what was really in store for me when I drove down a gravel road in rural Appalachia to Trails Carolina.
During the two days of training, I learned how to restrain children. I learned about emotional regulation and fight/flight/freeze responses. I learned of various protocols like what to do if a kid runs away and how to build rapport during one-on-one check-ins. The entire time, my eyes were wide with confusion and fear. “This is some serious shit,” I thought to myself as I rolled around in my sleeping bag at night. “What have I gotten myself into?”
I knew that there were red flags when I found out that Trails Carolina constantly hired people and even had a full-time position for someone to deal with training the incoming guides every couple of weeks. The hair on the back of my neck would stand up as I learned about how it was perfectly legal for parents to pay to have people from the program arrive in the middle of the night to “kidnap” their kids and take them to Trails. Being “gooned” is what this is called.
When kids arrive at Trails, their first night is spent in the “burrito.” Basically, staff members tuck the kid inside their sleeping bag and then roll them in a tarp. The flat end of the tarp is where a guide is stationed to sleep as close to the kid as possible. This is to prevent the kid from wiggling out and escaping.
This was the method that was enforced while I was employed there. However, at some point, Trails must have switched to a different mechanism to keep the new kids from leaving. According to several news articles, in 2024, a bivy with an alarm device attached to the opening was used on a 12-year-old boy during his first night at Trails Carolina. In the morning, he was found dead by staff members. From my understanding, the cause of death was suffocation and was ruled a homicide.
Reading about this, after my employment with Trails Carolina as a wilderness field guide at the end of 2021, is very unsettling. My experience there was not pleasant from a burned-out, overworked, and understaffed perspective. However, I knew if things felt horrible to me, the kids must have felt twenty times worse. There were so many outbursts, panic attacks, and self-harm instances. This was not an environment for healing. It was traumatizing.
In the aftermath of the 12-year-old boy’s death, the state of North Carolina prompted Trails to shut down. This is good news. However, wilderness therapy programs like this still exist today. And we should all be advocating for their closure as well. I don’t have the right answer for how parents should deal with their troubled children. But I know with 100% certainty that wilderness therapy is not the correct way. Unless things change to become more humane and safe, these institutions should not be supported.
Breaking someone down to build them back up doesn’t work
It was a rainy October evening and I was tasked with hiking alongside Sarah as our group traveled to the next campsite. At 10 years old, she was small and had cute wire-rimmed glasses with two brown ponytails on either side of her head. She was also carrying a 40-pound pack that I’m sure weighed more than her. As she was hunched over and struggled to walk, we would take a few steps forward before Sarah would stop to burst into tears. While the group leader was out of eyesight, I remember frequently reaching over to lift up the top strap of Sarah’s backpack; my lousy attempt at trying to alleviate some of the pressure.
This was a normal day at Trails Carolina. Hiking a few miles while softly encouraging a crying child to keep moving. Judging by the look on her face, I knew that she thought this was bullshit. This whole program was bullshit. My eyebrows furled together as I strained to carry two backpacks on my body, along with my arm holding the weight of Sarah’s pack so that she could walk faster. I was starving and tired. The night before, I had to wake up several times to check on the kids and make sure no one had escaped. That morning, I skipped breakfast because one of the kids was having a meltdown.
Now it was drizzling. Everyone was wet, cold, exhausted, and in a bad mood. This wasn’t exactly what I had in mind when I submitted my job application a few months prior. I’m not sure why I didn’t quit after that week-long shift was over. It took another month for me to reconsider and actually send in my two-week notice over email while I sobbed in a hotel room after yet another traumatic week as a guide.
During that shift, it was the group leader’s behavior that actually caused me to quit. Harley, who was forced into her role too soon, was under a lot of pressure from management to lead the group without any flaws. Needless to say, there were many flaws about that week and Harley took out her frustrations on me by criticizing everything I did. Literally any and every move I made that entire week was somehow my fault, according to Harley.
I remember driving away from Trails Carolina for the last time, crying so hard I could barely see the road. I’ll say it again: breaking someone down to build them back up doesn’t work. Within a few weeks, I was back working at a gear shop in St. Louis, trying relentlessly to recover from my experiences at Trails. I sank into a deep depression. I spent five days at a psychiatric hospital playing Monopoly and having nightmares about children throwing rocks at me. It took a long time before I was able to set foot on another trail again. Now, years later, reading about the 12-year-old who suffocated in his bivy during his first night at Trails Carolina brings everything back up again.
I had good intentions. I wanted to be outside hiking and helping people with mental health issues. I didn’t expect to hold children down while they screamed. I didn’t expect to witness panic attacks. I didn’t expect the North Carolina woods to hold so much pain.
None of it should have happened. If I could go back in time, I would have never applied. The only thing that brings some comfort is knowing that Trails Carolina is closed for good. And I hope the kids who made it out know that things didn’t have to be that way. Most of the staff didn’t know what we were doing at the time, and I apologize deeply for the hurt our actions caused. I hope they can find joy in the outdoors despite everything. I hope they can move on.
Thank you for reading
See you out on the trail
Oh I totally forgot about this experience!