Wilderness

Photo: Pablo McLoud, “Onward”, www.pablophotography.com

Why is it that we send our damaged youth
to outdoor survival schools, but do not
make it a point to send all of our children?

Lessons on Self-Reliance, and Resilience,
Confidence, Tenacity and Teamwork: why
are they reserved for so few, or just taught
abstractly in the hermetic isolation of the
classroom, or kept to the rule-constrained
confines of the sports field? Why should
encounters with the Sublime, Uncertainty,
natural Complexity, the “Other”, and with
apparent Randomness not be required
fare? Shouldn’t every student have the
opportunity to situate themselves within
what Gregory Bateson called “The Pattern
That Connects”?

A striped basketball court is not freedom.
A playground offers no hint of the Sublime.
A sports field offers no connection to the
“Pattern That Connects”. Compromised and
domesticated exteriors like these miss the
point of Wilderness. They are versions of the cultivated garden, not of Wilderness.

We need to send our children into the Wild.

Photo Credit: Pablo McCloud