boys, but many returned to gangs once they got back home. “I
challenge anyone that age not to get back into it, to resist what all
their friends are doing,” he said.
In the psychiatric hospital, “nobody was allowed to set foot
outside the fence,” said Gold. “If it was possible to make a recovery
in a nature-based program, that was not on the agenda.”
Branching Out, he hopes, can provide both the short-term benefits
of a “hoods in the woods” program with the long-term behavioral
modifications of more classical therapy. Since its inception in 2007,
Branching Out has run some 700 participants through the program,
which includes activities such as walking, bushcraft, woodland arts,
trail maintenance and birding. The idea is to help people transition
from institutions to living more independently. It’s been particularly
successful in promoting exercise and increasing well-being in the
sickest participants.
“We call it ecotherapy,” said Gold. “I prefer the term ‘adventure
therapy,’ but it makes some people nervous they’ll get eaten to death
by mosquitoes while wearing a scratchy wet jumper.” Branching Out
provides transport, Wellies and waterproofs as needed, and all
requisite snacks. It has a long waiting list.
We pulled off the highway and drove up to the old Cassiltoun
estate carriage house, where we met ranger Bolton, a small, easy-
going man with an air of unhurried competence. He explained that
Cassiltoun is home to 13,000 welfare recipients. The unemployment
rate here is 39 percent. Drug problems afflict 13 percent of residents
and mental- health disorders strike at nearly twice the national
average.
But Bolton, who has a background in ecology, thinks these woods
can help. He led us some distance into the forest. Although it was
sunny and leafy, vestiges of the woodland’s delinquent past remained.
(In this, the forest is not so different from its users, who retain an air
of recent breakage.) I’m not used to seeing tree graffiti, for example.