to back it up. I want to see randomized control studies, bigger
studies.”
To collect more data on its programs, Outward Bound is
partnering with the Sierra Club and the U.S. Department of Veterans
Affairs to run a large pilot study out of the Seattle Veterans
Administration. Between them, Outward Bound and the Sierra Club
reach hundreds of veterans per year. Stacy Bare is helping to
coordinate the study for Outward Bound. A veteran who credits his
time in the wilderness with saving his life, Bare understands the need
for better metrics.
“It’s amazing to me that we don’t know more,” said Bare. “I think
we all believe in the power and mystery of the great outdoors, but
these are difficult things to quantify by science. Is it difficult to do a
double-blind control study in nature? Very. I don’t think we have to
hit that standard, but we have to have a more systematic approach to
how we evaluate the effects of the outdoors.”
DURING THE LAST days on the river, we floated through a landscape
that had been ravaged by wildfire in 2000 and again in 2012. At the
site of the older blaze, new teenaged evergreens were rising. Around
the charred stalks of the more recent fire lay a carpet of brilliant
green grass. It was a powerful reminder that life cycles onward. One
morning I sat on a big gear raft next to Linda Brown, the older vet
who had been institutionalized for depression. She sat with her arms
wrapped around her life jacket, her sandaled feet propped on the front
tube of the boat. “The trees can’t control their lives,” she’d said,
speaking so softly she practically whispered. “We can’t always
control what happens to us. The trees can teach us acceptance. And
metamorphosis.”
Months later, most of the women of Unit HG-714-RA would look
back and say rafting in Idaho helped them on their long journeys to
recovery. At least one of them, Catalina Lopez, nurse of exploding