heads, would say it didn’t. Statistically, this seems about right. In
other mental-health studies, for example in Finland, about 15 percent
of subjects remain wholly unmoved by their time in nature.
Sometimes it’s because they just hate it there. They hate the bugs, the
breeze, the big sky. Their nervous systems will never calm down
outdoors.
That wasn’t Lopez’s problem. She said the trip just wasn’t nearly
long enough. Not long enough for her to turn off her nightmares. Not
long enough to stop her from sleep-driving through corn stubble at
midnight on Ambien. Not long enough for her to start believing again
in other people. Certainly not long enough to gain confidence
swimming through swift currents. Many wilderness therapy programs
for troubled adolescents run weeks and weeks, even months.
Although Higher Ground gives each participant a “recreation
fund” to keep pursuing an outdoor sport at home, Lopez told me she
still hadn’t decided whether she would use it. But Marsha Anderson
and Carla Garcia would go surfing, sometimes together, in Southern
California. Formerly passive Anjah Mason had joined a gym,
determined to lose twenty pounds. I was amazed at her
transformation. She now routinely hikes near her home, and she
wanted camping gear. Pam Hana had been cycling and wanted to use
her rec funds to buy a mountain bike.
As for Herrera, she told me she was signing up for another river
trip, this time with Outward Bound. “I liked the river. I liked to be
successful,” she said. And she was scoping out other programs as
well, a shooting trip in the countryside in Alabama, maybe sky diving
or rock climbing if she could find a place that adapts to disabilities. “I
want to find something to do every summer,” she said.
And, she told me with pride, she was growing her hair out.