About Dave.
The practice of Wilderness Therapy has evolved over the years. My experience began in the field in 2004, in Georgia. The first year was very much the experience of drinking from the fire hose. After that, I began to develop my own style and approach to connecting with the kids that I work with. As time went on, I began to gain a greater sense of mastery over the work to the point where I was mentoring other staff in how to do it. After about three years, I eventually decided that it was time for a change and went to a program out west. There were subtle differences in the experience, climate, programatic details, even the diet, but the core of what clients of the programs went through remained mostly the same. I used to compare it to driving to Canada, other than a different way of talking and some different food, we pretty much live similar lives.
After another couple of years walking beside folks looking for change, I reached a point where I felt like I had given what I could in that context and that I needed to do something else or risk failing to provide the level of care that everyone deserved. Frankly, at that point, I didn’t think that I would return to the field. But return I did, the temptation to help influence another program’s field department was tantalizing enough draw me back in after about five years away. It was at this program that I started to get a better sense of the bigger picture of how all of the various parts of a program fit together to provide a client and their family with a healing experience.
A move to Boulder ended my time at that program and this is where I was first exposed to transition coaching as well as had the opportunity to do some transport work. This broadened my understanding of the journey that families embark upon when they make the decision to send their child to a wilderness therapy program.
From Boulder, I moved to Montana to work at a therapeutic boarding school, thus gaining experience in one more stage of some families’ journeys. While there I began to suspect that many kids didn’t need that step and that perhaps a substantial number of kids were being over pathologized within the system that had evolved to treat families in crisis. This isn’t to say that there aren’t many families that do need that support, just that it appears to be a lower percentage than currently engage in that step.
I spent time at one more wilderness program before coming to the conclusion that it was no longer a physically sustainable job for me. By this point I had worked at enough different programs that I felt very prepared to work with kids again who were returning home from some sort of therapeutic experience. After a number of months some patterns emerged, one being that most families experience many of the same challenges whether their child just went to wilderness or if they also went on to a residential treatment center or therapeutic boarding school. After comparing notes with a colleague, I decided that there might be a need that wasn’t being filled; many families only need the intervention of a wilderness therapy program and there really wasn’t an explicit path to receiving a proper placement that then didn’t also have the expectation of going on to a more long term program. And so Pathfinders Wilderness Placement was born.