Outward Bound Brings Vets to Great Outdoors
by Joe Lindsley Jr.

Veterans hike down a mountain on an Outward Bound course.

The Sierra Club is not frequently associated with the American military. As an environmental group, the club promotes the "responsible use of the earth's ecosystems and resources." But in their mission to encourage people to appreciate and enjoy the outdoors, they recently partnered with the wilderness education program Outward Bound to offer free expeditions for veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Outward Bound, which began as a way to help British merchant marines survive lifethreatening conditions, has long served Vietnam veterans by offering structured wilderness courses as a means of helping servicemen recover from the horror of war. As T.S. Eliot once wrote, "the whole earth is our hospital," and Outward Bound believes that bringing people to the great outdoors for a week of challenging activity and good fellowship could help make the transition to civilian life a little smoother by healing the psychological wounds of war.

"People that come to Outward Bound, they learn skills to endure times of adversity," said Meg Ryan, who directs the organization's veterans program. "[Outward Bound founder] Kurt Hahn really felt like youth just really need an experience to hang in there, don't give up when the seas of life get rough and really learn about service and compassion for your other fellow human beings."

Af ter Vietnam, Outwar d Bound's veterans program focused on those with posttraumatic stress disorders. With support from Disabled American Veterans, the program took veterans out of hospitals and into the wilderness. Now, the Sierra Club Foundation has donated significant sums through 2010 to support programs for veterans of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, whether or not they are suffering from any post-trauma disorder. In fact, nowadays the goal is to prevent such disorders from arising, and even servicemen on active duty attend the courses.

So many veterans have applied for the free courses that Outward Bound is forced to turn down several thousand each year. In 2010, the year the current Sierra grant expires, they hope to serve 1,000 veterans.

The courses are only adapted slightly from the regular Outward Bound programs. A trademark Outward Bound experience is spending time alone in the wilderness, during which young people are forced to confront the fear of being alone. Figuring that veterans have already been through such experiences, the courses do not feature the solitary portion and do not need to teach rudimentary survival or navigational skills.

"It's kind of a neat mutual reciprocity," Read said. "The Outward Bound staff learn a lot from the participants and the participants really gain a lot of insight and have interests in wilderness skills." Frequently veterans are most excited about learning rockclimbing, to the surprise of OB instructors who assumed that it would have been included in military training.

After spending the days kayaking, climbing, and hiking, participants gather around the campfire each evening for a "debriefing," a time set aside to discuss the challenges they face.

"Nothing is forced," Ryan said. "[The veterans] always say, 'well, we don't want these really intense kumbaya sessions.'"

Each course features a "culminating activity," an all-day challenge, such as ascending a peak. When they reach the top, the veterans hold a "remembrance ceremony" and place stones in honor of their fallen brethren in a pile called a cairn, an old Celtic tradition.

One veteran who attended a course at Joshua Tree in Utah wrote in a letter of thanks, "Since my return from Iraq in Summer 2007, I have found it extremely difficult to relax and enjoy my life. I spent time with my family, exercised, tried to get into my social life and even saw a psychiatrist. … but the last five days [on an Outward Bound course] I have thought very little about the past or future. I cannot describe to you how liberating that is," he wrote.

Ryan is working to secure more grant money, from the Sierra Club and other sources, including the federal government. She would like to see money steered "straight to Outward Bound as part of their reintegration process back home."

According to Bob O'Rourke, a veterans program instructor, "The Outward Bound experiential approach is to take a group of strangers, put them in a new, very different environment (wilderness, mountains, desert), and challenge them physically and emotionally all the while keeping the atmosphere very positive and safe."