A mountain of good

The news story we see most often about the great outdoors will be about someone who has got themselves lost in it.

The irony is that there are many more people who head out into the back country and end up finding themselves.

No better place to go to be alone with your thoughts, to make more sense of them as you put one boot in front of the other.

No better place to go when you're utterly frustrated by a world showing so much enthusiasm for people like Trump and all that goes with that.

But wait! There's much more! There's a whole frame of mind that comes from pitting yourself against challenges, from locating yourself as one small piece in some much greater whole. Our educators know this.

When Hazel Nash took our third form class up into the mountains, she was giving every one of us a new dimension. She had no doubt that trying new things, challenging us to find something more within ourselves, would do us huge good. It was one of the best experiences of all my school years. I'll bet you the others would tell you the same.

Hazel went on to found Whenua Iti Outdoors, taking at-risk and abused young people into the outdoors and turning the light back on in their lives. Today that place is doing invaluable work with thousands of kids every year.

Would we ever think of undoing such good work? Of course we would. That's how things are these days. There's a proposal to remove Outdoor Education from the senior school curriculum.

This week I got an email from a very experienced retired high school principal whose opinion and experience I really rate. He said:

There are some subjects that in my view have limited use in the senior school, but this is not one of them. I have over many years seen young people develop as strong, focused and committed individuals with great leadership skills that, had they not had the opportunity to participate in Outdoor Education, I doubt they would have developed to the same level.

Of course he's right. Of course it's hugely valuable. Of course you shouldn't remove it.

Defenders might say Oh, we're not saying it isn't valuable, we're just saying we need to rearrange the senior school priorities. I would argue there’s no stage at which outdoor education won't be immensely valuable.

Still, if we must restrict this to the stunted calculus of return on investment, let's consider this, from an industry veteran:

The experiences our overseas visitors have when they meet our outdoor guides can be enduring. They expect safety and professionalism. The only way I could deliver that was by employing graduates from the polytech outdoor and adventure tourism programmes—alumni from all over New Zealand.

He also said: Outdoor education, in combination with other subjects, builds character, resilience and the can-do attitude.

What we do out there, in the mountains and the tracks and the rivers, captures many of our best qualities as a nation. Do we really want to strangle that?

It's not the answer to everything. But it could be the answer to more than we think.