How 'hard' outdoor education helps build up teens

The Boyle river is running high. There’s fresh snow on the tops, and the rain is icy. There are two wires stretched across the river, and the group of Year 11s from Ellesmere College look at each other nervously. They’ve been wet all day, and yesterday too, and on the other side of the river, they’ll be setting up tents for a night in the bush; hardly an appealing prospect. Their fingers are cold and their noses running. Brooklyn Ball, 15, steps bravely forward.

Back in the office, the radio makes everybody jump. “Sassy Ninja, do you copy? We need harnesses and firewood to camp.” Sharon Nicholas (Ngāti Ruapani, Rongowhakaata, Ngāti Porou me Ngāti Kahungunu) grabs her jacket; it’s still wet, she hasn’t been in long. “This is Sassy Ninja, I’ll be right there, over.”

This is the Boyle River Outdoor Education Centre (BROEC), 20 minutes east of the Lewis Pass, where Nicholas is centre manager. Off radio, she goes by Shaz. Nicholas wears a lot of hats around here - instructing students and teaching instructors are only two of them.

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A couple of hunters crowd the reception area; they’re looking for a drop-off to a nearby valley. A soggy Te Araroa tramper opens the door - he’s heard there’s pizza available. To add to matters, the water has stopped pumping from the creek, the filter clogged by leaves swept down in the rain.

BROEC, or ‘The Boyle', is a not-for-profit that offers outdoor ed programmes to mainly secondary school groups. They are in the business of fostering leadership, growth and confidence in young people. According to Nicholas, who’s been working in this space for over 20 years, their mission is more important now than ever.

She’s had a unique insight into the rise in mental distress in our rangatahi over her time as an outdoor educator - which has included both instructing and training instructors at Outward Bound.

“I’m generalising, and it varies, but if I look at what changes I’ve seen over time, I see more anxiety,” says Nicholas, “and I see more hesitancy about engaging in the outdoors and being uncomfortable.”

“I think young people spend so much time surrounded by tech these days that they’re not sure about the outdoors anymore, and it becomes almost a scary place to be,” she says, slapping at a sandfly, “when it used to be a natural place.”

Part of what students are developing out here - be they leaping into canyons or learning how to use a compass - is resilience. An increased tolerance for risk, for discomfort. “Because it’s hard,” Nicholas says. “It requires courage, it’s about finding the best version of yourself.”

Depending on their school rules, kids are usually expected to leave their phones behind. So, as Nicholas puts it, “they’re in the moment and are living it day by day”.

While alarming mental health stats do coincide with the rise of social media and screen time, there’s no simple causal link, says Terry Fleming, an associate professor in health at Te Herenga Waka | Victoria University of Wellington. Studies, she says, show mixed results, with some finding no clear impact and others showing small effects or only for some teens.

Fleming, a youth health specialist, is co-leader of the Youth19 study, a research project involving 7891 teenagers across Aotearoa. That research points to high and inequitable levels of mental distress in our youth - with a multitude of contributing factors.

“There are a lot of things that have changed for young people over the last 20 years - climate anxiety, political polarisation, a feeling of hopelessness about the world,” Fleming says. “Then you add social media and all the things that can come with that.

“You know, you could argue that our young people have become disembodied. They do plenty of critical analysis, but perhaps less noticing of the world around them.”

Back at camp, top priority is getting tents up and a fire built before dark. Ball recounts the two-wire shuffle. “When we first got there, the boys were like, ‘We'll go first!’” she says. “Then we got to actually doing it and they were like, ‘Oh yeah, we're a little bit nervous.’ So I went first.”

For Ball, the most valuable parts of camp have been the safety skills. “Crossing rivers, that’s probably something a lot of kids don’t know. We never usually get to do things like this. And learning how to layer properly!” she says, plucking at her dripping jacket. “I think it's important to know this sort of thing - especially in case something happens.”

While they were at camp, their school was closed due to widespread flooding in Canterbury. But this group are outdoor ed students, this is what they signed up for. And anyway, they’ve got their layers dialled.

“Does anybody know what this is?” The group’s instructor is holding up what looks like a piece of white rock. It’s bracket fungi, a natural firelighter, and once lit, vigorous blowing ensues to get the kindling around it to take. The steady rain is doing its best to thwart efforts.

Ball doesn’t think teenagers are spending as much time inside on their phones as people think. Fair enough. I ask her what she likes most about being out here, why it’s important to her. “It’s being able to breathe better,” she says. “And… I think spending more time outside makes you realise how much it actually is worth saving.”

School camp won’t fix our mental health crisis. But nature can offer respite from frantic modernity, and a place of belonging. An education in the outdoors can serve as an introduction and give kids the skills and confidence to go out on their own.

The survival of places like the Boyle, however, is not guaranteed. Set up by the Rotary in the 70s to provide ‘a mountain hut’ for local youth, and with the goal to keep programmes affordable for schools, the Boyle has always been run on the smell of an oily rag. But there is more pressure today than ever.

“We’ve had some amazing people invest huge amounts of time and energy into this place,” says Nicholas, “but we still have ageing infrastructure and increased living costs, and we need to pay our staff a reasonable amount. So when something breaks, it becomes a dire situation for us.”

Aside from school groups, the Boyle is kept afloat by fundraisers, donations and side hustles such as shuttling trampers to nearby trailheads, and housing and feeding Te Araroa walkers.

Being an hour from the nearest town, all the instructors live onsite. It’s isolated, and it’s hard work. But each time a school group comes through, amid the chaos, Nicholas gets a few reminders of why she does this.

“It’s a really beautiful thing,” she says, “seeing them have a sense of wonder when they engage with te taiao.”