OPINION:
Researchers recently gave us “the most underrated mental health tool.” A recent analysis of nearly 3,800 studies and more than 10 million people concluded that spending time in nature reduces anxiety and depression while boosting mood and relaxation.
I bet that somewhere, a grandmother who spent her childhood splashing in a creek bed is laughing. Somewhere else, a mother reading headlines about the study, released in May, is thinking as she makes dinner, “Great, one more thing I’m supposed to schedule for my daughter.”
I get it, because I am that mother. I am also a former summer camper, and I promise you that no study is needed to convince me that time outdoors is good for you.
I care less about discussing the research and more about what is actually happening to our daughters — and why the woods might be one of the last honest places left for them.
We are raising girls in a culture that manufactures anxiety and then sells them a self-care industry to manage it. Every phone screen is now a mirror. Every friendship has an audience. Our girls are exhausted from managing a version of themselves before they have even figured out who they are, and, honestly, we are tired too.
We are under pressure to perform, keep up and make sure our daughters look like they are thriving. It is a lot to carry, and most of what we are trying to rectify did not start outdoors. It started on digital devices in a culture that does not let anyone be themselves or a work in progress for very long.
What I noticed at the end of summer camp each year was that the girls who complained the most on the drive in were often the ones who cried the hardest on the drive home. Not because camp had been difficult for them, but because it gave them something they did not know they were missing.
“I don’t even like camping,” one girl told me. By Day 5, she was among those begging her parents to let her come back. She did not change her mind about the great outdoors. Something in her shifted while she was out there.
Take a girl out of a world built to keep her anxious and comparing herself to social media feeds and put her in a place where she has to pay attention: to a trail, a fire that will not light, a friend limping on mile four. Things start happening that do not happen at home.
New skills are forged. Real friendships are formed. The real outdoors — not pictures on a screen — is experienced.
For many of these girls, who have spent years learning to perform confidence rather than build it, there is something almost holy about getting to be tired and muddy and unfiltered in front of other people and finding out that it is fine.
Research professionals might call this an emerging field. At American Heritage Girls, we call it Tuesday.
Since our founding, camping and outdoor adventure have not been an add-on to our program; they have been the engine of it. Long before “nature therapy” had a name, mothers understood that a girl’s mental and emotional health is not separate from her physical world.
It is why we have specific badges for camping and hiking and why time outdoors sits alongside faith, leadership, citizenship and life skills as one of our core program emphases.
It is why our Free to Grow and Embracing Emotions curriculums walk girls through real conversations — anchored in Scripture, not in whatever mental health trend is gaining popularity that week — about anxiety, resilience and identity.
It is also why we lead girls through our Get Out There curriculum to help them discover all the ways that God uses the outdoors to enrich their bodies, minds and faith.
Camping remains one of the most requested, effective and talked-about parts of our troop experience.
So the science certainly is not wrong here. It is just catching up to something that mothers, camp counselors and troop leaders have known for a long time: Girls were not made to spend their days staring at a bright rectangle, managing how they look for people who are not even in the room. They were made for dirt under their fingernails and friendships forged by doing something hard together.
If your daughter groans about the next campout, take heart. So did mine, and so have many others. By Day 5, do not be surprised if your child is the one who does not want to leave.
• Rachael Culpepper is executive director of American Heritage Girls.
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