Working as a Field Guide at BaMidbar Wilderness Therapy is tough. Field Guides are in the wilderness for days or weeks on end, away from family and loved ones, technology and the creature comforts of modern life. They handle unpredictability, are exposed to a variety of weather and elemental forces and work with students experiencing deep internal struggle.

“There’s a lot of stigma about mental health issues and addiction across the board, but especially in the Jewish community.” — Jory Hanselman, Director of BaMidbar Wilderness Therapy at Ramah in the Rockies. “Using a wilderness-based environment is critical to building self and understanding personal responsibility as well as resiliency, so winter provides a powerful tool to really bring a lot of presence in the program.”

“When you go out into the wilderness, you just become open to all sorts of change,” said Rabbi Eliav Bock, director of Ramah of the Rockies. “When you go into the wildness, you strip away a lot of the noise we have around us — family, drugs, bad influences. You take somebody out of normal circumstances and force them to confront who they are as a person, what their core values are.”

BaMidbar Wilderness Therapy, an experiential outdoor education program for young adults struggling with emotional, behavioral, or academic challenges, will launch on January 24. BaMidbar is a program of Ramah in the Rockies. The therapeutic program includes four-day wilderness treks, with Shabbats spent at Ramah’s base camp. At base camp, participants will also have individual, group, and family therapy.