In measuring the mental health of our children and adolescents, we tend to use benchmarks for social skills. Whether they can start – and keep – supportive friendships, show common sense and make good choices.
Solitary children can make people uncomfortable. And to be fair, their busy lives aren’t so conducive to down time.
But quiet and solitude are unique, healthy prescriptions that counter our children’s more-than-enough screen time. Kids are around so much noise, including in their own homes.
So we’re especially excited that Mancos School District RE-6’s Wild Chicken cross-country skiing day on Feb. 23 will deliver on this at Chicken Creek Nordic outside Mancos.
Wild Chicken is in collaboration with Wild Fridays, usually twice a month activities to get students and their families outside. It’s sold as big fun – and it certainly is that – with slacklining, biking, plant and animal identification, and much more. Everyone gets exercise, gets a little rowdy and engages with the community in some form.
But there’s more inside these activities, as in the upcoming cross-country ski outing, that introduces kids to soft sounds in the wilderness. The swish-swish of skis on snow, wind bending tree branches and songs of winter birds.
Sure, we expect all the usual shenanigans of snowy fun, with kids falling over skinny skis and poking each other with poles. Also, creeks are magnetic to kids, who can’t resist watery hijinks.
But Mike Higgs, school district social worker who runs Wild Fridays, layers activities with opportunities for self-reflection and stillness. Higgs said the flow state experienced while cross country skiing is the “ultimate awareness of the present moment.”
This flow state is a remedy for social and emotional challenges that many of our kids struggle with and are working on.
Even before the pandemic, anxiety and depression became more common among children and adolescents, increasing 27% and 24% respectively from 2016 to 2019, according to research data from the National Survey of Children’s Health, published in JAMA Pediatrics in March 2022. By 2020, 5.6 million kids (9.2%) had been diagnosed with anxiety problems and 2.4 million (4%) with depression.
Winter-time solitude in nature cracks open parts of our children’s psyche in good ways.
Higgs saw opportunities when he asked a class of about 25 kids whether they had ever been hiking. Only five had. About 20 said they go to parks often, but didn’t get out into the backcountry.
Higgs put together lessons about wilderness safety – and how to optimize it – resilience, healthy risk and respect for the land. He and the kids pick up appropriate trash. And he’ll point out all the sweat equity and hours that went into grooming trails at Chicken Creek.
Not only a lover of nature and an outdoor recreationist, Higgs is a trained wilderness first responder with EMT training. He continually checks kids’ feet for cold injuries, and is that guy hauling extra layers and socks.
Higgs is also all about risk-management learning opportunities, such as safely crossing rivers in high and swift water. Mother Nature rules but crossings can be done securely.
During lessons, Higgs keeps in mind his close friend runner Ian O’Brien, who disappeared while training on a trail run near Hesperus Mountain on June 24. O’Brien’s body was found caught in a strainer on the West Mancos River by two hunters on Sept. 2.
O’Brien had a wealth of outdoor experience, an infectious spirit and a legacy in the backcountry. “Ian would be so stoked,“ he said.
Higgs is supported by an extraordinary team, including Brad Higinbotham and Effie Manahan. Wild Fridays is benefited by grant money from School Community Youth Collaborative, and caring community members in Mancos Gear Share, SCYC and Mancos United. Wild Chicken is supported by San Juan Mountains Association, Mancos Gear Share, Wild Fridays and SCYC.
It’s difficult to teach kids to slow down. To watch and feel. But we believe in this mission of quiet confidence built in the wilderness.
With inexpensive used gear, a new wintery landscape will open to our young people. A wonderland to soothe and ease with lessons to realize on one’s own.
