Braving the wilderness: Ava Lowe

Ava Lowe during her time in the wilderness, a program designed to help teens in crisis. Photos by Ana Lowe

What is wilderness? Being taken from your bed in the middle of the night and driven far away from your family. Having to live on your own in the desert or woods with other people, scraping for food and making shelter to stay dry when it rains or even snows.

This hard core training had a huge impact on junior Ava Lowe who experienced this massive change over the summer in Utah. She shares her wild encounters with cows, snow and hail, eating quinoa and rice everyday from scratch, learning to make a shelter, leading the other girls on hikes and giving survival tips. No technology, no contact with family or friends, basically disappearing off the grid. Unfortunately for Ava, Utah was at its peak with snow and rain, she was even snowed on during multiple nights when she first arrived.

“It’s a crisis intervention and basically, what happens to most kids, or what happened to me in my case, was two transporters, we call them goons, will come into your house at night, your parents hire them and then they take you to...Utah and they drive you there, drop you off and that’s kind of what happens," Ava explained.

Most kids who are sent there spend around 10 to 14 weeks, depending on one’s individual mental health status by the end of the set period.

Going from living in the comfort of your own home, having a roof over your head, having the resources to prepare a meal when hunger arises– to living on your own, eating rice and beans over a fire you made yourself and sleeping under hastily made shelters to keep dry from the rain. No help is allowed and you must learn to survive on your own.

“It’s for people who are going through crazy situations at home so it can show you that you can go through those crazy situations and then also go through them while living in the middle of the woods for an extended amount of time,” said Lowe.

Wilderness therapy is for all kinds of teens going through any situation that needs specific help and guidance. While the concept is to adapt, change and live on your own, essentially there are other people there for either similar or vastly different reasons that accompany you on your journey. For Ava, the girls at her designated facility were her people. She was with them for months, forming bonds that were incomparable to a normal friendship.

“The friendships were a big thing, there are like 7 other girls…you know those people, they're like, that's your life. We see a few adults every once in a while but like those are your people, if I have extra rice because I can bow drill and this girl can’t I’m gonna give her my rice, so it's kind of like a really tight knit relationship.”