The Great Adventure

By chance earlier in the year I came across Channel 4's  Brat Camp 3 . The series focused on seven out of control teenage girls from the UK who were sent on a Wilderness Therapy Program run by the Aspen Achievement Academy based out of Loa in Southern Utah USA.

For the innocents amongst you a "Wilderness Therapy Program" is a civilised name for the depositing of the unruly girls in the middle of nowhere, sleeping out under a tarpaulin away from civilisation. There are no showers, no toilets, no TV, no cigarettes  in fact very little of anything, apart from rules and miles and miles of wilderness.

They have to earn privileges e.g. the right to eat hot food or even to socially interact with the group. They are hiked daily until such time, with the help of therapists and field staff, they learn to manage their emotions and behaviour and are deemed ready to graduate and return home. Typically they are in the wild living rough for 70 days.

Redemption is said to be good for the soul and how these seven aggressive and profane "brats" might be redeemed had me totally hooked. However that was not all that had me hooked as I was very taken with the outdoor beauty, the space and a desire, if only for a short period of time, to escape from the rat race of civilisation. How I envied those brats!

Have you ever reached the stage in life when you started wondering "what's it all about" ? Well it suddenly hit me that aged 42, the years are rattling by and it was about time I started to have some fun with life before it passed me by.

Maybe I thought I should do something completely different,  outside of my comfort zone and go on a wilderness trekking holiday, so I started to search the web to see what was available ...