MOUNTAINS TO CLIMB

For six months, a group of teens battling drug addiction have been in
the bush, preparing for their return to the real world

Kerry Williamson Calgary Herald

There's an old forestry hut, long abandoned, at the top of Black Rock Mountain.

Unused since the 1950s, the hut has seen better days. It was
reshingled once, a decade ago, but nobody has stayed up there for
much longer than a few hours.

It continues to stand, though, holding up against howling winds that
blow down the eastern slopes, carving their way past the bluffs that
stand like sentries over the foothills.

And inside, scratched out with a knife on the old wooden walls that
seem ready to fall with every strong gust, are hundreds, perhaps
thousands, of names.

Each one is etched in its own unique way, dug out, written in fading
marker, scribbled in barely legible ink.

Chris's name is there now. So is Sarah's. Right now, this hut, this
mountain, means more to them than pretty much anything else.

They are two of eight teenagers living at the Enviros Base Camp, a
camp deep in the Ghost Wilderness bush that helps teens kick serious
drug addictions.

For Chris and Sarah -- three weeks ago for one; three months ago for
the other -- getting wasted on drugs was the only high they had.

Both were caught in a web of serious addictions that tore their lives
apart and left them balancing on a precipice.

Not unlike the precipice where Chris stood on that blue sky day a week ago.

"It's pretty crazy up there. The view was just wicked, man. You could
see everything, everything," he says.

He'd never climbed a mountain before.

"You could see this place here, you could see the lake that we skate
on, you could see Calgary. I'd never seen anything like that, ever.

"And there were thousands of names scratched in the hut.

"I carved my name in the hut. We had to do that."

Black Rock looms large above the camp, casting a shadow each day when
the sun falls behind the Rockies.

It's hard to ignore, as mountains tend to be. And it is easy to use
it as a clear but clumsy metaphor for this place. A mountain that
needs to be climbed, a challenge that needs to be overcome.

It is six hours from the bottom, to the forestry shack at the top,
and back down to the bottom again. It is not treacherous, but it is a
good hike all the same.

You hear a lot about Black Rock here.

"I never thought I would be in a place like this," says Chris. "I'd
never climbed a mountain before. I'd never even started a fire before I came.

"I've learned a lot."

The first thing you notice is how young the youth are.

Shooting hoops on a makeshift, snow-covered court. Or standing around
the sink, rinsing dishes, they look like teens you'd see waiting for
a bus outside school.

When a reporter's tape recorder is inadvertently left alone and
recording, the teens open up, making up raps, singing some old Tupac
Shakur song, begging staff members for suckers they know are hidden
in a box in the kitchen. They sound like your brother, your daughter,
your grandchild.

They tell their stories with their heads down, barely looking you in
the eye. Their pain is clear as they talk of drugs, of addictions
that have put them on the streets, that have stolen their childhoods.

Sarah is your typical teenage girl. A little shy, she jokes with
strangers who enter the camp and laughs when she turns down an offer
of seconds at lunch.

So it's shocking when she speaks of why she is here.

"I got into trouble with meth and everything a couple of years ago,"
says Sarah, whose name, along with all of her campmates, has been
changed. "I've done lots of these programs."

Her story is typical of the youths who choose to come to Base Camp, a
three-month program offered to youths with serious drug addictions
that has been up and running for six months.

Sarah grew up north of Edmonton, got in with the wrong crowd, and
started doing drugs before her 15th birthday. But it was the crystal
meth that took over her life. She struggled with school and saw her
relationship with her family deteriorate.

She has spent the past two years trying to kick her habit. A social
worker referred her to Base Camp, and she is now just one week shy of
leaving, her 12 weeks almost up. She hasn't done drugs in three months.

She remembers when she first got here. The youths go through the same
ritual -- they arrive with their family, parents, uncles and aunts,
close friends, older brothers, stopping in a nearby meadow used for
grazing horses during the winter.

From there, they walk together into camp, passing wooden signs
nailed to trees representing the four stages they will go through.
Courage, for deciding to change. Trust, for having faith in their
abilities. Commitment, for their desire to stay. And Wisdom, for
making the change a reality.

During their stay in camp, the teens are given wooden beads that
represent each stage, as they move forward with their treatment.
Sarah is close to having all four.

Now, she isn't sure she wants to leave. But three months ago, she was
sure she would not stay.

"I thought it was stupid and I was going to leave the next day," she
says, slumped in a couch inside the camp's main cabin.

"I almost left, because they do some really weird stuff here. They
were passing this feather around and doing all this weird stuff that
I had never seen before.

"But I am glad I stayed. It's good out here. You just stay here and
deal with your problems and you can't just run away from them.

"I think, hopefully, this will be the last time I am in treatment."

She has cut ties to her dark past. She has become closer to her
mother. She has a job lined up, in the mountains, once she leaves.
And she has already said goodbye to friends she knows she can't see anymore.

"I've had to drop a lot of close people, because you know they won't
change and you just can't be around them," she says. "You have to
change everything.

I had to tell some people I couldn't see them, and it felt good,
because I never thought I could do something like that.

"This place, it gives you a chance to be a kid again, to live a normal life."

Another kid, Matt, has a similar story. He, too, is here because of a
court order.

"I am surprised that I can go a day without doing drugs. I didn't
know that was possible," he says. "When you are growing up, doing
drugs all day long, that's what you become used to, that's what you know.

"And then you come out here, and it all changes. In the back of your
mind, nobody really wants to be here. But we know it is helping."

It is a transformation that is common, but one that is not expected.
The teens choose to come here, and have already decided to kick their
habits, but they are still a long way from being normal teenagers.

Many have been living on the streets for months, even years. Many
have few or no ties to their immediate family, those strings cut when
addictions took hold.

When the teens arrive, they are still the tough youngsters from the
streets, or the ones that skip school to smoke pot or crack. But a
few weeks in the bush often prompts a change.

"What I see, over a period of time, every time I come out here, is
some sort of change in the kid," says Doug Darwish, executive
director of Enviros. "When I first see them, I see them with their heads down.

"A month later, I see them carrying their body differently. They are
sitting up, they are willing to look me in the eye, they are willing
to engage in conversation.

"You see a whole physical change that says 'I'm proud of who I am.
I'm comfortable with it now, I can stand tall.' "

Carolyn Godfrey has been working with youths like these for 16 years.
She, too, watches them change. "I see their confidence increase," she
says. "I see that ability to make a decision. I see them recognizing
the value of themselves and their families. I see respect for
themselves and for others.

"Some of the kids, success is coming out here and staying for one
week. To me, when I think of success, I think of positive change.
It's one day more without drugs. It's one more conversation with
families that is healthy and positive.

"It's small steps. But, in their perspectives, they are huge steps."

The idea is not new. Experiential learning is perhaps the oldest form
of education -- the old 'teach a man to fish' theory -- but it is one
that has often battled for credibility.

Godfrey, the camp's manager of specialized resources, says the
wilderness can be just as effective as a classroom or an urban
treatment program. A difficult cross-country ski trip can often teach
these youths more about themselves than a talk with a counsellor.

"It is a really quick tool to help people learn about the strengths
they have. The cause and effect is very quick and immediate," says
Godfrey. "If it is raining, and if you don't put on a coat, you get
wet. It's raining and you do put on a coat, you stay dry. It's that
kind of immediacy.

"And it's about transferring those skills that they learn in the
outdoors, that they can persevere through a tough day of skiing or a
difficult hike.

"Things like, 'When it was really tough and you guys dug in and you
got there, when things are tough at home or at school, how do you use
those same skills to get you through that experience?'

"The technical experiences speak for themselves. What our team does
here is transfer that to real life."

The first kids came through here close to six months ago.

The camp, a scattering of cabins and outhouses amongst stands of
birch and spruce and nestled beside a small lake, has been here for
close to two decades, beginning life as a work camp for juvenile offenders.

Its latest incarnation came last August, when the Alberta Alcohol and
Drug Abuse Commission teamed up with Enviros Wilderness School
Association -- the company that runs the camp and other programs like
it across the province -- to make it a home for youths aged 12 to 17
with serious addiction problems.

It is funded through a $4.2-million injection of provincial cash,
funding for 24 youth detox and residential treatment beds in Alberta;
Calgary got 12 of the beds, eight of which were allocated for the camp program.

Dave Rodney, chairman of the alcohol and drug abuse commission and
MLA for Calgary-Lougheed, says that money should continue in
perpetuity, meaning the camp is here to stay for now.

The kids come here voluntarily, referred to Base Camp through the
commission's various treatment programs. They do not have to stay,
either. This place is no prison.

"Years ago, we found that when a 17-year-old young man was having
problems with drugs, we could find a spot for that young man in the
adult detox and residential program," says Rodney, who visited the
camp two weeks ago, and was almost reduced to tears talking to the kids.

"But we started to see more young men, and younger and younger males,
and we also started to see more females, and younger and younger
females. We decided that we needed a facility specifically for youth.

"For kids that exhibit higher tendencies towards risk, who . . . are
much more suited to get away from that urban environment, let's get
them out of town and make sure they are ready to come back when they
come back."

For three months, the kids live in the bush, apart from the odd home
visit toward the end of their stay.

Twenty-six kids have been through the program. Those that graduate
are moved back into more traditional programs once their 12 weeks is
up, or left to go back home, hopefully to stay clean. But the camp is
no magic wand -- it is up to the kids themselves to change.

Some of the first group are, no doubt, still mired in addiction. But
others are likely now cut off from the lifestyle that brought them
here in the first place.

They attend daily classes, being taught Alberta Education curriculum,
just as they would at school. They are offered numerous types of
therapy and treatment sessions, from decision-making to risk-taking
to relapse prevention to information on drugs and alcohol.

Most days, they gather at a ceremonial fire pit near the lake,
sitting on wooden benches and talking together of their experiences,
sharing their stories. It's here they often write in their journals, too.

There is a ropes course further up the hill, designed to help
confidence, to bring the group together.

And they are offered a fulltime wilderness experience, one most have
never had. They skate on the frozen lake, hike the trails that pock
the Ghost Wilderness area, rock climb nearby bluffs, cross-country
ski and canoe in the summer.

They are responsible for keeping their bunkhouses -- one for girls,
one for boys -- warm, by chopping wood and keeping their fires going at night.

"It's about them," says Darwish. "I mean, we facilitate it. But it's
them finding their strength along the way, realizing they have value."

Joost de Bruijn's classroom is modestly decorated, a small room near
the back of one of the cabins nestled in the bush.

But every day, he teaches these kids the same as he would teach them
in Calgary, or in Edmonton. The youths are expected to continue their
schooling while they are here.

Trouble is, many of them haven't been in school for months, even years.

"Some students come here on an academic track already, they may even
come with correspondence materials," says de Bruijn. "But generally,
they will come from an outreach school, or not from any kind of school.

"Some of the kids that come here, they won't have been at school for
two years, so they are way behind. But the academic side, with many
of them, is secondary or tertiary to the other issues in their lives.
The social issues, the addiction issues."

When he's not teaching, he's a friend to the kids. On this afternoon,
he joins them at the basketball hoop hanging loosely over an icy concrete pad.

"The kids here are great, they all have so much to offer," says de
Bruijn. "They all have gifts, and they all have the ability to change."

Camp counsellors live with the kids, working four days on, four days
off. They supervise the activities, make sure the work is done. But,
most importantly, they are there to talk to, and to listen.

They admit the youth that come to Base Camp are already survivors, of
the streets, of their own addictions. But living here, in the bush,
requires a different kind of survival.

"Some of these kids have never left the city, never left their own
environment," says Darwish. "So it's one thing to say, 'I'm going out
there,' but it's another to actually move in and live here.

"The survival skills these kids have, actually become an impediment to growth."

Rodney knows a little about survival. The rookie MLA is perhaps
better known for climbing Mount Everest, twice, the only Canadian to do so.

"It's one thing to survive. It's another to thrive," he says. "I have
heard stories of people who have embarked upon hobbies, whether it
was white water rafting, climbing, camping, or even something like
birdwatching, whose hobbies actually saved their lives in terms of
changing that addiction to a much more healthy pastime.

"You can achieve certain benefits in the outdoors that are just
unattainable in an urban environment."

Mike has been on the streets for most of his teenage years.

He's a tough-looking, street-hardened kid, wearing the bling -- a
thick silver chain, a flashy watch -- bought with money made from
dealing drugs.

He has been in and out of court. He misses his girlfriend, also
fighting a serious addiction, and wants transferred out of Base Camp,
to another residential program which will allow them to see one another.

He is here because of a court order forcing him to enter some sort of
treatment program. He chose Base Camp because he enjoys the outdoors,
and has a love of rock climbing.

While he wants out, he knows the program has helped him.

"You learn life skills, survival and that kind of stuff," he says,
his head shadowed by the brim of a cap. "You are surviving away from
the streets. When I grew up, I was always off and on the streets for
like, three years, selling drugs and what not.

"And now I'm not, and it's all about trying to keep away from that stuff."

Mike has tried other programs before.

But like many kids with addictions, day programs weren't the answer.

He has sat through day after day of therapy and treatment sessions,
only to go home and smoke up two or three hours later.

"Here, it's not so much that they are teaching, it's that we are
learning it on our own through different experiences. Different
things happen every day out here, and you have to find ways to cope
with it," says Mike.

And by being here, he has discovered a different kind of high.

"You learn how you can get highs off other things than drugs. When
you are way up high, rock climbing and stuff, it's a different experience.

"You realize you don't have to smoke something just to feel
something. You can climb real high up and just look down. I used to
be afraid of heights. Then I started climbing and I would get real
high up somewhere and look down and just go 'Wow!'

"You just get that adrenaline pumping. It's better than drugs, man."

Chris spent Christmas Day on house arrest. He, too, has spent the
past few years on the streets. He, too, has been through program
after program, each one failing to curb his drug addiction. He's lost
touch with his immediate family, but is hopeful Base Camp can help.

"I signed up because of the need to turn my life around," he says.
"I'm just always in and out of jail, living on the streets. This
isn't what I want, not at all.

"The hardest part for me is being here. I miss my independence, I
miss drugs. But you learn a lot out here.

"I'm just surprised that there are two ways to live life. I come from
a lot different than this."

Chris thinks he will last the three months. A city kid, he's already
done things he'd never thought possible, like climbing Black Rock, or
going cross-country skiing, or even finishing a simple hike.

He likes to look up at the mountain he climbed two weeks ago. From
the meadow near the camp, you can see the forestry hut, the one which
now has Chris's name scratched into it.

He laughs when he thinks of what his friends would think about his
conquering of a mountain. He doubts they would understand.

But he knows what that day meant for him. Stepping out of his comfort
zone, hiking a trail he'd never seen before, immersing himself in a
place that must have seemed like another planet to a kid from the
city, a kid from the streets.

He also knows camp won't save him.

"This is just a stepping stone for me. This ain't where it ends for
me. There's no way that three months is enough.

"You can't just say 'I'm done with drugs.' It just doesn't work like that.

"It's going to be a life-long struggle."