Run Away From Home

What a Himalayan concept, a phone ban in Thailand, and a rain-soaked rafting trip taught me about designing outdoor programs that actually meet people where they are

Ghar Se Bhago.

It means run away from home. And in the Himalayan tradition, it's not a flight from something — it's a call toward something. The discomfort of the unfamiliar. The growth that waits just outside your front door. The person you become when you go somewhere you've never been.

Krishna Patel found that phrase on a sticker at a campsite in Uttarakhand, India, after finishing her 21-day NOLS backpacking course in the Indian Himalayas. She stuck it on her Nalgene. And it became, she told me, the closest thing she has to a life motto.

I met Krishna virtually — she in Maharashtra, me in the Santa Cruz Mountains — and spent an hour and a half watching her dismantle almost everything I thought I understood about outdoor education.

Not in a combative way. In the way that only happens when you talk to someone who has worked on every continent, with every kind of kid, and has been paying close enough attention to notice the patterns.

"You've met one group. You've met one group. You need to really assess the needs and the

values of those young people before you take them outside."

That was the line that stopped me mid-conversation.

Because here's what I think a lot of outdoor educators — myself included — are guilty of: we build programs that worked for us, and then take them to kids who are nothing like us. Somehow, we're surprised when the kids don't respond the way we expected.

Krishna described a rafting trip in India where, at the end of day one, her students came to her asking for plastic bags to seal their wet clothes. Not to dry them. To seal them away. The first instinct wasn't to use the sun. It was to put the discomfort out of sight.

A different educator might have read that as the kids being difficult. Krishna read it as information.

The students weren't broken. They were urban. They had grown up in environments where you handle mess by containing it. The solution wasn't to override that instinct — it was to offer a different relationship with it. The sun is here. Your clothes will dry. That is outdoor access.

She told me about a group of Grade 10 students in Thailand who wouldn't put their phones down. And instead of confiscating the phones, her co-facilitator — an exceptional photographer — offered to teach them something. By day four, the phones were lying in corners. By the end of the trip, the students had produced short films, created Instagram pages, and built community they didn't know they needed.

That is also outdoor access.

"Outdoor access isn't just about getting to a trailhead. It's about whether the person who arrives there feels physically and emotionally safe enough to stay."

What Krishna is describing — and what I think this episode is really about — is the difference

between outdoor education as a product we deliver, and outdoor education as a conversation we keep having with the young person in front of us.

She grew up going on hikes with her dad to 300-year-old hill forts in the Sayadri mountain range. She got a treat at the top if she made it. She came home dirty and didn't think twice about it. That is her outdoor story.

But she is not her students. And recognizing that — carrying that recognition into every program she designs — is, I think, what makes her one of the most thoughtful outdoor educators I've encountered.

She left me with this:

"Let's start with cleanliness. Let's not litter. And carry your own shopping bag. It's a small step. But tote bags are cool. And it starts something."

That's the whole philosophy, if you let it be. You don't have to take kids up a glacier. You don't have to build an expedition. You start where they are. You take one small step outside the front door.

You run away from home, just a little.

And see who shows up.

Listen to this week's episode of Hopeful by Nature wherever you get your podcasts.

Learn more about Krishna Patel's work on LinkedIn, and explore NOLS programs at nols.edu.

And if something in this conversation moves you — reach out. I'll keep collecting these stories as long as people keep living them.

— Scott

Wildward Institute supports organizations, educators, and parents building meaningful relationships between young people and the outdoors. Learn more at wildwardinstitute.net.

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