Wilderness

Adventure and service work in a wilderness setting are important parts of our students’ work and growth at Santiam Crossing. Our adventure programming also has an academic component that provides further opportunity for credit recovery. Through adventure, education, service and recreation in the wilderness, students continue to receive the benefits experienced during their wilderness therapy program. They find excitement, courage, success, and the valuable lessons and spiritual connection that is inherent to all healing, learning, and change.

Two to three weekends out of every month and one week each quarter, students participate in a high adventure wilderness experience such as mountain biking, rock climbing, horsemanship or whitewater rafting. One of these weekends includes a service learning component. Caring for the environment through volunteer service work allows students to increase their awareness and understanding of the need to preserve and protect the wild places that have helped them to grow, learn, and heal. They also develop an appreciation for and ability to implement modern ideas and systems of sustainability. Accepting stewardship and responsibility within the various service work projects helps students recognize the important relationship that they have with the community and to develop their own cognitive framework around balancing and managing the environment in which they operate.

Adventure Weeks One week each quarter, students take part in an Adventure Week. These experiential adventure trips allow students to be challenged in leadership roles, practice and master the skills of a particular adventure activity in depth, and to refocus on the basics and find peace within themselves. In addition, students practice both self-reliance and group-reliance, and garner both emotional and physical growth. Each Adventure Week also includes an academic aspect that brings the students’ attention to various elective and core subject areas in the context of their particular adventure curriculum.

Recent adventure week trips: Klamath River Rafting Expedition Backcountry Horse Packing in the Cascade Mountains Salmon River Expedition Sea Kayaking in the San Juan Islands Deschutes River Rafting Rock Climbing in northern California

"Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find resources of strength that will endure as long as life lasts." --Rachel Carson