Why We Still Send Our Children into the Wild: Evidence Over Amplified Fear
By Jordan Stone, Executive Director, Cottonwood Gulch Expeditions
I first arrived at Cottonwood Gulch in 2007 as a road cook for our Prairie Trek expedition. That summer job, so long ago now, became a calling that has spanned nearly two decades, culminating in my leadership during our centennial year. Now, each day, working as the Executive Director for the organization, this brings the subject of benefits of outdoor summer programs for children to the forefront of my mind.
Jordan Stone, Executive Director of Cottonwood Gulch Expeditions, on a Trek of their own in the New Mexico wilderness. Immersive outdoor experience is a key feature of his own approach to parenting, in addition to a career.
As a father who has seen his own children transformed by guided immersion in the desert Southwest – their confidence, curiosity, and resilience growing through real landscapes and manageable challenges – I write this essay with deep personal conviction. My love for my family, for these lands, and for the lasting power of experiential education drives me toward an unwavering commitment: these opportunities must remain available to thoughtful parents seeking to raise grounded, adaptive young people.
The 2025 Camp Mystic tragedy, a devastating flood claiming 27 young lives, has rightly shaken parents. Media coverage has spotlighted genuine risks — floods, boating accidents, sexual abuse, and oversight gaps over many years of nationwide children’s summer programs. These stories push the industry toward higher standards, and that’s good.
However, some of the media coverage related to Camp Mystic can rightly be described as fear-mongering, taking a genuine but rare tragedy and magnifying it into a perceived crisis. A casual observer could easily get the sense that the outdoors itself is a threat, or that outdoor programs are something to be feared. Those claims are hard to square with what I see every year at Cottonwood Gulch, and with the overwhelming, research-backed benefits of well-designed outdoor experiences. I want to challenge parents to consider the risks of keeping their children away from the outdoors entirely. One narrative is centered on fear and avoiding nearly all risk. Another is that thoughtful, high-quality outdoor programs are a healthy and reasonable risk that will help our children grow into stronger and wiser and more curious adults.
Cottonwood Gulch Expeditions instructors and attendees practice Wilderness First Responder training during an instructional program at The Gulch. Our programs and Treks are staffed by skilled professionals trained in a variety of unique skills supportive of safe outdoor exploration.
30 Million Kids A Year Benefit From Summer Programs
The American Camp Association’s research shows that nearly 30 million children a year benefit from attendance in an educational summer program. A significant percentage of this number attend an outdoor-focused experiential learning program like Cottonwood Gulch’s.
To this end, millions upon millions of children each year are given their first glimpse of independence, freedom, and confidence in the natural environment through these carefully guided experiences. Organizations like ours, of which there are many, provide a window into adulthood, and we are cognizant (bordering on obsessive) in our pursuit of enjoyment, learning, and lasting memories our participants carry into adulthood.
At The Gulch we prepare extensively for every Trek and outdoor educational program. Instructors and staff are briefed on route and travel, both before and during each adventure.
Two Narratives: Choosing Evidence over Fear
The headlines about Camp Mystic are frightening, and understandably so. When children are hurt or killed, every parent feels it. But those same headlines are sometimes rooted in negative, anxiety-inducing clickbait, which can feed a paralyzing parental fear, and children bear the cost. That is a narrative I want to challenge, and there is an alternative.
A robust and growing body of research argues the bigger risk to kids today is not too much challenge but too little. Psychologist Peter Gray has tied the long decline in children’s independent activity to the rise in their anxiety, and his work on self-chosen risk shows how managed challenge builds the courage that over-protection quietly erodes. The researcher Ellen Sandseter finds that thrilling, age-appropriate risk has an anti-phobic effect: a child who meets a manageable fear and masters it carries less fear forward, not more. That is the case for what we do, made by people with no camp to sell.
Longitudinal data tells a compelling counter-story. A landmark Danish study of over 900,000 people found that higher childhood exposure to green space is associated with significantly lower risk of psychiatric disorders — including anxiety, depression, and mood disorders — from adolescence into adulthood. Those with the least green space faced up to a 55% higher risk.
Systematic reviews, such as Tillmann et al. (2018), demonstrate that nature interactions positively affect mental health, emotional regulation, cognitive function, and well-being in children and teens. Broader analyses, including Jimenez et al. (2021), link early nature exposure to improved stress resilience, academic outcomes, and physical health that endure across the lifespan.
Peer leaders have also responded with balance and insight supporting this assertion. As one example, Sanborn Western Camps Executive Director Elizabeth Marable counters anxiety with observed gains in resilience and independence for children attending summer programs.
At Cottonwood Gulch, we stand with these voices while bringing a century of experience to the conversation. In our programs, fear of the unknown stops being fear once it is known, even a little bit. The story that fixates on avoidance is unhelpful, even harmful. The one that makes room for appropriate risk and curiosity helps turn partially-formed children into well-adjusted, socialized architects of their own future.
Cottonwood Gulch Expeditions Youth Conservation Course trainees use a crosscut saw on a log during the course of the program in Gila, NM. From beginner to advanced programs and Treks, we emphasize safety throughout the curriculum.
The Gulch Way: A Century of Deliberate, Evidence-Based Depth
Since 1926, Cottonwood Gulch has helped define the highest standards in this field. Our approach to education is a place-based and experiential, a model predicated on managed risk, never mere thrill-seeking. Boys and girls participate fully and equally in programs such as Prairie Trek, Turquoise Trail, Family Treks, GO Trek, and Outfit Expeditions. They engage in hands-on scientific inquiry, cultural reciprocity with Indigenous communities, authentic environmental stewardship, and real-world navigation of challenge in Southwest desert landscapes.
Over 100 years we have watched these experiences reduce unfounded childhood fears while cultivating informed courage, emotional intelligence, independence, empathy, and adaptive capacity. The outcomes – grounded adults who engage uncertainty with curiosity and wisdom – align with and extend the peer-reviewed research above.
At The Gulch, our staff is extensively trained in risk management as a function of their employment. This is an example of a training manual we use to formalize this approach as a skill-set unto itself.
The Gulch’s model pairs rigorous risk management with profound developmental impact and reciprocity with land and people. We are proud that our alumni send their children and grandchildren to experience the same formative exposure.
While our program is unique and well-storied, many other organizations also provide similar exposure and benefits to their communities. This works through trust: parents must trust our organizations to bring about benefit, and we must trust the parents to fairly analyze the paths their children take to find benefit. This collaboration depends on transparency, which is why any credible organization must be ready to provide reassurance in the form of detailed information about programs to parents, so that they can make an informed choice.
Hillis Howie, founder of Cottonwood Gulch Expeditions consults a map with staff to plan routes and expedition goals during the early years of our outdoor programs.
Living Proof Across Generations
Our alumni provide the most compelling testimony. Renowned author Kurt Vonnegut is one such example of many notable past attendees. Vonnegut participated in a 1937 Prairie Trek, credited the experience with shaping his worldview and authorship. He dedicated his novel Galapagos to The Gulch’s founder, Hillis Howie. It has been this way across generations of alumni – we are proud our programs have produced leaders across science, public service, law, nonprofits, and the arts – all of whom carry forward the same resilience, curiosity, and stewardship.
Students on a Cottonwood Gulch Expeditions rock climbing course are taught belay techniques under the close watch of our highly trained program staff. The Gulch prides itself on empowering children with safe and enjoyable outdoor skills education.
A Call to Thoughtful Parents
Real risks exist in any meaningful endeavor, and programs like ours manage them seriously through continuous improvement and transparency. Yet the evidence is overwhelming: the developmental benefits of well-designed outdoor experiential education far outweigh the distorted risk narrative created by selective, fear-driven media.
As we mark our 100th year, Cottonwood Gulch reaffirms its leadership role. Our Treks have prepared generations not to fear the world, but to meet it head-on with courage, empathy, wisdom, and care. Thoughtful parents deserve more than sensational and negatively biased headlines; they deserve exposure to the full evidence of an industry dedicated to their children’s formative educational outcomes.
Perhaps the most significant takeaway from the Camp Mystic tragedy and accompanying media response is that organizations like ours need to do a better job informing parents about the enduring benefits to childhood development when they step away from home and into a place like the Gulch. Our programs are not simply “safe”, so much as they are necessary.
We invite you to look beyond the moment’s panic. Consider the research, the lived outcomes, and the quiet authority of a century of proven impact. Your children, and our shared future, will be stronger for it.
– Additional Resources –
Benefits of outdoor summer programs for children.
Longitudinal Resilience / Nature Exposure Studies –
Psychology of Media Bias / Fear-Based News –