Nature hiking program helps troubled Houston teens

While Houston has a lot of things and plenty of them – heat, humidity, traffic – one aspect that Houston lacks is a place for young people to experience nature. The Woods Project seeks to change that by sending troubled teens on hiking trips in California, Montana and Wisconsin. The goal of the program is to show young people that they can overcome the obstacles in their lives.

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The program launched in 2006 and has helped hundreds of teens get a view of life beyond the concrete canyons and dangerous streets of Houston. Volunteer leader Ralph Manning, who works as an administrator in Houston’s public schools, said that the program offers youngsters the opportunity to see things they never thought they would encounter in their lives.

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“For a lot of them, it expands on what they thought was possible,” Manning said. “Many had never even been on an airplane or even been outside of Houston. And now they are doing things that their minds had never even considered before.”

For many of the students, the trip marks their first up-close encounters with nature. Steven Ruiz remarked on his first experience with snow.

“It was like an ice bath,” he said. “I really enjoyed playing in the snow.”

The mission of The Woods Project is “to create wilderness education and exploration experiences that develop critical behaviors needed for disadvantaged students to achieve success in school and life.” The programs run year-round and include a two-week hiking trip through beautiful scenery and challenging trails.

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Students such as Jennifer Cantu encounter physical and mental challenges that they say make them better prepared to deal with life back home.

“If someone would have asked me if I wanted to go hiking for 20 or 30 miles with a 40-pound backpack, I would have looked at them like they were crazy,” said Cantu. “This has changed my life. It’s opened me to possibilities that I never would have thought possible before.”

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