EXCURSION : A 24-Hour Stay in Nature Is Meant for City Slickers

Like many urban dwellers caught up in fast-track careers, 33-year-old Brent Backus had never given much thought to nature.

So when he heard about a 24-hour nature course in the Santa Monica Mountains that was created with the hopelessly citified in mind, Backus decided it was time to get on the stick.

“I had never really observed nature, or done anything like rappel from a mountain,” said Backus, a Simi Valley Planning Department employee who took the course last July. “I wanted to learn about that, and the course just seemed like a good way to do it.”

Backus isn’t the only nature novice who felt that way. It was so popular when it was offered last year by the Agoura Hills-based Wilderness Institute, the “24-Hour Nature Experience” will be offered again March 24. Sponsored by the Ventura County Department of Parks and Recreation, the course includes everything from hiking and wilderness safety techniques to wildlife observation under the stars.

Participants meet early Saturday morning and spend the next few hours learning how to orient themselves with a compass, according to Wilderness Institute president Bradley Childs. Later, they try their hand at rock climbing and rappelling before hiking to a lake in the evening. Rest periods are scheduled for those who require them, although many participants choose instead to gaze at the stars or listen to owls and bullfrogs.

As the night draws to a close, Childs said, each participant is sent off to a ridge top for a “solo” nature experience watching the sun rise.

“The activities are all designed for people who don’t have any experience out-of-doors but who want self-confidence in the wilderness,” he said. “What we’ve done is combine a weekend’s worth of backpacking experience into one night.”

Barbara Dienes, a legal secretary in Glendale who took the course last year, said she always has been an “outdoors sort of person” but wanted to have a sunrise-to-sunrise wilderness experience.

“I never would have thought of going out by myself and listening to the sounds of the night,” Dienes said. “There were animals in the reeds, and the stars were beautiful. Now I want to take a weeklong survival class.”

With all those babes in the woods, one might expect to hear of at least one urbanite who ended up offering his kingdom for a mattress. Childs, however, said it isn’t so.

“A lot of the people have never done anything like rock climbing, so for some of them it was a little scary. But when they see they can do these things, it’s exciting,” he said.

“We open a door for them, and then they get the confidence that comes from when they step through.”

* MORE INFORMATION

For reservations or more information, call the Ventura County Department of Parks and Recreation at 658-4726, or the Wilderness Institute at (818) 887-7831.