Nurture Through Nature

Way up here, where nature can still stare down bustling traffic with quiet eyes, children who are so used to noise are reveling in a temporary pocket of solitude.

“There is so much peace and quiet here,” says 15-year-old Manual Arts High School student Bobby Middleton, staring off into a sea of oak trees and green grass. “You can hear a pin drop and just chill out from the city if you want to. No sirens going off, gangsters messing with you or loud music everywhere. It’s just nice.”

It’s an unusual Saturday morning for Bobby and 15 or so teenage boys and girls who have traveled from their South Los Angeles neighborhoods to this old campground in the mountains near Castaic.

As part of a state effort to stem juvenile crime through changing kids’ attitudes about getting into trouble, the Office of Child Abuse and Prevention has launched a pilot effort, the Juvenile Crime Prevention Program, to steer teens toward positive alternatives. Its premise is simple: To use camps and other cultural field trips as a foundation to show kids the world is bigger and safer than their often hectic environments.

Some of the moments at camp are just that: small, friendly moments boys have always shared.

Bobby and Manual Arts classmate Frederick Burns spent part of the day roaming around a cluttered pigpen, debating a point only city slickers could argue about.

“It’s a real, real big pig,” Bobby argued, laughing.

“Naw man, that’s a hog,” countered a grimacing 14-year-old Frederick.

The boys marveled at how the hog, a goat and a rooster were effortlessly partying together. All so different, and yet they got along.

This weekend they have a few unfamiliar choices: Instead of searching for a calm place to relax their minds or dodge neighborhood crime, these teenagers can trek through dusty hillsides where only bugs or maybe snakes are lurking in the shadows.

Even the freeway entrance to get to this ranch, situated just a few miles from Six Flags Magic Mountain, involves a symbolic choice for the kids: Driving straight ahead leads you into the rustic Stanley Camp Ranch; making a left heads you toward the chaos and dead-end iron bars of Peter J. Pitchess Detention Center.

During the year these teenagers, a mix of foster children and first-time offenders, will be whisked away to museums and to camps like this one. Sponsors hope not only to enhance their self-esteem but also to help them visualize the meaning of the word “future.”

“They plugged right in as soon as we got here,” said program director Mark Edwards, looking at a group of bare-chested boys playing basketball. “We usually can’t get anything out of them without pulling teeth. But they are already asking when can they come back. One of the things they have mentioned is how safe they feel up here. There are no probation officers or teachers hovering around them. There is no threat of harassment from police, gang members or anything like that.

“I think a lot of people my age take for granted all the things we were able to do like field trips, amusement parks and beaches. Most of these kids haven’t had any exposure to things like that.”

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Grant money from the state allowed Edwards’ Los Angeles-based outdoor group, Woodcraft Rangers, a chance to start the weekend camp program. Statewide statistics show the need for the effort: Between 1985 and 1995, the violent crime arrest rate rose by 40% among teenagers.

But the retreat goes beyond basketball and nature hikes. Part of the routine is an early morning discussion about male and female relationships. It’s a brutally honest chat, where they talk about how some young men call female classmates “bitches”--and what the girls think of that--or the need for kids to take personal responsibility for their actions.

Between the discussions are other activities that aim to challenge and inspire.

In a wall-climbing exercise, akin to the ones beefy men and women perform on TV’s goofy show “American Gladiators,” kids clamber to reach the top and touch the highest rock. They pull themselves up by grabbing rocks embedded in the wall.

“If you go all the way to the top, then that’s good,” says wall-climbing director Brian Lewis during his preliminary instructions. “If not, that’s good too. We just want you to try.”

Lewis thinks a camp visit is more valuable to these kids than to the children of parents who can afford to send their kids to camps. “They definitely do appreciate it much more than the kids that have more opportunities,” he says.

While he lays out the rules of the climb, the excited teenagers strap on safety harnesses that resemble giant leather diapers, provoking plenty of “wedgy” jokes.

Woodcraft Rangers camp counselor Danny Avila, with his slow cool stroll, black wraparound sunglasses and socks pulled up to his knees, urges the teenagers to liken the rocks to a friend who’s been avoiding them. “Touch that rock like it owes you money,” says Avila, known to the youths as Danny Boy and himself a former gangbanger from Watts before attending Cal State Chico.

A few feet away from the wall, 17-year-old Omar Adams is sitting on a bench talking to his friend Kevin Samuels about current events.

“He could have been my brother, who’s 25,” says Omar about slain rap star Tupac Shakur. “But I guess he died because he was leading that type of lifestyle.”

Omar, a football and track star who dreams of being a rapper himself, suddenly bursts into an off-the-head rap. “I’m not the man from ‘Cliffhanger’ nor am I a gangbanger,” he says loudly.

The youths all laugh.

Kevin, a 10th-grader at Manual Arts, says he got involved with Woodcraft Rangers after being sent to the principal’s office. He asked a teacher if he could go home because he was bored. She sent him to the principal’s office instead.

After the climbing exercise, with a lunch of crinkly hard French fries, flavorless hamburgers and too-sweet Kool-Aid in their bellies, the campers head out to the cabins for a break. The teenagers use their limited free time for a fun-spirited session of “bagging,” or telling friendly put-down-your-mother jokes.

During a later afternoon activity, groups of campers are given just six minutes to construct a shelter to cover a person, using only newspapers and tape.

The groups must decide not only how to build the structure, but also how to organize the group quickly to accomplish the task. The winners ultimately utilize a log-cabin-style design with rolled up pieces of newspapers as corners and foundations.

Next, in 10,000 Juvenile Crime Prevention Points, a game combining education and competition, they separate into three groups whose goal is to guess the right answers to various juvenile crime statistics.

A typical question is: For the first time, California will spend more money on corrections than higher education. True or false?

Upon learning the statement is true, they celebrate, as if it’s OK for the jails to get more funds than schools. “I guess it’s just a sign of the times,” sighs Stanley Camp Ranch assistant director Reginald Johnson.

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Disturbingly, the groups also begin to liken the points they earn to cash, joking about all the fancy cars they will be able to buy. According to the camp counselors, this type of thinking--that crime is a part of life and money is all-important--is one of the things this weekend tries to quell.

The materialistic jokes about cash and cars aside, Avila feels the camp experience is just the type of open-air remedy needed to reshape their lives, to prepare them for the future. But it also lets kids enjoy being kids.

“So many of these kids have never seen nature,” Avila said as the day wound down and dusk approached. “‘All they see is the concrete jungle. And in their neighborhoods they are always doing grown-up things. Up here they can be kids and laugh. They might have grown up fast, but there’s still a child in there, one who likes stories read to them at night.”