Wyoming summer camp tackles “brain drain” with nature
Wyoming summer camp tackles “brain drain” with nature
On a midsummer day at the base of the Gros Ventre mountains in western Wyoming, 17 boys were living their best lives. They are in full-on summer camp mode — reeling in fish, playing in the mud and running through the willows and pine trees.
“So we wake up, some of us get hot chocolate,” Colten Christianson, a 13-year-old from Kinnear, Wyoming, explained about a typical camp morning that starts in a tent at 6 a.m. “You can also go to the sluice box.”
Sluice boxes were used back in the day to separate gold from water. But here, they funnel ice-cold stream water off a hillside. Zach Cortez, a 12-year-old from Riverton, Wyoming, said it’s a shower.
“I do it in the morning to get waked up. It’s way better than coffee,” Cortez said. When questioned about drinking coffee at his age, Cortez pointed to his buddies and said frankly, “Yeah. Because somebody decided to drink all the hot cocoa.”
This might sound like a lot of play and hijinks, but there is also a serious tone and focused mission.
The Rocky Mountain region, including Wyoming, is not only facing a number of conservation issues, but also net brain drain and out-migration. That means more people, especially professionals, are leaving than coming to the area. So that is where this summer camp is designed to help. It is geared toward kids from across the country who do not have lots of opportunities to explore wild places, ideally training them to be the next generation of outdoor leaders and conservationists.
The weeklong camp is spent fully outside and tuition is free. There was also a camp for girls earlier in the summer.
It is part of a Wyoming initiative called Inspire a Kid, and a partnership with a local cattle ranch and a wildlife nonprofit that Chris McBarnes heads up. He has helped grow the camp since its first summer in 2022.
“The hook are the mountains and the fly fishing and the horseback riding,” McBarnes said, gesturing to the camp’s nearby mountains, river and forest. “That’s what gets the kids here.”
And once they are hooked, McBarnes hopes that excitement reels some of these kids back one day. Because in Wyoming, most people born in the state leave by their 30s, which is a problem for a state that has a relatively high rate of job openings.
“If we don’t do this, we won’t have the future conservationists and leaders that will continue to make Wyoming all it is today,” McBarnes said.
More than half of Wyoming is public land, meaning lots of wide-open spaces, mountains, forests and wildlife to take care of. And McBarnes said these kids are up to the task, like one New Jersey camper from last summer.
“This young man has completely changed his career goals. He wants to be a conservation officer,” McBarnes said. “That is his dream. That is his passion now.”
Jobs like that require competence in the outdoors and working with your hands. So, on this day, the task for the campers was unloading hay from a truck and moving it to a nearby haystack. It would be used to feed the camp’s horses.
“There’s enough hay on this truck we need to unload and stack, that everybody’s responsible for one bale,” camp instructor Chris Storey said to the campers.
Green, rectangular hay bales on the truck towered over the kids. Storey heaved a few bales to the ground to start on.
“It’s going to bounce guys, so you got to stay back,” he said as a 90-plus-pound bale thumped to the ground.
One bale probably weighed more than many of the boys. So, they partnered up, each taking an end of a bale. They did an awkward shuffle while breathing heavily.
“We need to put it back there,” the boys muttered under heavy breaths.
And sure, not all these kids need to know how to move hay bales. But it is more than that. It’s problem-solving, teamwork, a sense of accomplishment and, of course, a love of Wyoming’s outdoors.
“I think I’ve kind of fallen in love with the mountains here,” said 15-year-old William Johnston as he sat on a stump near a campfire.
Johnston came all the way from Newark, New Jersey. That is a pretty big city, and this is the first time he has really been in the mountains.
“So, that’s the biggest thing, is that I want to try to come back here,” Johnston said, whether that is just to fly fish or to maybe fill one of those open jobs.
Wyoming is on Johnston’s radar now. After a weeklong camp in the mountains, he knows more about what it takes to live and recreate in them. One of his biggest realizations? The nights are cold.
“It’s definitely below freezing,” Johnston said, donning a wool balaclava on his head.
So his recommendation for future campers: bring layers.
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