In my back yard

This off shift I explored my new home area, spending two days at Zion and climbing at some of the local crags. Here are a few pictures from one of the Zion days. View from the top on Angel's Landing in Zion This is my good friend Zack. We are cheersing with cups from his local coffee shop in Nebraska. Also, Zach successfully hunted his first elk this past weekend. Tracked it, shot it, skinned and quartered it, and then carried it out of the wilderness. Impressive! A beautiful 5.7 crack. ...and then it started raining.
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Shift 3

This may have been my best shift so far. The staff team was super fun; I busted my first fire, led a cross country hike using a map and compass, and took on more therapeutic and logistical responsibilities.

One theme that continued to come up for several clients this past shift was the return of “feeling”. Many in the group had been using substances to run away from severe anxiety and/or depression. While escaping negative feelings, drugs made them numb and aphetic to everything else in life. Being off substances, away from distractions of the modern world, and in an emotionally safe environment, they began experiencing emotions again. These were generally positive. Clients talked about being surprised at how they were actually happier than they had been in a long time, despite living in the wilderness with lots of work, structure, and supervision, and without the things that used to make them happy. The return of “feeling” also included those that what we typically classify as negative. Grief, guilt, sadness, regret, etc. In life we often want to rescue others and ourselves, from such emotions, but without really facing and feeling these things, we can’t heal, move on, and improve.

To me, this is why wilderness is so powerful. Grief from the loss of a parent, guilt from treating parents and others poorly, and pain from rejection hit straight on and there is no swerving out of the way. It’s raw and real. However, nature and genuine community have an amazing way of comforting and providing a type of spiritual balm to help cleanse and mend.


This is what I am making fire out of these days. We bust an ember, place it in a nest, and then blow it into a flame. When you start a fire you get to name it. I named my first fire "Ronny".

Joshua Tree National Park, CA

If you can't tell, that's an old school Auburn sweatshirt underneath all that gear. I sported it all weekend and was as obnoxious as possible about my alma mater winning the national championship. The sweatshirt was Matt's originally; I inherited it at about 11 years old. Dad had a picture on his desk of Matt and I on the field at Jordan Hare stadium at the 1993 Auburn v Alabama game. I was wearing this sweatshirt. It is perfectly broken in and classic. I love it.


Joshua Tree looks like the land before time. Seems like dinosaurs should be roaming around somewhere.


A friend from NC who just moved to Tucson met us for the weekend. Thanks for your patience on my natural anchors Jason!!!


My friend's friends were also Massey's!! We took a "family" picture.






We got to the top just at sunset. Gorgeous!!!

Second Shift

It was a week of all boys again. I was the only female with 16 males. (We started the week with 10 clients and finished with 13. There were three other male staff.) We had guys in this group that were both remarkably competent and enjoyable to be around, and others that were insanely deplete of self-care skills and totally incompliant. I was working with an amazing staff team. Our senior staff, a 55 year-young former rancher, had endless energy. I never saw him without his leather cowboy hat, which is complete with a feather. His energy, ability to motivate young boys, and positivity reminded me of dad.

The weather was sunny and dry, but very cold. We had a few nights with temps around -10. Unbelievably, I managed to stay warm at night. Cold has been my biggest fear, and I am learning that it actually is possible to stay warm in what I thought was impossibly cold weather.

The winter and this level of temperature calls for ridiculous, but absolutely necessary, practices to survive. It also creates a culture of its own. It takes so much self-care just to survive. Self-care and self-reliance is a huge piece of what many clients are here to learn. This kind of weather really forces the lesson.
To give you a small idea, here are a few winter practices.

To keep water from freezing we have to bury our water jugs in snow. (Simply putting it by the fire at night is not sufficient.)

Whatever you don’t want to freeze (or anything that you’d like to touch in the morning) must go in your sleeping bag. I sleep with my boots, sunscreen, toothpaste, soap, all my clothes, and a few other random items I’d like to touch the next day.

We check the clients’ feet three times per day for cold weather casualties.
Though it’s cold, feet still sweat in boots. So, I keep a pair of socks on my feet and a pair on my shoulders to dry out. I rotate these socks about four times a day to keep my feet dry.

Once the sun goes down, fire is absolutely crucial. It is the center piece of community, cooking, and staying warm.

Before going to bed I make sure I have a water bottle full of boiling water in my jacket. This keeps me warm while doing the rounds to shelters to make sure everyone is safe and “home”.

This week was a lot of work, but at the end of each day I curled into my sleeping bag and felt pretty good and warm. Tomorrow I will head to Joshua Tree, CA for three days of climbing. Hopefully I will have some beautiful pictures to post in a few days!

First shift, then Vegas

My first shift was more fun, funny, and wet than I ever expected. I was the only female in a group of seven males (two other staff and five clients). I heard “legite”, “epic”, and “badass” more times this week than in my entire lifetime.

The first 72 hours it rained non-stop. As with all things, the rain eventually passed and the sun came out. At least for a little while until it started snowing. They tell me that this was a bad as it gets as far as weather goes…We’ll see.

Despite the weather, I was fortunate to be in a group with clients that were grateful to be spending Christmas in the desert. While each member of the group had been here for different lengths of time and were in different places, all had undergone the realization that they needed to be here and were thankful for a second chance.

While wanting to be with family may be expected and typical around Christmas, for these guys, it truly was remarkable. We reflected on the difference between this Christmas and their last. Last year they were all with family in warm homes, and had every material possession they desired. This year they were with strangers in a cold and wet desert, and had no TV, video games, music contraptions, etc. However, last year they saw no value in their relationships to family, and were making themselves and everyone else miserable. Extraordinarily, this year they did not want gifts, but wanted to reconcile and reunite with their moms, dads, brothers and sisters.

As additional bonuses, we (the staff) doused a dead tree in gasoline and lit it on fire to serve as our Christmas tree. Also, there were two Spanish speakers in the group, so I was able to speak Spanish a lot during the week. Something I never expected to do here, so that was a real treat!

After my shift I went straight to Vegas to ring in the New Year with some fabulous friends from high school. We are now scattered all over the country, but amazingly all made it to a central place other than Alabama (thank you Evan!). We had a marvelous time, and it’s a good thing that I had two days to catch up on sleep before my next shift!




We went climbing at Red Rocks, but it was so cold!!

The sunset was amazing!

The Grissom grads

These two guys could strut into my Econ class and convince the teacher to let me out for an "off campus field trip".