For some Grant County kids, Fridays without school now mean a day in the woods.
Earth Ways Outdoors takes young people into wild areas around Silver City, where a typical outing can involve hiking off trail, identifying plants, playing awareness games, carving wood or learning to start a fire. The nonprofit’s Walkabout program is designed to get children comfortable outdoors while introducing them to traditional outdoor skills.
Andrew Dahl-Bredine, director of Earth Ways, said the organization grew from his concern that children are spending less time outside as smartphones and other technology occupy more of their lives.
“We’ve always been connected as human beings, no matter where you’re from, we’ve always had a connection with nature, with the natural world,” Dahl-Bredine said. “What I had noticed is that that has been changing.”
Earth Ways offers daylong Walkabout programs for children in Grant County. Some communities in the area operate on four-day school weeks, so the organization runs a Friday program for those students and a Saturday option for children who attend school on Fridays.
Participants are picked up around 9 a.m. and taken to different outdoor locations near Silver City.
Children might practice sneaking and hiding through awareness games, learn to recognize local plants and trees or gather materials for a “five-minute fire,” which challenges them to prepare everything needed to light a fire with a single match. Other outings include fire-making with hand or bow drills, cooking, carving, weaving and making cordage from yucca fibers.
“It’s a lot of games. It’s a lot of exploring out in the wilderness and learning new skills and just having fun,” Dahl-Bredine said. “We’re a little bit flexible with what we plan for the day, depending on what we see and what we find.”
Dahl-Bredine describes that approach as “nature connection,” with the goal of helping children become comfortable with the landscape around them.
He said the change can sometimes be visible within a single outing. Some participants initially worry about leaving their cellphones behind, but after 10 or 20 minutes outdoors, he said, the phones are no longer part of the conversation.
Other changes take longer. Dahl-Bredine recalled children who initially struggled to cross a creek or walk more than a short distance over uneven terrain. After returning throughout the seasons, he said, some became noticeably more comfortable navigating those environments.
Dahl-Bredine said some children have later returned to those places with their parents.
“We hear from the parents, that the kids took the parents to the place we took them,” Dahl-Bredine said. “The parents are also maybe becoming more connected to nature because the kids are so excited about it.”
For Dahl-Bredine, those relationships extend beyond recreation. His background includes outdoor education, ancestral skills and work with young people, experiences that shaped a program built around what he describes as connection with nature, with others and with oneself.
One practice, known as a “sit spot,” sends participants to spend time alone and quietly observe their surroundings. The distance and duration depend on the child’s age, but Dahl-Bredine said the exercise gives young people an opportunity to slow down in an environment without many of their usual distractions.
“We’re not just educating, and we’re not just recreating — we’re just having fun,” he said. “We’re actually developing connections for kids with each other, for kids with nature and for kids with themselves.”
Access is another part of the organization’s model. Dahl-Bredine said families in Grant County often have limited time or financial resources to put toward extracurricular outdoor programs, even with the Gila National Forest and other public lands nearby.
Dahl-Bredine said funding from the New Mexico Outdoor Equity Fund allows Earth Ways to offer its youth programs at no cost. The Friday schedule also provides an option for families whose children attend schools operating on four-day weeks.
“All of our programs are completely free,” Dahl-Bredine said. “We specifically targeted these areas to provide free programming for the kids during the school hours, where we’re taking them out into the woods, having quality nature experiences.”
Programs are open to children from Silver City, Bayard, Hurley and Cliff, with registration available through the organization’s website at earthwaysnm.org.
Earth Ways may eventually reach farther south.
Dahl-Bredine said the organization was recently contacted by Family Ties in Las Cruces about a possible collaboration involving its Catch Me Outside program. Discussions are still underway, but possibilities include bringing Las Cruces youth to the Gila for Earth Ways programming or having the organization provide outdoor activities in the Las Cruces area.
For now, Earth Ways continues its Grant County programs, giving local children a chance to navigate a creek, recognize a plant or discover that a phone can stay behind for a few hours.
