“It's not always an easy thing to do, to find a way to be useful. . .the most obvious way we could think of to really plug in and be useful, was to start offering these backpacking trips,” Eli Marienthal, one of the co-founders of Back To Earth, said. Back To Earth is a backpacking program for youth based in the Bay Area. It was founded in 2015 after Marienthal and his best friend Jesse Sachs reconnected. Sachs and Marienthal both attended Berkeley High School, where they found their shared love of backpacking. After going separate ways for multiple years, both found themselves back in Berkeley with the wish to provide something to the community that was like “what we needed when we were in high school,” Marienthal said.
Back to Earth offers custom programs and community events along with their main program, a summer backpacking trip for teenage boys, called the Wilderness Immersion and Leadership Development (WILD). Trips are seven to ten days long for teens starting at age 13. The aim of the WILD program is for boys to learn how to take care of themselves, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Wilderness immersion means that teens are spending time in the backcountry, away from screens and the stress of daily life. The leadership development part is, “How to be a leader in your own life, in some really material, nuts and bolts ways, (to) take care of yourself… a lot of interpersonal skills, how to deal with other people with kindness, generosity, honesty,” Marienthal said. Marienthal also added that students gain the ability to reflect, be self-sufficient, how to stay calm and regulate your nervous system in high-pressure situations, and more.
“I’ve come to appreciate being outdoors more because of Back to Earth,” Henry Hirsh, a BHS junior, said. Hirsh has participated in three WILD programs, one seven-day and two ten-day trips. A special part of the seven day trips is a solo ceremony, where teens spend 24-36 hours alone in the wilderness, often fasting.
“From the solo ceremonies I’ve learned about the importance of having time to yourself, especially in nature and how it’s important to have time away from distractions where you’re just by yourself,” Hirsh said.
“It was an experience not like anything I’d done before, it was pretty difficult because you don’t get food or anything to distract you. You just get a bottle of water,” Luc Haji, a senior at BHS, said. “It was really boring at first, because you’re just there with nothing to do and it makes you just think a lot, it’s a super reflective process.”
A key focus of Back to Earth is giving teenage boys a space to explore themselves as people. “I think teenagers these days often get a really bad rap. Teenagers get pegged as lazy, disaffected, digitally addicted, less interested, less curious than their parents and grandparents, etc, etc. . . And what I found is the ability to rewire, to transform, it's closer at hand than we think,” Marienthal said. Back to Earth’s mission is to “guide young people into deeper relationship(s) with nature, self, and community,” WHO said, through exposure to the wilderness and living a few days off the grid.
“I have a lot of favorite moments… I’d say what sticks with me the most is probably the fires,” Haji said. Every night after dinner on a WILD trip, everyone gathers around a campfire to talk and sing. “First I thought it was a little bit silly. . .but it was really meaningful to me. . .it was really cool hearing other young men my age actually talk about their feelings and what they’re thinking about,” Haji said.
Back to Earth is about connecting yourself to the Earth, yourself and other people in a healthy, supportive way. Marienthal explained that until you step away from typical, everyday life that may be disconnected from nature, you can never know whether or not you have an affinity for the natural world. “You could spend your whole life thinking that you're a sad person or an angry person or a person who doesn't really care about nature… if you don't ever get the perspective of stepping away from (that), you don't know how not true they are and so that's really what the break, the pattern interruption of going on a backpacking trip like this lets you see yourself more clearly in your context,” Marienthal said.