Hello and welcome to the Lonely Chapter, a podcast for people who are doing okay on the surface, but quietly unsure how to live well.

Today's episode is with Chris Barton, who is part of a movement working to restore rites of passage for young people through nature, challenge and responsibility.

In this conversation, we talk about what rites of passage actually are, why they've disappeared, and what it costs individuals and society when initiation is removed.

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Let's get into the conversation.

Chris, can you begin by explaining what rites of passage is all about?

Rite of passage, to put it another way, is an initiation.

It's changing from.

In this instance, it's changing from childhood into adulthood.

That doesn't really happen in one event, usually happens across a number of events.

And the rite of passage we are offering is at the moment for young boys aged 13 to 17, and it is part of their transition from childhood into becoming a man.

We take boys age 13 to 17 and we take them out into the woods and we strip away the outside world.

We take away their phones and their.

Even take away watches and we train them up in bushcraft and survival techniques and lots of other little life skills and teach them things like silent movement.

And we then cast them out of our little village we've created into a survival quest where they have to put their skills into practice and create their own shelters, light their own fires.

And after that, we bring them back to the village and we have a celebration that is our rite of passage.

Awesome.

In a nutshell.

And part of the reason we're doing this is because rites of passage for boys, well, for anyone in a Western culture, really is basically non existent.

We do not initiate our young people.

It's good.

It sounds like a lot of the stuff I speak about on this podcast, whatever the conversation is, it always comes up that idea that kids are sort of glued to their phones now.

They don't go out in the nature and play as much as maybe they once did or they definitely did, and I know I did.

But yeah, it's an interesting thing.

There's lots to dig into.

But starting off with the word initiation, why is it important to have initiations?

Young people, particularly boys, will initiate themselves, but.

And, and part of that is risk taking.

So if your community does not do it, they'll do it themselves and they'll take risks, you know, be that drug taking, alcohol, driving their cars fast.

We spoke earlier about Some of the horrifying statistics about young people of very often boys dying in car, car accidents.

So they're hardwired to go out and take risks and initiate themselves to prove themselves.

And we don't manage that at all.

I was looking at a, a local, next door group where just people post local issues.

And somebody posted, this lady posted, I've, you know, I've just been through the park and there was a group of teenagers and they had deodorant tins and lighters and they were setting fire to cardboard.

You know, somebody, can somebody please find these, their parents and educate these boys about public safety.

And it was a big long rant and lots of other people sort of chimed in and said, oh, that must have been awful for you.

You know, how horrible.

And I don't know, you speak to most men and at some point.

Yeah, everyone's tried that one, haven't they?

It's like done that.

Oh yeah.

And okay, it's not, it's not ideal that there's a load of kids spraying their own homemade flamethrowers in a park.

But actually it's really, really normal behavior for teenage boys.

They're out there and they're taking risks.

So they'll do it.

They will do it.

So we feel it's just really important to step in and provide that.

A more structured way to do it.

A more structured way to do it.

Yeah.

Because I think back to my.

Yeah, I've done that before and yeah, you mentioned about like drugs and alcohol and all these things.

I suppose it's a way of like proving yourself as well to the people you're around.

Yeah.

You obviously get it in within like gang cultures as well.

Absolutely.

Within football teams, sports teams, any team role as well.

In jobs everyone's got initiations of sorts that happen whether they call it an initiation or not.

I suppose.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean something that a lot of people might be familiar with is the sort of American college frat boys in their football teams.

They have to go out and prove they can be a member of this team by, you know, doing something awful usually.

So there's lots and lots of examples of perhaps not so positive initiations.

And not so many held structured, positive initiation.

When was the first time that you sort of saw the need for this and you saw that modern, modern day life was holding this away from young boys and men.

It would probably be the first time I was a staff member on one of these camps.

It was a real stark moment for me of, oh, wow, this is really needed and it's so absent.

Yeah, just it was one of the most powerful and it felt like the most important thing I've ever done.

Um, you know, and there was a.

Somebody told me one of the sayings on that is there's an old Maasai tribal saying, if you don't initiate the boy, the man will burn down the village just to keep warm.

There's, as we've just mentioned about.

There's all these things that boys will end up doing themselves whether you give them the opportunity to or not.

So trying to provide a way to do it safely and structured and maybe have a bit more guidance and learning from it as well.

It's really important.

So we speak about modern day life.

So one of the stats that I looked up before this episode is that from 1990 to 2021, so 31 years, the global incidence of anxiety disorders among those aged 10 to 24 years increased by 52%, particularly in the 10 to 14 age group, which is the little section that really blows my mind.

And post 2019, obviously with COVID and stuff, young people are struggling with anxiety and depression and other mental health disorders.

How does rites of passage help children work through that?

So what we give people, what we give these young boys and hopefully soon young girls.

I'd just like to add we're really looking to build a women's team as well.

But at the moment we've just got the staff for a men's team.

What we give them is these survival skills which are incredible tools for self resilience.

There's something.

When I first got into survival many years ago, there was something quite incredible and quite gave me that self assurance that, oh, actually I do know what to do if I've suddenly got no shelter, no food, no water, like, you know, if you chuck me in some woods for five days, I'd probably, probably be okay.

Yeah.

And so passing that onto to young people, a lot of them will have never known how to do that.

So that, that gives them, that gives them a lot of confidence.

But it's not just survival skills we teach them.

It's, yeah, all sorts of life skills really.

We work on things like accountability, we teach them silent movement and a lot of this is woven into games and play.

So a lot of the time they're learning skills without really knowing their learning skills.

Yeah, tricked into it.

We trick them into it.

Yeah, definitely.

And as I said before, we also take away their phones and even the ability to tell the time.

So we try and strip away as much of the outside World as we can.

Um, and what we're telling.

What they're learning from that is that, oh, I don't actually need this phone, or I don't need these things.

I can still have a good time.

And how long does it usually take them to get to that point?

Cause I imagine when you first take it away, they're quite.

Well, this is.

This is quite an interesting thing.

We were talking about this the other day.

The last courses ran in 2019, so that's five years of technology that has moved on.

Social media has become a much bigger thing.

Phone addiction is a much bigger thing.

So I could tell you how it was in 2019.

It was almost instant.

Like, you know, they're just.

We keep them so busy, we keep them so focused.

They've got to.

They're thinking about so many other things.

It's pretty much instant that they just forget their need for those things as soon as we take them away.

What it will be like with the next camp we run this year remains to be seen.

Interesting to find out.

Yeah, yeah.

So they're going away, sort of stripping it back to nature.

No phones, no technology, learning these survival skills.

What makes it different to something like Scouts?

It's, it's the.

It's.

It's the ceremonial element, I would say.

So part of the process is their parents are there to drop them off.

And we have a handover where we take the children away from their parents.

And at that point they, you know, they're letting go of their parents.

That's the first part of it.

And then we take them down to the woods every.

As much as possible.

It's ceremonial.

So, you know, we, we.

We've got serious looks on our faces and we play a drum as they come in like this, and we get them to sit down and, you know, we can't kind of don't look them.

Look them in the eye at first.

And so.

So they're.

Well, that's right.

They've got to pass through an archway where the camp elder is standing there.

I shouldn't.

I don't want to give too much away about the camp because I want it to be a bit of a surprise.

But, yeah, it's very ceremonial, you know, and I was a scout myself when I was younger.

It's completely different.

But I would say this, the ceremonial element of it is what really makes it different.

Yeah.

And just to also add on top of that, when I say we don't look at them when they sit down, we do.

We chat.

We're very you know, amenable with them and, and we have a laugh.

So it's not like we're cold with them throughout.

Yes.

There's that introduction to it.

Yeah.

First moment of, oh, this is different.

Yeah, exactly.

We're, we're, it's.

We.

We sort of call it pattern interruption, where they're used to doing certain things a certain way, attending school, whatever it is, and, and they turn up and at every level we try to make them think this is different, this is not the same.

So it's nothing like scouts other than there might be some crossover with some of the skills we teach them and some of the inputs will be similar to scouting, but everything else about it is different.

Yeah, yeah.

And you mentioned about play before and how you almost tricked them into learning skills through that as well.

What's the importance of play to you?

Vitally important.

I mean, you know, one of the first things we do to them is start playing a game of a variation on a game of tag.

And on one level that just gets everyone moving and not having to worry about what they say, and it's just running around and getting rid of that nervous energy.

But then we start adding a new rule into it each time, this version of tag, um, and it kind of makes it a little bit more difficult.

And yeah, they kind of.

It suddenly makes them a bit more aware of their surroundings and, and, and things like that.

And another example would be there's a game we play that is played in the dark.

So when they go out on their survival quest, they're going to be spending quite a lot of time in the pitch black.

And for a lot of people, that's quite scary.

You know, if they live in a city with street lights, they won't have experienced pitch blackness before, so it'll be a new thing for them.

And it can be terrifying for some young people.

Some adults are terrified of it.

So the game we play is based around a group of two teams.

And one team goes out into the darkness to hide, but their job is to sneak up on the fire and there's another team guarding it and they have to look out for them.

And what that does is it reframes the dark for these people out there to think, oh, this.

This darkness is my ally, they can't see me.

And that has a real effect on, on just switching it up for them and, and helping them with that.

Yeah, with that fear.

Yeah.

I've spoken to a lot of people about reframing and normally I speak about, like, words with it.

So, um, we Had Sean Conway on, who has done multiple world records and he reframes the word failure to a hiccup.

So he calls it a hiccup.

Yeah, but it's like a different reframing.

It's a.

It's not a word.

It's a feeling towards something.

Something that we are and maybe naturally from evolution should be scared of in a way because historically there is things that would prey on us and would have better vision.

So.

Yeah, but sort of putting them into that discomfort in a safe, controlled environment, it's really important as well.

Yeah, and it's a lot of fun, that game as well.

Yeah, it does sound fun.

It does sound good.

How do you balance it?

We sort of spoke about how boys will naturally find this sort of initiation sense and in that sense to prove themselves.

How do you balance it on your camps?

From becoming a sort of prove yourself place with what you want it to be is more of a self reflection, some sort of learning from it.

So a lot of it is modeling.

So we, you know, we think of ourselves as mentors rather than, you know, we're not really.

We're on, we're staff, but we're not teachers.

We're not their friends, we're not their family with something else.

We're.

We're mentors.

So modeling is, is I would say, a really important part of that.

So we demonstrate, you know, if somebody is great at something or if say I'm.

I'm really competent at one of the skills and it isn't.

I would never, you know, show bravado.

So they tend to, they tend to imitate what they see.

And just the way it's structured, we, yeah, we.

I mean, it's sort of fairly normal behavior from, from some teenage boys to show a bit of bravado, you know, and that's okay.

We don't, we don't shame them.

We don't, you know, tell them that they shouldn't behave that way.

But what we might do is open up a line of questioning.

So a huge part of the camp is having discussions, really frank, open discussions about sometimes it's structured like what does it mean to be a man.

Other times it might be about though, you know, and that's okay.

We don't shame them.

We don't, you know, tell them that they shouldn't behave that way.

You know, tell them that they shouldn't behave that way.

But what we might do is open up a line of questioning.

So a huge part of the camp is having discussions, really frank, open discussions about other Times it might be about Internet porn, or sometimes it might come from an interaction two boys might have, you know, you might be shown a bit of bravado and we explore that.

And you get some fantastic conversations with these people once they, you know, feel safe to open up.

You know, I remember one young lad and he come from a, you know, council estate in Liverpool, I think it was, and with the staff, and it was.

Yeah, we really had to manage that one well, but it was.

He was such a fantastic young lad.

He was absolutely great.

And what.

What actually happened was one of the guys said, yeah, yeah, I'll have a little fight with you.

Would you want to do a bit of mma?

And he goes, oh, Seb, you don't, you know, you've be careful about starting a fight.

Handled it brilliantly.

Like they did the.

The kind of MMA when you roll around on the floor and try and get each other in hold and do the tapping and stuff like that.

Luckily, Seb was really good at it and he kind of beat him, you know, they had a discussion about the moves and a couple of other staff men went up to this young lady, can you show me how you did that?

And he was so receptive and so excited, excited to.

To teach what.

What he knew.

And he spoke about it at the end and said that was one of his favorite moments of the camp when these men came up to him, said, can you show me how you did those moves?

So it turned that bravado, that needing to.

Yeah, it's fantastic, that re.

Channeling of energy, I suppose.

And, yeah, yeah, finding that moment where actually I know something that other people don't.

And, yeah, that makes me feel good, but I can help these people get better at it as well.

You mentioned the word mentors, and I suppose another word that you could use around that would be like, role models.

And something I've spoken to some people about before is the role models for men.

At the moment, it seems like the conversation always goes to the negative, especially in the media.

The talk of role models, it always seems, at least from what I see, to turn to, like, Andrew Tate's a bad man, whoever else is a bad man, Donald Trump, whoever these people are that they list off and they always look at the negative, but they will never turn and say, well, there's this guy who did this great thing.

And yeah, there's that F1 racer, Billy Munger, who lost his legs in a crash, but he's now doing Iron Mans.

And all these amazing people who have overcome so much and really should be highlighted.

Yeah, I think mentors are vitally important.

Absolutely.

And you, you're absolutely right to say that society is ready to judge those, those what they perceive as bad influences.

But it really, it's an absolute goal of ours to.

Once we've got the camps up and running, what we're really looking to do to do is develop a, a follow up mentoring program.

So obviously logistically that's really tricky to do if we've got boys from all over.

So the best we can come up with is web based, you know, zoom, zoom calls to check in with them and it kind of really sort of goes against what we're trying to do and that's get away people away from screens.

But um, yeah, again that's something we're lacking.

Positive male role models are kind of absent.

Really.

Yeah, yeah, it's hopefully, I think the conversation might change in the coming years, but it seemed definitely the last five years or so has been pretty negative and it's something that I've tried to talk about in a positive way.

And men's mental health, Obviously male suicide rates, 75 of suicides are men and it's shocking stats.

So yeah, anything that we can do to change that conversation to be more supportive and the other side of it as well.

I think a lot of people when they talk about men's issues and women's issues, they separate them.

But men's issues are women's issues and women's issues are men's issues because whether you're a man or a woman, there's gonna be someone in your life from the other side that you love and want to support and if they were going through something, you'd want them to have the help.

So I've always found it weird when people think that by speaking about one side and maybe specific issues that affect them, they think that something's been taken away from the other side.

So.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, I completely agree.

Yeah, men's, men's issues don't automatically mean well, forget the women, you know, don't worry about them.

And they're that.

Unfortunately that assumption is in my observation, prevalent in a lot of areas in media, in, you know, industry, senior management, in, in all sorts of areas.

So we, we do need to change the narrative on that.

That's probably a little bit beyond the scope of our little project.

But, but it starts with stuff like this, doesn't it?

It starts with having these conversations.

So hopefully the people listening then bring that conversation to their lives and it just rolls on.

It's a Snowball effect, isn't it?

Yeah.

You've spoken about the skills that the children will be learning on these camps and obviously some of the survival skills and more maybe communication based skills.

Being around people, they may not be around people a lot.

What are the most important skills that their kids should be learning or what are the most important skills for them to learn?

Yeah, I mean, if there's one thing I could get all children to be doing, that is that would be disconnecting from their devices and getting out into nature, getting out into the woods or even just out into the parks.

Um, you know, I feel a real sadness that so much of the connection that young, particularly young boys do is, is through, you know, an earpiece and a microphone on a game.

Um, you know, and, you know, I see it happen with my, with my sons.

It's, you know, oh, you meet my friend later.

Oh, oh, are you?

Yeah, online.

So that's really common.

And it just.

That would be that if I could change one thing, wave a magic wand and change one thing, it would be that it would be connection, genuine, real connection.

It doesn't happen across a WI FI connection.

No, I agree.

I feel, I feel lucky when I look back on it, because I, I did game and I would be on the game probably quite a lot, to be honest.

But I also had, I was lucky enough to have a social life that was in real life and playing football in the park with friends, going and being part of sports teams on the weekends.

So, yeah, I was very lucky.

How much of that side of things, that disconnection starts with the parents?

Well, I was listening to a podcast the other day and somebody was asking about how, you know, how do we initiate our boys?

And the word he used was disconnection.

And that really struck a chord with me.

And he said, well, that's what we offer them at the moment when they become go from being boys to adults.

What we got is disconnection.

They disconnect from their emotions, they disconnect from their connection with their parents.

So already we were offering them disconnection, you know, in our society.

And that was before this technology came along to, to further that disconnection.

So what could parents offer?

I mean, I'm speaking from my own experience.

I spent a lot of time encouraging my boys to turn these devices off and move away from them.

And I mean, I, I didn't let my boys have smartphones.

They were, I think they were the last kids in their school to get smartphones at age 15.

And all they wanted was smartphones and so on the one hand, I felt really mean keeping them away from it, but find ways to move them away from that technology.

You know, I've got a young daughter now and we, we don't let her near anything.

You know, we don't have a tv.

She most certainly will not be getting a phone.

She doesn't have any screen time because, you know, I've got older boys and I've seen what happens when you allow allow smart technology into the lives of a young person.

It's sort of highly addictive and all consuming, really.

Yeah.

I saw this advert recently online.

I think it's an Irish advert and it's these parents walking through like a shopping mall with their young girl daughter.

And they're walking through the shopping mall and this guy's walking past and he stops and he goes, oh, hi, whatever her name is.

Harriet.

Hi, Harriet.

I saw that you got your.

Got a good grade in school the other day.

Well done.

And the parents are like, what?

And they walk off and then another guy turns around and goes, oh, I saw you won your football match the other day.

Well done.

And it's all about these, this online thing, everything that's getting posted, everything that's getting spoken about.

Right.

All of these strangers that you don't really think about.

And it just that visualization of walking through a shopping mall and strangers just talking to your child, it's really no different to what's happening.

Yeah.

And it, it's just stuck with me since I saw that because it.

Yeah, yeah, it's a really interesting thing.

And there's obviously a lot of places Australia have just brought in, I think 16 to go on social media.

Other countries are talking about it, so hopefully that works.

But then kids will be kids and find a way around certain things, I'm sure.

Yeah.

But in your case, and you speak about how you didn't give them a smartphone until a specific age, like you say the words, you may feel mean, but I'm sure that when they're older than they look back on that, they will really appreciate it.

And I think the, the difficult thing is, and this is me just guessing because I'm not a parent, but the difficult thing is it probably requires a lot more effort if you hold a phone away from them, you've got to entertain them, you've got to be that entertainment.

So I think from observing parents at dinner times and restaurants where they just give them a tablet and make them quiet, I find it really sad to look at, but I can see why as well.

So I'm not, don't want to demonize those people.

But yeah, it's, it's a lot of effort and it's a lot of time and energy.

It absolutely is.

You know, just having, having a daughter who does not have that, she wants to play, she wants interaction and, and you know, great.

That, that's, that's fine.

But, you know, my brain isn't six years old, so there's only so much role play I can do.

But yeah, so I do, I do get the, the parents giving the, you know, I get it because they are the ultimate babysitter these things.

But like you, I've, I just.

Oh, just like feel such sadness when I see it.

Such sadness.

I, you know, this stuff is so addictive for children.

So addictive.

And it's like.

And adults.

Yeah, and of course.

Yeah.

And, and well, that was the other thing I was going to say is it goes back to the role modeling, you know, if I said to my dog, no, you can't, you can't.

You're not having a phone.

You know, while I was sitting there scrolling, you know, and, and I mean, I, I, out of a reflex action, I will get my phone out my pocket and start looking at it.

And my partner's very good at saying, can you put your phone away?

Especially in front of my daughter?

So, yeah, it starts with the parents you're teaching them.

If you, if you're out with your daughter, say, and you pull your phone out whilst you're walking along and she's looking up at you, you're almost telling her in that moment that this thing in your hand is more important than her.

And I think that's something that people forget is they think, oh, well, I'll just quickly check because someone's messaged me, I'll reply to that.

Yeah, they haven't realized that they've looked up and gone, oh, yeah, I'm second best to that thing.

Yeah, you're telling them a lot in that moment.

Yeah, you are.

So, again, we've, we've spoken about role models and mentors and use the word elder as well.

What does a good role model.

What does a good mentor look like?

So we're not, we're not their dads, we're not their teachers, and we're not their friends, but we're something in between.

So what's coming to my mind is the camp we ran where my son was on it.

So I ended up having to initiate my son.

And it really brought to mind how different the experiences when there's this, you know, it's my little boy there.

And when it came to us getting ready to cast them out, I was sort of taking him to one side.

If you've got batteries in your torch and, and if you've got this and you, if you've got your knife in your pocket and all this sort of stuff, and one of my friends came up to me and said, right, Chris, stop mothering him.

Right?

You need to, you need to back away.

And so in that moment, I was being his dad, I wasn't being his mentor.

So I guess part of being a good mentor is knowing when to step in and support them, but also when to step back and let them learn on their own.

Because if I'm making all their decisions for them, like if I said, have you got batteries in your torch?

If he didn't have batteries in his torch and they ran out at, you know, 7pm when it first started going dark, he's got an amazing lesson ahead of him all night long of being in the pitch black without the ability to turn a light on.

And I might have taken that lesson away from him by saying, have you got batteries in your torch?

So I found that really, really, really hard to disconnect from him.

And he kept coming up to me to sort of talk to me and I'd give him a one word answer and walk away.

And that was awful.

You know, that was really.

I was just sort, is he gonna be safe going out?

You know, I've initiated all these boys over the years, but I suddenly was really, really scared for him.

So traditionally in, you know, communities that do initiate their youth, the parent the dad is never part of would be the uncles and the other tribe members who would come along and take, take the boys away from the family.

That's part of the process.

Have that little bit of disconnect from the immediate family.

Yeah, yeah.

And you're taken away by your, your mentors.

So, yeah, it's a hard thing for me to put into words exactly what that mentor is.

I quite like the.

You sort of said you got friend, teacher and parent and they're somewhere in the middle.

So, yeah, if you look at the parent side of it, they're caring, but not over caring to that level that you just discussed.

Yeah.

As a friend, maybe they will joke and listen to you, but not super friendly on the level that your closest friend would be.

And on the teacher side, you're not back at school, you're not.

Listen to me.

I know what I'm saying.

It's you're helping them learn as they go through the experience.

So you sort of bring them in slightly from those three points somewhere in that maybe.

Yeah, yeah, I guess so.

I mean, another thing that springs to mind is when they first turn up, we say to them, you've got X amount of time to put your tents up.

That's the area to do it.

Go and crack on.

And we let them just do it on their own.

And then when the time's up, we bring them back, whether they pitch their tents or not.

And they've got to live with the consequences of either pitching their tent perfectly or not doing it.

Now, if I was a parent, I'd be there going, come on, I'll get out the way, I'll do it.

It's quicker if I do it.

You know, if I was the teacher, I'd be there going, shouting at them, saying, come on, hurry up.

So, as the mentor, we tell them what they need to do, we give them the time frame and then we let them get on with it and they live with the consequences, whatever they may be.

Yeah.

So we've spoken a bit about kids being kids again and going out and learning these lessons through experience that otherwise you get told about and you just go, oh, it's just dad telling me something, or whatever kids do.

But is there a line to be walked between overprotection that we see a lot of parents do, but also about giving these kids too much leeway with what they're doing?

Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely there is.

You know, I guess we have to be really conscious of that line on, on our camps, you know, and I should perhaps say to any of the parents listening to this, when they go out on their survival quest, they feel like they're out on their own, but we very much manage it and, you know, they are not.

They're not.

They're not alone, really.

We're regularly checking in on them from a distance.

They can't see us.

We provide a night waking watch at all times.

So although we want them to have that survival experience in, you know, in order to walk that line about giving them too much leeway, we do have to build a safe container for them and, and keep them closely monitored.

So.

Yes, absolutely.

Is it in.

In terms of parenting, it's a very tricky line to follow, but, you know, I reckon we've got it pretty honed for our camps.

Good.

And with regards to the parents, you spoke about the dropping off and the ceremonial stuff around that.

Obviously the parents dropped them off and picked them up I assume.

Is there any further roles that you ask of the parents before and after?

Yeah, we give them a briefing before and after.

So we kind of get one of the staff men to go up and meet them at wherever they're being picked up.

And it's just a case of just saying to them, look, these young people have had quite profound transformational experiences and they might not be ready to talk about it.

You know, I mean it's, it's quite a common thing when you pick your kids up from school.

How's your day?

Yeah, fine.

Because they've learned a lot in school and a lot has changed in their brain and it's just hard to talk about.

They just don't want to talk about it.

So when it's been a real profound shift in themselves and, and which is what I think they get from, from our camps, it's, it really is, it really is hard to talk about and it's hard for them to go from this container we create to step back into the real world.

So we do, we do give them briefing and just say, look, you need to be gentle with your son.

He might not want to speak about it.

He might.

And we also briefly brief the boys as well to say, look, you know, you might want to talk about it, you might not.

But, you know, that's okay.

But just be aware if you, you can, you can end up diluting your experience by getting in that car and going, we did this, we did that, we did this, we did that.

And, and because your parents won't be in the same frame of mind as you, they might go, oh, that sounds nice.

And suddenly it's a bit, it can be.

Feel a bit deflating to think, oh, I've just had this transformational experience and my, my mum said that sounds nice, dear.

So that, yeah, there's quite a lot of sensitivity around that.

So their parents definitely got a role in that.

Yeah, in supporting them through that.

Is interesting.

What sort of transformations do you see on these camps?

I, I think it's a life changing experience and you know, I've got some sadness that I didn't get that experience.

But several of the guys on our staff team are past initiates of the camp and they come back and volunteer their time to help us with the tech side of things.

We have in the, after the survival question, we have a sort of a ceremonial celebration and a debrief and lots of talking circles.

Some of the things we hear from the, from the young boys is, you know, just awesome, just absolutely fantastic, you know, this young lad saying, this is the best thing I've.

You know, it's the best experience of my.

I've ever had.

Because we haven't quite developed that mentoring program afterwards, we don't have as much connection with them afterwards as we like, so we don't get to witness the transformation.

What we're really hoping to build is a relationship with schools so we can maintain that and, and actually even start collecting data on, on this, on the, on the outcomes for these boys once they go back out into, into their, into their world.

They'll be looking at like the behavior afterwards versus before maybe.

What do the schools notice as well?

I mean, previously the camps were all run on a.

You know, I think they had.

Their parents had to find 600 quid to send them out on a camp.

And so that made it available really just for the, the middle classes of Sussex who these young boys still need, still need the experience, but.

And there'll be a few bursary places and, and occasionally we'd get, you know, funded places or whatever.

But what would just be absolutely amazing is if we could go to a, you know, a school in a, you know, socio economically deprived area and take their most troublesome boys, you know, and take them out and really start getting some data in that way.

That would just be fantastic.

You know, that's what we, that's where I'd really love to see this project move is to a much wider, you know, range of participants from different backgrounds.

Yeah, sounds good.

What about the.

So I'm, I'm just thinking now about.

I was in Scouts too and obviously I would see these people every week and then we'd go away on camp and do some of these things to maybe a lesser level.

But obviously I knew them and I was quite comfortable with them.

When these boys are going to these camps, are they sort of strangers to each other?

Is that another element of it that is important, do you think?

Yeah, that's a good question.

So they usually are strangers.

Or maybe there might be two people who know each other from, you know, the same school or something like that.

For the most part they are strangers.

I've certainly never done a camp where they all knew each other.

I suppose that would be the case if you did it from a school, wouldn't it?

Yeah, it would, yeah, it would.

I guess, you know, the only differences would be in the early days of it, you know, cause everyone's a bit quiet and shy of each other.

But that really quickly changes.

Yeah, I bet once they start teaming up in Games and for activities.

They soon, you know, they're soon making friends and mucking around together and stuff.

Yeah.

What do you think children and adolescents and young men are being initiated into?

Maybe unintentionally.

So obviously social media, we've spoken about consumerism, maybe a way of thinking, like fragility, stuff like that.

Is there anything that we're unintentionally initiating our young boys into?

Yeah, probably a whole host of things.

One thing that springs to mind is, you know, gang culture in our cities.

You hear about county lines and gangs using very young people, boys and girls who are under a certain age, which means they can't be tried in court, they can't commit a crime technically, so they're being used for as drug mules and that sort of thing.

And maybe these young people don't have positive role models in their life and suddenly they've got these gang members who like, oh, that I'm important to them.

Or they think that they're important to them.

And so they, they.

They're initiated into that life.

Yeah.

You know, this is, this is a big thing in this country.

And an initiation camp, you know, that we're offering would really fit.

Would really fill that void really nicely.

I think it's got great potential.

Other.

Other.

Other thing.

Other ways we're initiating our young people.

So you mentioned sports earlier.

You know, rugby teams are quite well known for it, aren't they?

But it tends to be around, you know, alcohol.

Yeah.

And sort of, you know, that sort of thing.

Yeah, there's a whole host of little subcultures within our, you know.

Yeah, I think maybe, and I think back to when I started playing like football in the men's team, there is that.

It's like that initiation into drinking culture, like that something.

And that's like university is less now as more young people are not drinking.

Whether that's to do with costs, whether it is more awareness around health, I don't know quite what.

What's causing that.

But yeah, it's interesting to think back to that because you're.

Again, you're sort of encouraged to.

It's part of.

Makes you part of the team.

I'll have a beer with us after.

And if you don't, you get little comments maybe, or if you.

I went sober for two years and I remember then going back and saying, oh, I'm not having a drink and going out on nights out.

And they'd be like, I just have one.

Why can't you just have one?

And it's that little.

It's like people trying to make you.

I think it's their own vulnerabilities being reflected onto you.

Because at the end of the night, they would then turn to me a lot more intoxicated and say, I really respect what you're doing.

I wish I could do that.

And it's.

It's just an interesting observation, but I think there's so many things that we unintentionally initiate young people into and we spoke about social media.

But to go a little bit deeper into that comparison, I think through social media we see the best of everyone's life.

I could have the worst day of my life, but if I have a coffee and I take a picture of it in front of a sunny field, it looks like I've had a lovely moment there.

But I could be just in an awful way, internally.

Yeah.

But no one will ever know that.

And I might go on a holiday with people who I don't really get on with and I'm not really having a great time.

But I post a couple of photos.

Everyone's jealous that I've gone on holiday and they think that their life's worse for it.

Yeah.

So comparison is a massive one.

Yeah.

That's one thing we do try.

Well, we do.

We definitely do on the camps, and that is honoring.

I don't want to say failure, but honoring the struggle and trying to convey to these young people that there is incredible gold in your struggle and.

And what in the area you are not succeeding in.

You know, if you've built a shelter that.

And it rains that night and you are absolutely soaked, that's not a time to shame that person and can say, look, come over and look at his shelter.

If you'd have built like that, you wouldn't be in this situation.

It's, you know, it's a time of reflection.

Definitely.

But yeah, that's a really important thing.

Comparison.

Yeah.

Struggle is a key point of life, isn't it?

You.

You look at any.

It's every storyline of every movie or every book.

It's never.

This is Jeff and he woke up and he just got everything right.

Yeah, that's a boring story.

Yeah.

It's always.

This happened and his wife left him and then he lost his job and he was down in the dumps and then he came back and it's the superhero movies.

His uncle died and they got bit by a spider and he's Spider man now.

And it's these stories.

And this is something.

I was speaking to Miles last week, speech coach about stories and about the stories we tell.

They're the engaging ones.

But it's real life, ultimately.

No one's got to where they are without their own struggles.

And whether those struggles seem on the same level as someone else's struggles.

I think people even compare their own.

We talk about Harrison.

People compare their struggles to other people.

So they think my struggles, that person went through way more than me.

So my.

My thing's not even important.

Yeah, but it's all relevant.

It scales to your own life.

Yeah, absolutely.

It's interesting you mentioned story.

That's another thing we do on the camp is lots of storytelling.

In fact, the.

The camp.

The camp itself is sort of loosely based to follow a story.

Okay.

I won't.

I won't.

I won't say what story it is because it's a really.

It's a really lovely part of the camp and it's kind of nice to keep it within the camp.

But each night before bed, we tell them a part of the story.

And what's happening in that story is slightly mirrors what they're experiencing on this camp.

It's a very, very ancient story.

And, you know, the day they're cast out, this part of the story is this young lad is cast out.

So, yeah, story storytelling is just a fantastic part of it, of the initiation.

Yeah.

What do you think?

And maybe we've covered this slightly, but if there's something that young men are missing in today's world and young women as well, what do you think that is?

Yeah, I mean, I think perhaps the word that sprang to mind to me there was connection, you know, authentic connection, not a WI fi connection, obviously.

That would be what is missing.

That.

That is.

That is absolutely it.

The word authentic's big there as well.

Yeah.

I think that word is getting used more and more now because the recent increase of use of AI.

Yeah, everyone's.

The word authenticity has been banded around everywhere now because so much of what we see online isn't.

Isn't authentic.

No, I think we are going to see a swing back to authenticity, hopefully.

Yeah.

I mean, it'll probably come to the point where the only way you can know what you're seeing is authentic is if you are in that room at that moment in time.

Yeah.

And, you know, perhaps that's a really good thing.

Yeah, I think I. Yeah, I think in person experiences are going to be bigger and more sought after in the coming years.

That's hopefully a projection of what I want to see.

Maybe I'll try and make it happen as well.

And this is obviously what you're doing.

But I think obviously in childhood it's super important you learn these lessons.

But we've also got lots of adults who still on those levels of connection.

And I've spoken to people in my life before who maybe moved to a new area and haven't really met anyone and maybe feel a bit lonely and say, well, what do you like?

Okay, well, you like playing chess online.

Why don't you go and find a chess club in person and meet people?

Okay, you like going to the gym, why don't you go to some classes, just like chat to people.

And it's those first steps of trying to gain that connection again that I think is going to become more important in the coming years, hopefully.

Yeah, I completely agree with you.

Yeah.

So you spoke a little bit about schools and how you'd like to get involved with schools, taking some of the kids away from them.

What's one thing you would change in the schools to help encourage your vision?

Yeah, my experience of school wasn't, wasn't the greatest.

You know, I had a pretty, you know, not an awful time, but a really boring time there.

You know, I'm not hardwired to sit in lessons and move from lesson to lesson and just sit at a desk.

I guess like the, the schools that did do the, the forest school and, and now even now forest school is seen for just little kids.

It's the young kids that do forest school.

And when you grow up, you don't do forest school anymore.

I, I, you know, again, give me my magic wand and I'd make.

Being out in nature intertwined with the curriculum.

Yeah.

You know, even to integrate it with, with the other subjects.

You know, I can remember doing orienteering as a kid, as a kid at school and that was great.

You know, go out with a map and you're, you get your geography lesson and it's PE as well.

So I'd, I'd, you know, I'd, I'd completely change education if it was down to me and, and integrate as much as possible with, with the outside.

Yeah.

You know, of course I'd make wild nature rites of passage part of the national curriculum.

But one day, maybe.

Well, I don't have that power just yet.

Yeah.

So obviously you spoke about the cost and how maybe some people can't get to one of these.

Maybe they live far away, got listeners in other countries, so they might be listening from miles away.

But if the parent listening can't get their kid to one of these camps, what things can they do?

In their sort of day to day life to help them recreate some of those lessons.

I know, I know we get lots of messages via our Facebook group of people around the area who just say, look, I really want this for my child, but I can't do it for whatever reason.

How do I do it?

And really the answer is I don't know.

You know, I know there's some organizations that, that have a much wider reach.

A journeyman, I think they, and a Bob.

A band of brothers, but a band of brothers, they get involved when there's criminality and there's an, there's a, an intervention there.

So, you know, that's a pretty narrow parameter.

You can get your, your children involved in that.

Journeyman, I think, has got a wider reach.

It's.

So that is an organization that does mentoring and initiation for young people and it would just be a case of, of looking out in your community and see what's happening.

Yeah, you can reach out to your local men's groups.

They, they exist, you know, all around the country, really.

If you can find a contact there, they'll probably have good information.

There are things going on, but sadly it's, it's sparse.

What about you personally as a parent, if you had to recreate some of this with your children without the use of the actual camp itself?

Yeah.

What are you doing?

Yeah, just, just to bring in that, that sense of challenge and encourage, encourage the risk taking, you know, not to say I'm a huge fan of this guy, but I read an interesting thing about Richard Branson.

He, he, he said that his things his mum would do was if he was ever climbing a tree and he was up high, his mum would come along and say, oh, can you get any higher?

See how high you can go?

You know, encourage.

Whereas every other parent probably would say, oh, careful, come down.

No, I don't like that.

And, and, and another thing his mum would do was, was take him, go for a little drive and drop him off in the car and say, right, see if, you know, see if you can get home and drive off and leave him.

And when he got back, wow, you did so well.

I'm not suggesting, I'm not suggesting for a minute that, you know, for any parents to do that, but, but to just think about that, that way of approaching things and, and think, well, what challenges can I give my, can I give my children that would have, have them come away and thinking, oh yeah, you know what?

I smashed that.

I nailed that.

That would be what I would think.

About things like that, yeah, I think of as you were sort of saying that, I thought of a story that my girlfriend told me about when she was a lot younger.

So almost as soon as she could speak properly, if they were out in a restaurant, her dad would make her order the food.

Right.

So it's that fear of speaking to strangers that even as adults we have it right.

We go to a party, we walk into a room like, oh, I don't really want to be here.

Like, everyone's going to look at me.

Everyone's thinking exactly the same thing.

So when you realize that, that helps a lot.

But she's now so good at communication with anyone, throw in a room with anyone, she'll be fine.

And she attributes a lot of that to like, those things, those lessons, early doors.

So even something as simple as that, that doesn't seem like a lot, but just going, right, you're ordering the food, tell the waitress what you want, the waitress is obviously gonna like find it really cute and parents right next to her.

So you're in a safe environment.

So yeah, that's absolutely brilliant.

I love that story.

And it, and, and I'm thinking back to my schooling days and, and my form teacher was also the drama teacher and he had this little box at the front of the classroom.

So if you were ever going to say anything, you had stand up on the box and address and address the whole class.

And that terrified me at first.

But you, you got, you really got really comfortable with it and, and I'm sure that serves me now in, you know, it at, in at work, if I've got to go and deliver training and it's to a room full of, you know, kids at a school, I'm really comfortable with that and I, I do attribute it to the, to the, to the box.

So.

Oh yeah, I totally get that.

I think that's great and that's what I hope that we're doing with these camps by giving them these skills, these life skills, these survival skills and this resilience and the emotional maturity they learn from our discussions is something that they're really going to carry forward in their lives.

Yeah.

Super important.

What's one conversation that parents should be having with their kids around this sort of stuff about becoming an adult.

So there are lots of conversations I can think of and it's, and it's a hard one because you know what, for a lot of kids, what a cringe fest it is for your parents to come along and say, you know, you're doing this properly and it's a conversation that you're not used to having.

My, my suggestion would be regular frank conversations about the tough stuff in, and don't take them to one side and say, you know, using contraception, you know, but, but to do it in an open, non judgmental way, perhaps at the dinner table and, and talk about some if something like Internet porn or, or some of the things we discuss in our camps.

Yeah, just, just from an, from an as early age as possible.

You know, it's down to the judgment of the parent and what that is.

But, but to have to have these conversations regularly and, and, and in a.

Just, you know, just not make it a big thing.

Yeah.

And, and don't be afraid to say what needs to be said.

They're going to react to how you approach the conversation.

Exactly.

So yeah, if the parent comes in with that sort of, oh, this is an awkward conversation, they're going to sense that and they're going to feel, oh, this is awkward because dad doesn't really want to talk about it, but he sort of got to.

Whereas if it's just like you say, like just a passing comment like, oh, just tell me about that and how's that going for you?

And then it's like, oh, okay, yeah, it's all right.

And it sort of opens up that dialogue in a more relaxed way.

So even though internally you might be going, oh, this is an awkward conversation, I never had this with my parent.

Is this the right thing to do?

But yeah, the way you perceive yourself to, or the way you present yourself.

Yeah, yeah, the energy you bring to it is, is going to be, is going to be reflected.

You know, I'm a great believer in family meals.

That's, that's a thing that doesn't, you know, is sort of slipping away from our culture.

And you know, it's food on the go or food on the lap in front of a telly or whatever.

And so I do, I do love a family meal and it is a good chance to have that family meeting to discuss the things that need to be discussed.

So that, that would be my thing.

That, that would.

What I'd recommend.

Yeah.

Awesome.

Chris.

The way I like to finish my episodes is to ask my guests to leave a question for the listener.

So I like to listen to podcasts and go away and have conversations around the topic of that podcast or anything that I learned from it.

So if you could give the listener now a question to go away with and start a conversation with a friend, a family member, or even a stranger, what question would you give?

Them.

I guess a question could be, you know, if you're speaking to an adult, was there an initiation in your life?

You know, was there a point at which you became an adult?

You know, and how.

How was that for you?

Could that.

Could that have been managed a bit better by a.

A caring mentoring community?

Yeah.

And if you've got children, how would you like them to pass into adulthood?

That's a good question because they're reflecting on their own experience and then looking at what would they want for their child, if they have a child?

Yeah, nice question.

Yeah, it's something I just want to put into everyone's awareness, really.

Um, it's so absent in our culture.

And the.

The other thing to say is that all cultures around the world throughout time have initiated their youth.

Except our Western culture, it's for some reason completely absent.

Women do have a biological initiation, which is menstruation, which is why it's ever more important for.

For boys to.

To have that initiation, you know, managed for them.

But that's not to say that women, girls don't benefit from.

From this experience as well.

Yeah.

Awesome.

Chris, thanks so much for coming on.

I've really appreciated this conversation and your time today.

If people want to find out more about Rites of Passage, where can they do that?

Yep.

So we have a Facebook page, Wild Nature, Rites of Passage, and if they're not on Facebook, they can contact us.

We've got wildnature.ropgmail.com if they want to find out a bit more about the upcoming camps.

We've got a camp running this summer which is in late.

It's the first week of the school holidays, I believe, so we are very much open to.

We've still got space for participants for that.

Excellent.

We've got a staff training camp in early April.

We're quite well stocked for staff men.

We're really looking for any women who'd be interested in joining the team, especially if they got Bushcraft experience.

But that's not totally essential.

But again, just reach out to us on our Facebook page or.

Or email and we can take it from there.

Awesome.

I will link it below so anyone listening can just scroll down and click on the links and send an email.

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