Sydney Grogan - Outside Reading 1 - Entry 4

How Spiritual Journeys in Nature Can Be Made Possible for People with Disabilities


My final term paper is about veterans taking long distance hikes as a means for them to achieve transition & healing. Veterans hardly get the recognition they deserve, despite all of the traumatic events they endured just for the sake & survival of our country. Many veterans end up suffering from depression, anxiety, PTSD, & several other mental illnesses due to the hardships they faced during their service.          I thought of how helpful a spiritual journey through nature really could be for veterans with struggles such as these, so I wanted to learn more about it.

My only concern with the idea of veterans taking long distance hikes is the fact that a significant portion of veterans have disabilities. So, depending on the disability, long distance hiking may not be a possibility for some...

I may have never even had that thought if it wasn't for the fact that my boyfriend's father is a veteran with a disability. He's a paraplegic, so he uses a wheelchair almost all of the time. But, for things such as getting in & out of bed or his car, he is able to walk, but he must be careful & take his time. I thought of him as soon as I saw my topic, & wondered if a spiritual journey through nature would even be possible for him. I thought maybe bussing, but of course, that cannot be truly compared with the raw beauty of hiking. Then I began to research. 

I ended up discovering a recorded radio show segment about how people with disabilities can still hike & enjoy nature from KJZZ, a radio station located in Phoenix. Both the audio recording & its transcript are included. After discussing how people with disabilities can feel removed from nature & why, they began talking about programs created with the pure purpose of opening up the outdoor experience to people with disabilities. They also place heavy emphasis on the fact that these programs are extremely inexpensive, & sometimes even free. One of these programs, central in Arizona, is called Ability360. Their main mission is to provide people with disabilities care while also making it possible for them to do a range of activities, no matter what the disability may be. Pictures of people with disabilities experiencing a hike through nature were also included, &  it was incredibly heartwarming to see the smiles on their faces & feel their joy while truly experiencing nature for the first time in a very long time, or ever. 

Learning more about the ostracism that people with disabilities feel from nature related activities has inspired me to emphasize solutions around this issue within my final term paper, in reference to veterans who are disabled & in search of their own spiritual journey.

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