As the three founding directors of a 501(c)3 non-profit called Logos Wilderness Therapy, Chelsea Van Essen, Karly Buer, and myself led a special trip in August. Eight women would journey into a remote wilderness area to begin an unknown adventure towards both trust and healing.
This trip required months of planning and building trust within the sex trafficking survivor community. Our goal was for lasting positive impact from this, our first, wilderness therapy trip with five women who dared to risk journeying into the mountains for deeper healing, restoration, and further freedom.
For three nights and four days, we base camped between alpine lakes and beneath awe inspiring mountain peaks.
The goal of this trip:
To see the fullness of freedom re-imagined, restored, and reclaimed for our participants.
How?
By creating a space where authenticity is held within story and where challenge by choice is lived into, and not just said.
Our base camp was at roughly 10,500 ft, and with participants coming from sea level or close to it, we gathered a team of volunteers’.... pre-trip...... and hiked in all group gear to set up tents and equipment.
For four days, we lived life together while sitting on the same ground, eating the same food, and working towards the same goal. After hiking a peak nearby during our last full day, we asked that our participants not dedicate the effort to someone else but rather, to the strengths which enabled them to be here.... to be survivors.... and to continue climbing the path towards healing.
Why wilderness therapy for survivors of trauma?
Trauma strips away presence and essence in ways that are difficult to name.
It is something that is as much now as it was then and therefore, distorts safety and hinders wholeness.
Nature alone is a powerful force in creating safety within space; space that is not confining, not trapping, and holds a balance between predictability and complexity that on a neurological level creates a sense of safety.
This is something science refers to as the "power of awe"...... the power of natural fractals, and so many other things commonly found in nature.
Our Clinical Director, Chelsea Van Essen, speaks more about this with writer Florence Williams in her audible The 3-Day Effect.
Our first trip, by any measure was a success and affirmed the power of using wilderness as a conduit for healing.
Our goal in 2020 is to run six of these survivor trips. Join us by joining the Commit 12 Challenge and experience the power of nature and......
KAVU days for yourself!
Note: No names or images of our participants were used in this publication as their identities are confidential.
All images are those of volunteers and/or the employees of Logos Wilderness Therapy.
© 2026 KAVU
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