Spiritual Formation in the Outdoors

There’s something that happens around a campfire that I’ve never been able to fully explain.

I’ve watched quiet kids talk. Closed-off teenagers open up. Boys & girls who haven’t said anything real in months suddenly start saying things they mean.

It’s not the fire. It’s not the s’mores. It’s something about being away from everything familiar – no screens, no schedule, no performance pressure – that loosens something inside a person.

One Stake Young Men’s President described it this way: “With what these experiences do for our young men and the testimony meetings around the campfire, these are conduit experiences that help our young men connect with the Savior. That is the ‘why.'” (Church News 9/4/24)

He’s right. And it’s not unique to Church camps. It’s true in every Scout troop that takes the outdoors seriously.

I’ve seen it happen on backpacking trips where a kid had to keep going when everything in him wanted to quit. I’ve seen it at the end of a long day of service when a boy sits down by the fire and says something honest for the first time in months. I’ve seen it at 11 pm when the adults have stopped talking, and a Scout looks up at the stars and asks a question she’d never ask in Sunday School.

The outdoors can strip away the armor.

That’s what Scouting gives us that’s hard to replicate in a classroom, a chapel, or maybe even a youth conference. Not a lesson about hard things. The actual experience of them. I can remember leading a Troop into the Philmont mountains over Spring Break. It was cold…and wet…and tough. Those young men were simply amazing at the end of the day, despite being so TIRED.

Lord Baden-Powell didn’t build a camping program. He built a character formation program – and he deliberately put it outside, around fires, on trails, under stars. Because he understood that certain things only happen when a person is removed from their comfort zone and placed in the middle of creation.

Latter-day Saints have always known this. Alma 30:44 says “…all things denote there is a God.” The trail teaches that. The campfire teaches that. The moment a youth pushes through exhaustion and reaches the summit – that teaches it too.

If you’re a Scouter, you’re not just planning trips. You’re creating conditions for something potentially SACRED.

Don’t underestimate what happens out there.