Today we’d like to introduce you to Nathaniel W. Brown
Hi Nathaniel W., thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
My name is Nathaniel (Nate) Brown, and I am a student development professional and outdoor educator. I’m recently married to my wife, Layne, and we live in Greenville, Illinois with our Australian Shepherd, Shelby, and former-alley cat, Gunther. I have worked with high school and college students for over a decade, seeing students develop as leaders, investigate faith and worldview, and explore their sense of calling through place-based learning experiences. My favorite learning experiences by far are always outdoor and wilderness trips. I first cut my outdoor trip-leading teeth paddling Ozark rivers on three and four-day retreats with dozens of junior high and high schoolers at a time. These trips always resulted in conversations about how to help others and how much beauty there was to be found in the world.
Those trips taught me how the outdoors can bring young people together and begin to instill a sense of responsibility not only to the people in their team, but to the river they paddled and the environment they depended on to recreate. High schoolers took on the duty of teaching junior high schoolers how to paddle and where to stop and swim. Students navigated the river, rescued their canoes from log jams, and shared the hardships of maturing into a young adult around a campfire. As a young professional, I had the opportunity to be part of similar trips where first-year college students planted native pecan trees, networked with other students, pulled bags of trash from the river, and later discussed how their service impacted the communities that depended on the river and how the trip helped them connect to their college community.
Over the next ten years of my professional career, I helped plan wilderness backpacking in the Great Smoky Mountains, winter camping and snow skills in Wyoming’s Wind River Range, and camping-climbing in Pennsylvania wilderness areas. I have since acquired a Wilderness First Responder certification through NOLS and built up what I consider a toolset for teaching leadership, conservation, mental health self-care, and so much more. As much as I love teaching outdoor skills, I love helping young people feel like they can accomplish big things and see just how much they can contribute to a team dynamic and to the world around them. Students are able to come together to do truly challenging things — like self-evacuating a team member down from a base camp at 12,000 ft above sea level or making sure that the team follows the map and takes plenty of water breaks before sharing their own story as a developing young adult. There are opportunities to practice conservation ethics like those taught by Leave No Trace as well as techniques to improve mental health both in challenging outdoor scenarios and everyday life.
Recently, I have taken a position in Residence Life at Greenville University where I have the opportunity to help design programming that allows opportunities for student leaders to develop leadership skills and test them in practice. I helped plan Greenville’s 26th Annual Walkabout program — an 8-day wilderness backpacking experience in the Great Smoky Mountains where teams of 6-8 students traverse Smoky Mountain ridge lines and camp near Tennessee creeks. Each day student leaders take turns leading their team according to their trail map and sharing about their own story as a leader once camp is made for the night. Outdoor education and wilderness experiences like the Walkabout program present unique opportunities to retreat, learn new skills, develop as a leader, and get out of the range of a cell phone tower. Professionally, I hope to lead outdoor leadership experiences that help people get to know the beauty of the world alongside a profound sense of responsibility, embracing and serving others – and to continue creating those experiences for students in the St. Louis area!
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I recently heard a talk from a mental health researcher that measured an individual’s “inner peace” by dividing it into categories of the individual’s purpose, personal health, provision, the place they live, and the community (people) around them. Humans have a lot going on, and that makes inner peace both really simple and hard to balance. Care for your mental health. Rest. Get exercise. Make friends. Make enough money to put food on the table. Live somewhere you love. Find purpose in your work. In a way, it’s a simple equation, but good luck figuring it all out at once! Teens and emerging adults are often at a stage of their life where they are building their life from square one, and it can get pretty stressful trying to juggle a full schedule of work, education, and interpersonal relationships.
I love outdoor education because you address so many areas at once. You’re getting outside and seeing the sunrise/set (proven to benefit your mental health and sleep schedule), making new connections, meditating on your relationship with your place, missing all the things back home you took for granted — not to mention putting your phone down while you’re out of cell service. These things are especially essential for teens and emerging adults who are developing their own identity and starting to imagine what they want their life to look like long-term. The hard part is convincing young people (and their parents) to stop being busy and reflect. Since they were kids, they’ve had adults making decisions for them and heaping homework, sports, clubs, work. Identity development takes self-reflection and discernment from your community. The outdoors is a perfect place to reset and remind yourself how you want to make an impact on the people around you and the place you live in, but being less busy really is the hurdle of our generation.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
Often, the students who benefit the most from these opportunities to get outside and go on trips are the same individuals who haven’t had ample opportunity to go on trips/vacations or had access to local green spaces or the outdoors. Sometimes these students come from under resourced neighborhoods in inner cities or come from low income, rural communities. Sometimes it’s students who grew up in the suburbs and have been too busy with school and sports to really take time away to be a kid and see natural wonders around the country. I really would love to build opportunities for underprivileged students in the St. Louis area in two ways. First, I’d love to create more opportunities for high school and college students to go on outdoor leadership experiences without the financial burden. I’d also love to help local Midwesterners to recognize the wealth of the environment they live in and how to protect that environment. The Mississippi river valley wetlands, Ozark plateau, Shawnee National Forest, and endangered Illinois prairie are worth saving for the health of future generations, and I love when people recognize the wealth of micro adventures that exist in our backyard. The more we learn to value our wild places, the more we are willing to invest in parks and open spaces in urban areas as well.
Another huge part of this work is attending to students’ mental health. I come from a background of Christian ministry, so I really have a heart for attending to our spiritual lives. For young people, I think that includes a lot of dimensions like investigating faith viewpoints, attending to mental health, meaning-making in hardships, and investing in religious communities. I try to make time for self-reflection as students rest and retreat in nature. As the mental health crisis only gets worse in our culture, it will be necessary (in addition to clinical mental health efforts) for people to find ways to find/make meaning in their work and find outlets to designate time to rest and reflect on their lives.
I also have recently started to take outdoor portraits and action-proposal shoots. I’ve been an amateur wildlife and outdoor photographer for years, and now I am hoping to provide people with photos that tell stories of their journey — whether that is taking a picture of you on the mountain you climbed or really capturing the story or your proposal that you’ve spent many long hours planning and choosing a meaningful location. I’m a photographer/videographer who is not afraid of a grueling hike or hiding in the bushes to capture your life event, and I have had a lot of fun working with people to tell their story in images.
Any advice for finding a mentor or networking in general?
In my experience, my best networking came from being willing to participate in the projects that I thought were meaningful and being a genuine person while you are putting in the work. People who have turned out to be mentors in my life were always intentional about asking questions and offering friendship despite busy schedules. Find a local nonprofit who cares about the needs of your community in your interest/field and be genuine in your interactions — people who could mentor you or be mentored by you want to be friends with that type of person.
I initially made my professional connections by saying yes to events — retreats for high school students, river cleanups, church soup kitchens, guiding first-year college students through national parks (and through their first semester of college). Just jump in, do good work, and make friends. Those relationships with the community you serve and the people you serve with will be a lasting network.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://nathanielwbrown.myportfolio.com/work
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nathanielwbrown_/
