This Is Personal
This Is Personal.

I know what it is to lose yourself before you ever get the chance to find out who you were supposed to be.
In my early twenties, I was asked to leave UT for two semesters. I lost my job. I was arrested. I woke up in a hospital. What I couldn't see then was that beneath the drinking was a young man who had no idea who he was, what he felt, or how to say any of it out loud.
What began to change that wasn't someone fixing me. It was backpacking — being in an environment that asked something true of me, and gave me the space to finally answer honestly.
For six years I took young men from underserved Austin communities into the wilderness through Explore Austin, from sixth grade through senior year. I watched boys who had never been seen as leaders become exactly that — not because anyone told them to, but because the wild held up a mirror long enough for them to see it themselves.
That's what Trails of Transformation is built on. Not a program. An answer to something I've lived.
“The wilderness does not fix you. It shows you that you were never broken — only lost. And it gives you the landscape to find your way back.”
— John Thomas di Bari


