What I Learned Backpacking the Appalachian Trail With Newark Teens

As a kid growing up in Hoboken before Hoboken was haute, the closest I ever got to the great outdoors was the patch of baggy plane trees and crabgrass they called Church Square Park two blocks from my house. It wasn’t until I was in college that a night under the stars awakened in me a sense of all that I had been missing, and I was immediately hooked. My trips into the wild quickly grew…