“Look deep into nature, then you will understand everything better.” — Albert Einstein
Headwaters provide opportunities for teens and adults to learn how to reconnect with themselves and with the earth through fire making, earth shelter building, nature awareness skills and wilderness skills.
The Walker/Hupp Fund is a non-profit organization created to help young men and women whose families do not have the financial resources to attend Headwaters Outdoor School either through the Boys Rites of Passage for the young men or through the Apprenticeship Program for both boys and girls.
Please consider making a tax-deductible donation to the Walker/Hupp Fund today.
Direct Donation
If you would like to make a direct donation, please call 530-938-1304, or if you wish to send a donation through the mail, send your check payable to Upper Reaches to:
Upper Reaches
P.O. Box 1210
Mount Shasta, CA 96067
Thank you!
Buy a Book, Help a Child
Headwaters offers several books for sale that can augment your learning experiences at our school and inspire you to get out in nature. One hundred percent of the profit from the book sales will go to the Walker/Hupp Fund, which is an affiliate of Upper Reaches. It is a 501(c)(3).
The Story of Walker/Hupp
by Jean Sage
Many years ago, I started a nonprofit in honor of my friend Dan. His given name was Ted Hupp, but I knew him as Dan Walker. He had taken the name of Dan Walker when he became a sports broadcaster for two reasons. The first was that he liked the sound of the name. The second was that he didn’t want the government to overtly know who he was. He thought they were still tracking him years after Vietnam for things he had done during that war.
He had been in Special Operations. He spoke fluent Vietnamese, and he had traveled alone through the jungles of Southeast Asia, mainly in Laos, where the US government denied sending troops. He had lived in the highlands with the Hmong tribes because his mission had been to find tunnels that the Viet Cong had dug in Laos and Cambodia to move equipment from the north to the south undetected by the US military. He didn’t talk about his experiences very much, but they hung like a noose around his neck when he returned.
He told me of his capture by the Viet Cong. They had known he was important, he said, as he carried sophisticated weapons that the average ground troops didn’t have. It was Christmas 1970 when a party of eight Viet Cong captured him. They tortured him, rifle-butted the back teeth out of his mouth, breaking his jaw, which he said was agonizingly painful. Figuring he was too badly hurt to escape, they left him with two guards while the others went in search of more Americans. He successfully freed himself and killed the two, placing their bodies in upright positions to look less suspicious when the others returned. He packed his mouth with mud to lessen the pain in his jaw, and waited for the other six to return, killing them all, assuring his escape. He figured he was a dead man, as he knew there were Viet Cong all through that part of the jungle. He ran, stalked, and rested until he reached a military base. He recuperated. And the military sent him out, again, into the same Laotian jungle.
His story will always stay in my memory. I witnessed firsthand the nasty aftereffect of war. Dan had nothing to hang on to upon his return. He had been raised Catholic but no longer believed in God after Vietnam. He physically came back to the United States, but his soul stayed in the Southeast Asian jungles.
War is the result of greed, stupidity, and the lack of leadership. The Chinese book of changes, The I Ching, which is the companion philosophy to The Art of War, expresses that “even if the army acts in the right way, the leaders must be mature to obtain good results.” There have been no such leaders since Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt.
I created the Walker/Hupp Fund in honor of Dan. I wondered, if he had had a childhood experience at a place like Headwaters Outdoor School, would he have had something substantial to hold on to when he returned.
Nature heals. Einstein, who understood the universe better than anyone, said, “Look deep into nature, then you will understand everything better.” I want teenagers, boys, and girls to have an opportunity to look deep into nature in order to understand everything better, especially when life seems hopeless.
