FREEPORT

Too many teens aren’t getting out to enjoy the world around them, but an Edgecomb family, in honor of a daughter they lost too soon, is trying to get more kids into the great outdoors.

Carol and Bob Leone of Edgecomb founded Teens to Trails, an organization aimed at promoting outdoor activities for teens, after their 15-year-old daughter, Sara, died in a car crash in 2005.

Their vision was on display Saturday in Freeport, where L.L. Bean hosted the Life Happens Outside Festival in Discovery Park, where children maneuvered through a mountain biking course, climbed a rock wall, flew through the air on a zipline and flexed their muscles on the kids ninja warrior course.

The Leones had an active lifestyle, and spent most weekends outdoors hiking, kayaking or camping.

Sara and her older sister were active in the outing club at Wiscasset High School, one of only a handful of schools at the time to have such a club. After Sara’s death, the Leones formed Teens to Trails, and made it their mission to make these clubs more common.

“There’s a growing body of research that shows that disconnection between young people and the outdoors is affecting their health and mental wellbeing,” Leone said.

In 2011, The Nature Conservancy polled 602 teens ages 13-18 and found a wide range of reasons kids don’t spend time outside. The group reported that 80 percent of the teens said irritants such as the heat and insects made the outdoors uncomfortable; 62 percent said they didn’t have transportation to natural areas; and 61 percent said there were no natural areas near their homes.

The poll found that youth who would be classified as obese participated less frequently in outdoor activities.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, in 2013, just under half of all high school students (47 percent) said they were physically active for 60 minutes at least five days a week. In 2011-12, about one in five adolescents ages 12-19 (21 percent) were categorized as obese. Obesity can increase the risk of health problems such as cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol and asthma.

According to the July 2010 Harvard Health Letter — a newsletter produced by Harvard Medical School doctors — the benefits of being outdoors include increased levels of vitamin D resulting from exposure to the sun; more exercise, improved mood and better mental concentration.

Researchers have reported that children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder have scored higher on concentration tests after walking through a park compared to taking the same test after a walk through a residential neighborhood or downtown area.

“When you find yourself in a time in your life when you just want to do something meaningful, we thought outing clubs might be the way to go, and we realized that there were a lot of folks worried about kids not being outside,” Carol Leone said.

For 11 years, Teens to Trails has experimented with ways to support outing clubs, and worked with about 100 schools across the state.

When the group started, it found just 16 outing clubs existed in Maine high schools. Today, those clubs number 66. Many of those programs were jump-started by small grants provided by Teens to Trails.

“If we could get an outing club in every high school in Maine and every teenager going through their high school years would have access to outdoor experiences, and that would be whether they’ve been doing it all their life or whether they’ve never done it before,” Leone said. “Some come and they’re afraid to be outside that somehow if it’s connected to school, your friends are doing it, you have a trusted adult, and all of a sudden the outdoors doesn’t seem so scary, and it’s fun.”

The outing clubs also can expose youth to outdoor professions in tourism, forestry and other industries, she said.

Saturday’s festival was not as much about fundraising as it was about raising awareness.

“I still think that half of what we do is just talking about how important it is for young people,” Leone said.

dmoore@timesrecord.com