INSTRUCTORS
Prin van Gulden is a homesteader and craftswoman passionate about exploring our connections to land and humanity through traditional crafts. She believes the ecological relationships we maintain through this work are as essential as the skills we cultivate.
Her practice is centered on the fiber arts, including basketry and textile weaving, spinning, felt making and natural dyeing. She enjoys gathering and growing plants for crafting, from flax, cotton, and various dye plants to broom corn and basketry willows. Prin teaches the Fiber Arts curriculum at Sterling College as well as workshops in Vermont and New England.
Prin is teaching Indigo Resist Bandannas
Penny Hewitt is passionate about revitalizing and sharing traditional skills, particularly in the forms of black ash and bark basketry. She enjoys teaching people how to transform natural materials from the surrounding forests into objects of beauty that are useful in everyday life. She is inspired by traditions of many cultures, and is grateful for the opportunities of connection that her craft cultivates. Her experience includes teaching workshops to all ages, as well as crafting for income, pleasure and to meet the needs of her homesteading life.
Penny is teaching Willow Bark Baskets
A habitual wanderer and weed eater, Lucian Avery lives with his family in Hardwick VT. He likes making things for everyday life, like baskets, bowls and chicken soup. Lucian spends his days blacksmithing, focusing on hand tools - mostly for the garden, woodshop and kitchen.
Lucian is teaching Knife Hafting and Shrink Pots and leading the naturalist walks in the mornings.
Luke Boushee worked as a wilderness skills instructor for the past 12 yrs at many schools including most recently Earthwalk Vermont and Orchard Valley Waldorf School. At OVWS he teaches an elementary grade woodworking class and outdoor education class that includes primitive and naturalist skills. He leads adult workshops in a variety of subjects including basswood rope making, flint and steel blacksmithing, hide tanning, etc. He lives in central Vermont and spends most of his time learning traditional crafts and harvesting and preparing wild foods.
Luke is teaching Flint and Steels and Hand Propellers for kids
Erok "e-rok" Gillard is a local artist, activist, poet, uncle and lover of the wild. He enjoys printmaking, paper cutting, shadow puppetry and sharing artwork, especially through the mail. Erok hopes to someday be able to whistle like a cricket.
earthshinestudio.bigcartel.com
Erok is teaching Willow for kids and Block Printing, and t-shirt printing
Sean Miller lives in the bustling metropolis of Montpelier but is lucky enough to have a sloyd barn in his backyard. Passionate about making, building, and tinkering, his hands are usually busy. Carving has been his daily meditation for several years, with spoons taking center stage. He is a lover of trees- both standing and fallen to the forest floor.
Sean is teaching Spoon Carving.
In addition to teaching crafts and earth skills, Ross Doree is a long time educator who loves the collaborative experiences that arise from being outside with kids. He also enjoys making up stories (some good, some not so good) based on folk traditions and the intersection of suburban and wilderness living. He is currently the Youth Programs Director at Crow's Path in Burlington, VT.
Ross will be leading Stories and Games for kids.
Nick Neddo has been teaching wilderness living skills, tracking, drawing and nature awareness professionally since 2000, although he considers himself a perpetual student. He makes his art supplies from materials he gathers from the landscape, which is the topic of his books: The Organic Artist, and The Organic Artist for Kids.
Nick is a sixth generation Vermonter who has been making art since he could first pick up a crayon. He grew up exploring the wetlands, forests and fields of his bioregion and developed a profound curiosity, respect and love for the community of life around him.
As a youth Nick identified primary focuses that would become life-long pursuits: study of the natural world, Stone Age technology (popularly known as primitive skills) and creating art. Trusting the inherent value of these skills, he continues to embrace their pursuit with a ravenous appetite fueled by a genuine love of the living world and the creative process. He has traveled the country extensively, visiting the last great wildernesses, seeking traditional skills and experiencing the landscape’s majesty, which are common themes in his work.
Nick enjoys clean air, water, food and dirty hands.
Nick is teaching Parfleches
Sarah Corrigan is an herbalist and ancestral skills practitioner who has a focus on ethnobotanical studies. Informed by these land based arts, she finds they offer the rewards of self reliance through skill, responsibility and gratitude through growing and gathering, and the awe and wonder of things through the beauty of the natural world. In effect, that this interaction can educate us to being more capable, responsible, and healthier human beings. As a student and an educator, she remains passionate about continuous learning, and facilitating a student’s relationship to the natural world through supporting their own learning processes.
Sarah is teaching Twined Baskets.
Brad Salon's work combines his love for wilderness and adventure, hard work with good folks, building with his hands, and constant problem solving.
Brad is teaching Felted Hats.
Scogin Zimmermann Mayo lives in a yurt outside Washburn, Wisconsin. He spends his time harvesting wild food, canoeing upstream, playing in the woods, and encouraging kids to play with knives.
Scogin has been teaching willow basketry since 2004, after apprenticing at the Ancient Arts Center in
Western Oregon.
Scogin is teaching Willow Baskets.
Born in Minnesota, André Souligny moved to Vermont in 1996 and was introduced to the green woodworking tradition at Goddard College. For 25 years André and his partner Heather have lived in Central Vermont, raising their daughters Marguerite, Cedar, and Ruby. By their graces, André continues to revel in green wood spoon and utensil making, always learning new things, and instructing and blogging on the topic at spoonderlust.com.
André is teaching Beginning Green Wood Carving. and Kid's Carving and demoing Kohlrosing on Friday.
Douglas Brooks work is focused on the appreciation and continued use of traditional wooden boats, and the preservation and sharing of the skills and knowledge needed to build wooden boats. These include American and English boat types, as well as the small boats of Japan.
Douglas will be demoing his trapping boat on Friday.
Coleen Butler lives among the maples and oaks in the Champlain Valley of Vermont. She is a hide tanner, hunter, and sewer. She works with the visceral cycles of life and death and is passionate about nose to tail eating, clothing making, returning bodies to ancestral health, living with the cycles and seasons of the earth, and generally being a wild human.
Coleen is teaching Buckskin Pouches.
Nelly Wolf is a professional weaver of Jewish ritual textiles. She lives off grid with her husband, three cats, and a whole lot of chickens.
Nelly is teaching Card Weaving.
Tim Swanson is the founder of Owl Eyes Wilderness Survival , a “traveling” nature connection and wilderness survival school for people of all ages. He holds a double Bachelor’s Degree in
Adventure Education Leadership and Adventure Therapy (Unity College). He is a Level 1 Certified Animal Tracker (CyberTracker) and a Wilderness First Responder (SOLO). He is passionate about educating our children/teens/adults about nutrition, natural awareness, equality, and hopes to spread his love of nature through the practice of wilderness survival.
Tim is teaching Gourd Canteens.
Betsy Kane lives in the White Mountains of New Hampshire where she and her husband homeschool their three children. She comes from a long line of quilters, craftsmen, and do-it-yourselfers. Committed to
practical, useful, everyday skills, Betsy seeks to encourage others to become adept in these oft forgotten traditional arts. Betsy will be teaching mending, since extending the life of textiles keeps them out of the landfill and allows us to opt out of the mindset of disposable culture. Betsy has taught art and philosophy at the high school level, and teaches workshops at ROOTS school. When not busy outdoors or at the spinning wheel, she masquerades as a librarian.
Betsy is teaching Wool Mending.
Caleb Genereaux was born and raised in North-Eastern Vermont on a large farm full of wondrous places to explore.
As a homeschooler, wandering through the woods was just part of his daily education. This was a
trampoline of sorts that catapulted him into a lifelong obsession with having fun outside with his friends.
This obsession has led him to teach at the Roots school for the better part of a decade, to pursue outdoor
adventures all over the world and to study Natural Resources and Outdoor Education at UVM. As part of
his studies, Caleb attended an Outdoor Educator semester at NOLS, which pushed his understanding of
leadership and its importance in our lives to a new level. Caleb now works for Proctor Academy taking
teens across the Southwest for six months as a Mountain Classroom instructor. Caleb brings these myriad
experiences to his teaching style and combines it all into a wild ride of skills, curiosity, introspection and
laughter.
B.S. Natural Resources-Outdoor Education concentration, University of Vermont, 2021
Caleb is teaching Tarps.
Micah Wiles is a farmer and craftsperson living in Kentucky in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains. He has been weaving baskets for over 12 years
with a focus on white oak basket making. His practice of craft is place based and involves a connection with the land, utilizing local materials found in the
landscape around him. He has studied traditional baskets of Kentucky and Tennessee and has travelled internationally learning from basket makers in
Romania, Ireland, England and Japan. Passing on knowledge and keeping traditional skills alive is important to Micah and he teaches a variety of classes
on his farm as well as at craft schools throughout the region.
Micah is demoing Split Wood Basketry on Friday.
Justin Sutera lives in Elmore and runs Back to the Earth Wilderness Programs, where he enjoys teaching
wilderness skills and nature connection to kids and adults of all ages. When he's not working he's wandering the woods, hunting, crafting, and enjoying time with friends and family.
Justin is teaching Stone Pendants for kids.
Michael Lowe lives on a hilltop farmstead in the forest. He is a traditional builder who loves working with animals in the woods as well as traditional tools and techniques in his building work.
His work focuses on using local wood in historical restoration and small traditional style cottages.
He enjoys making biochar, planting trees, and regenerating the forest through ‘worst-first logging’.
Michael is teaching Hand Hewing
Will Nissen (he/him) continues to ride the wave of joy and connection that has come with learning various wood crafts. His main focus has been making woodenware and chairs. Will primarily works as a youth mentor. He cares deeply about helping kids tend to their relationships, including their emotional and imaginal connections with the place they live. He loves to play and collaborate with others to cultivate a sense of belonging. He also is an apprentice to myth and storytelling.With his friend, he has started the Blue Cart.
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Will is teaching Wooden Bowls.
Emma Markowitz is an instructor at Owl Eyes Wilderness Survival and the Assistant Director of TimberNook Middlesex County.Emma is a lifelong adventurer and naturalist. Growing up in the prairies of Chicago, her boundless energy often led to climbing trees, splashing through mud, and turning the washing machine into a rock tumbler. With over 15 years of experience in outdoor and progressive education, Emma believes that by empowering people to take healthy risks and explore the natural world, she can help them develop the confidence and skills they need to thrive. Her teaching is infused with curiosity, patience, and a generous dose of humor.
Emma is teaching Coal Burnt Spoons for kids.
Kerry Lambertson lives in Hardwick Vermont.
At one time he spent a lot of years living in the great north woods of Minnesota where he used an axe everyday to cut firewood, build houses, clear trails, fell trees and make tools.
These days he tries to only build violins, but ends up building furniture, boats and houses, restoring old machines, playing fiddle and chasing wild foods around.
Kerry is teaching Axe Skills.
Jonathan Shapiro lives in Vermont and spends his days tracking, making traditional crafts, hunting, canoeing, picking up roadkill, and listening to birdsong. He believes that an accurate understanding of and deep connection to our wild surroundings are necessary for all people to thrive. He runs the Fox Paw School, where he teaches adults about wildlife tracking, bird language, weather, plants, awareness, and nature connection.
Jonathan is teaching Botany Walk for Crafters, and co-instigating the Morning Walks.
Alden Weiss is a homeschooled 18 year old from the White Mountains of New Hampshire. His interests range from book-binding to bushcraft to concert piano performance. Alden loves working with kids and has been interning and co-teaching youth programs at ROOTS School for the past couple of years. Alden wants to help others become comfortable interacting with the land and each other while exploring the wonder and beauty of nature in practical and playful ways.
Alden is assisting on Coal Burnt Spoons and Stone Pendants.