Wilderness / Outreach

Pricing

We understand this is a hard time for many people; instead of a fee we are implementing a recommended “$10.” trip donation per person. If you enjoyed your trip with us and want to contribute more we would greatly appreciate it. Everyone deserves a chance to connect with nature!

Experience

Hey, fellow nature enthusiast, my name is Phillip and I’d like to introduce myself, who I am, and why I’m so passionate about wildlife! Being raised in a big city during a time in which the world was transitioning into the era of technology didn’t allow for me to have much of an experience with or within nature. We had our occasional field trips in grade school when we would go to a state park for a day full of organized sports and activities. Unfortunately, we were never given the time nor opportunity to just be curious kids among nature. Years go by and eventually I found myself attending a small Liberal Arts college in Alfred, New York where my need for nature/wildlife was finally answered. For the first time in my adult life I was able to take a ton of special interest courses that were mostly field-work oriented and majority of those classes were held outside. With the guidance of amazing professors, I, the city kid, was able to get hands on experience with various aspects of Ornithology (the study of birds), Herpetology (the study of amphibians.), and other environmental issues. I was amazed at how much fun I had, but the most eye-opening thing was realizing that I was missing this exposure my entire life up until this moment. This new unconventional classroom captivated me and my interests for business marketing were replaced with a passion to serve nature; in doing so I ended up studying both Environmental Science and Geology. 

After graduating May of 2015, I was honored to work a session at a summer camp where I was able to network with a ton of amazing outdoorsy people who too shared the same passions and ideals as me. From that session I was able to learn about the amazing program Nature’s Classroom. The summer camp and Nature’s Classroom were the first places where I was able to share my new hobby with an audience of pubescent kids who didn’t have much of a desire to truly be in nature with a hippie they just met. Both places shared the same mission at heart, to provide students and teachers alike an opportunity to experience an alternative way of formal education, outside the constraints of a classroom. This is where I fell in love with mentoring other kids who were interested in the same environmental things as I, they were just missing the right person to captivate their attention all this time.

Collectively these experiences have lead me up to this point where we are starting “W.I.L.D.-erness” program! W.I.L.D stands for wilderness incorporated learning and discovery, and its purpose is to allow kids and parents both a platform to co-learn/co-experience nature as we partake in weekly activities focusing on varying aspects of environmental education. Our goal is to provide families with an opportunity to be encompassed in nature and allow themselves to step away from the stresses of today’s world, and to look at nature with a new set of eyes and appreciation. I was taught that one must be a steward of his environment at heart for them to teach others just how important our environment is to us. Unintentionally, the messenger that I am, I have the duty to share what I know with this new generation of people who will have the resources to change the world for the better far beyond our imagination.

If you’re interested in guided family/individual/couple/group wilderness hikes please contact us below to schedule and get more info!