Our Team
We practice Nature-Informed Leadership
Darren Silver, MA
Source & Lead Instructor
Darren Silver is a rite of passage guide, ceremonialist, and innovative educator.
Ever since Darren was a kid he immersed himself deep in the sanctuary of nature, following stream beds, hawks and box turtles in the thick Virginia forests. This led him at the age of twenty to begin his studies with renowned author and teacher, Tom Brown Jr., at the Tracker School, learning the ways of wilderness living skills, tracking, healing and the vision quest. Darren’s experience at the Tracker School was the beginning of a journey towards remembering how to live within the consciousness of the earth. Twenty years later, Darren continues to study within the lineage of the Tracker School and the healing philosophy of NIASZIIH.
Locally and internationally, Darren guides vision quests, mens retreats, teen rites of passage, and embodiment workshops for youth, adults, men and women. He can be very gentle, wild, fierce, always bringing deep care to the people who work with him. He was taught very early on that the first medicine is water, and the second his humor. Working with Darren, you can bet humor will be part of the teaching.
An avid dancer, for over 10 years, Darren was trained in SomaSource, a rites of passage based model of movement rooted in the 5 Rhythms. He teaches dance as part of his residential trainings and is passionate about teaching embodiment practices as a way to better discover our communication between the body, soul, and nature.
In addition, he is trained in the art of Cowry Shell Divination as brought to the West and passed down from the Dagara elder Malidoma Somé. Darren’s teacher Kedar Brown, an early student of Somé, has mentored Darren for over a decade in the ways of ritual and divination. Divinations are focused on bringing ourselves in right relationship with our gift, ancestors, and the worlds of nature.
In 2016, Darren received a Masters degree in the Mythology of Initiation, where he rigorously studied mystical and indigenous teachings pertaining to major life transitions and thresholds. Darren pushed the edges of traditional academia with his experiential approach and revivifying cantor of mythical speech, in hopes that his academic contributions can inspire others to have an intimate relationship with the worlds of nature.
In 2023, Darren founded the Great Earth School - a school devoted to empowering the genius within us all, ultimately living a life of Vision. A gifted storyteller and apprentice to the old myths, Darren weaves the power of the natural world, Vision, and community in remembrance of regenerative culture.
Elias Serras
Community Guide & Instructor
Elias works at the intersection of somatic healing, deep ecology, and culture change as a facilitator and guide. He works with individuals, communities and organizations to empower embodied belonging through Truth, Healing, and Wholeness. Contact with wilderness saved his life as a younger man and inspired him to live and learn in communities ranging from traditional villages to contemporary Ecovillages in 11 different countries. He has trained and worked in the realms of grief tending, men’s work, rites of passage, sexuality, mindfulness and somatic therapy. He currently lives in a cabin in the woods on the Olympic peninsula, and can often be found singing, dancing or breaking bread wherever the village fire is burning bright.
Advisors & Guest Teachers
Joe Bob Merritt
Esoteric Teachings
Joe Bob Merritt is an Artkitect, a Psychedelic Cowboy, a Meaning Maker, a SpiritUallMattereAllistic Propagator of Psycheteknical Curriculums and a Developer of Psyborganic Culture in Service of the ReMemesis at Hand. Joe Bob specializes in drawing maps of The Machine which are proven to be useful to those whom have found themselves residing therein and subsequently decided to move towards the exit and enter into the work of consciously contributing to the development of human consciousness in service to the Hol of Life. More of Joe Bob's work can be found here:
http://josephrobertmerritt.com/
Ginny Jordan
Dream Work
Ginny Jordan, MFA is a writer, environmental activist, film producer, and dream therapist. She co-founded Street Business School, a non-profit organization dedicated to end generational poverty by empowering women as entrepreneurs. The project is now in twenty- five countries around the world. She co- produced the award-winning climate change films Chasing Coral and The Human Element. She also sits on the Board of the Cricket Island Foundation funding youth led social change projects in New York city, Chicago and New Orleans. She recently joined an advisory group for the Biodiversity Narrative Project, a movement building initiative that uses the power of story as an agent of personal and cultural change.
Ginny has a special love for the dream life and has led dream groups for the past thirty years.
Ginny lives on thirty-five acres outside Boulder, Colorado which to her great delight she shares with owls, bobcats, eagles, kingfishers, bull snakes, bears and the occasional mountain lion. Ginny is a mother of three and a grandmother of five.
Kat Mackinnon
Herbalism
Most of Kat's work is as a teacher and a clinician, and she approaches both of those things from a Vitalist perspective. This is a belief that we all have a fundamentally intelligent life force that drives us, and that this is in fact what are constantly in communication with and in service of.
Kat a certified clinical herbalist and nutritionist, as well as a certified Bach essences practitioner through the North American Institute of Medical Herbalism, where she studied with Paul Bergner in the Vitalist tradition.
She is also a Registered Herbalist through the American Herbalists Guild. She currently works at the Colorado School of Clinical Herbalism in Lafayette, CO in the capacity of Clinical Program Director, as well as primary faculty for the Fundamentals, Advanced, and Botany programs. In between those things, she holds intensives on wild foods, medicine making and botany, teaches at various other schools, conferences, and apothecaries, in addition to her clinical practice.
Though a transplant from the East Coast, Kat has a passion for bioregional herbalism, so in the past 10 years she has developed particular love for working with herbs of the Colorado Plateau. She began her formal career with plants by studying forestry at Northern Arizona University, in Flagstaff, AZ, and the plants, animals, and incredible harsh beauty of the Southwest have been one of the great loves of her life ever since.
Her other interests include poetry, ancestral skills, gardening, and delighting in the the beauty of the natural world.
Joshua Paquette
Herbalism
Joshua holds certification in herbalism from the North American Institute of Medical Herbalism (NAIMH), as well as from the Columbines School of Botanical Studies. He began his formal study of the natural world in 2005 at the University of Maine, Orono where he was introduced to the craft of environmental education. Since then he has had the opportunity to work with some outstanding botanists and herbalists in the field. His time with Howie Brounstein and Steven Yeager at the Columbines School of Botanical Studies in Eugene, Oregon has enlivened his passion for botany, ecology, and wildcrafting ethics. His studies with Paul Bergner at The North American Institute of Medical Herbalism in Boulder, Colorado revealed the powers of vitalism as a therapeutic approach to healing as well as a way of living—namely, that our body's innate intelligence does much of work, one has only to encourage the flames a bit and step out of the way (which is much more challenging than it sounds).
Joshua teaches classes on field botany, wildcrafting ethics, herbalism, myth and story. He is a core faculty member at Colorado School of Clinical Herbalism (CSCH) in Lafayette, Colorado, where he teaches botany, nutrition, herbalism, and natural therapeutics. His other time is spent operating a small carpentry remodeling business called Redstone Woodwork, LLC out Boulder, CO. Some of his thoughts and writings can be found his personal blog: www.makehasteslowly.org
Tony Troia
Regenerative Design
Tony Troia is a gardener, builder, beekeeper and yogi who is propelled by one thing: beauty. He acquired a steep acre of land in Western NC immediately after earning an ENVS degree from Western State University (Colorado). As a child, Tony was restless; often asking, “Why is the world the way that it is?” It took decades to satisfy the question. For 17 year’s Tony has experimented with a plethora of plant species and regenerative design; transforming a clay hillside into a resilient perennial polyculture. Through sensorial learning Tony has deepened his connection to, and understanding of local ecological process (ecology). He’s the co-creator of Red Sun Tea where Camelia sinensis is hand picked and processed into red tea. He starred in three seasons of Nationally Geographic’s “Live Free or Die”.
Nala Walla
Grief and Ancestral Healing
From her handbuilt earthen sanctuary at the edge of the woods, Nala has been cultivating the old-tyme “wisewoman" skills for decades. Weaving Griefwork and Ancestral Healing, Nala moves us beyond the psychological, and into the realm of Ritual. She specializes in helping people who feel rootless, culturally orphaned, and spiritually homeless reclaim our birthright of belonging to our own ancestors. Through a deeply somatic and liberatory approach towards deconstructing whiteness, we become more rooted in relationship with who we come from, and the lands we where we live.
Nala is director of "The Well, An Oasis for Animist Ritual," supporting innovative ways of restoring grieving and lamentation culture from around the world. For 25 years, she has been tending the lands and waters of her permaculture homestead, both physically and ritually. Hands in the soil, she is honored to practice a low-tech, ecosomatic lifestyle on an Island beside the Salish Sea, in Washington USA -- the traditional lands of the Chimacum and S’Klallam people.
Nico Kladis
Threshold Guide
Nico is a threshold guide and somatic psychotherapist walking the edges of what it means to be fully human while living and dying well. Nico is immersed in culturally responsive change work for the co-liberation of ourselves, each other and the more than human world. He lives on the Olympic Peninsula in Port Townsend WA (s'Klallam/ChimakumTerritory)
