Welcome to Wilderness Skills Institute
What's New
Why Choose Wilderness Skills Institute
Our participants tell us that, "Wilderness Skills Institute's programs does not feel like camp, or school but doing really cool stuff with family". This is not a seasonal job for our staff but a life's passion that they have years of training and experience in. Youth and teachers have been coming to our programs since 1998 with caring, integrity and excellence, with most of our new participants come from referrals. (A referral is sending someone you care about to someone you trust).
For Updates About Our Youth Wilderness and Nature Programs
Wilderness Skills Institute's informative monthly e-newsletter. It also contains wild craft projects, wilderness safety, native plants, and animal tracking sections to better connect your family to the nature of the Pacific North Coast.
What Do We Do?
We mentor youth and adults the way our ancestors were mentored to:
- Become deeply connected to nature
- Connect them to the skills and play of their ancestors
- Take them past their comfort zones; to grow self confidence
- Mark growth with Rites of Passage
- Make people walk taller
- Offer an alternative
- Above all we make happy kids
What We Have...
- Instead of a pool we have the ocean
- Instead of a slide we have grassy hills
- Instead of a climbing wall we have rock cliffs
- Instead of a bounce house we have a plank over a creek
- Instead of video games we have animal tracks to follow
- Instead of a play structure we have rocks to climb and forests to hide in
- Instead of popsicle stick art or Legos we journal what we saw in the forest and make beautiful things we use from clay and plants
- Instead of PCs we have books
- Instead of counselors we have mentors
- Instead of toys we have animals to track
- Instead of aquariums we have tide pools
- Instead of a mural we have the wilderness
- Instead of a TV we have a camp fire and stories
- Instead of a schedule we have the day, a week, or two
- Instead of activities we live life in the wilderness
- We are not a camp or school for troubled youth, but for kids that want to connect to nature.
- Instead of fear there is respect
- What we do is real, what we learn we apply.
What do We Learn?
- What happened here?
- What is it telling you?
- What is it teaching you in a deeper way?
- How is it helping you?
- How is it helping you help others?
|
