Program Support

Jesse Ash Newcomb, LMHC

MA Clinical Mental Health Counseling and Expressive Arts, Lesley University

Graduate Certificate in Ecopsychology, BA Sociology, Beloit College

Ash is a licensed mental health counselor, creative, and earth-loving being with training and experience in using the expressive arts, embodiment, and nature connection to support people and fostering relationship with themselves, others, and the natural world. They especially love supporting people of all ages in recognizing their own magic and bringing that into the world and feel passionate about creating spaces where people feel welcome to bring their whole selves to explore, create, and connect with themselves and others. They are passionate about supporting and listening to young people, the natural world, and the elements and wisdom inside each of us. Ash has been doing self study and attending workshops related to plants and herbalism for 10 years and loves spending time in the natural world and deepening their connection to, and learning from, all that is alive. They have experience working as a nanny for many ages, a camp counselor for teens of all genders, along with other youth support and empowerment work. They currently work as an individual and group therapist for all ages including several adolescents. In addition to the rivers, trees, and plants that have been teachers to Ash, they have been a participant and assistant with the Wildwood Path program in Unity, Maine, trained with the EarthBody institute in ecotherapy, have a certificate in Ecopsychology from the Pacifica Graduate Institute, have participated in several programs through the Animas Valley Institute, and assisted with the Rising Moon program last year. They also have a Masters in Clinical Mental Health Counseling and Expressive Arts Therapy from Lesley University and have trained with the Internal Family Systems Institute. Ash enjoys making art, singing, writing, movement, time outside, and spending time with good people laughing or talking about the hard stuff. They believe that part of creating a world that is best for all of us includes each deepening our relationship with the natural world inside and outside of us, and that being in touch with joy and creativity are important parts of creating sustainable futures.

“LAKE” aka Lisa Quatrale

Certified Forest Therapy Guide, Certified Permaculture Designer, Graduate Certificate in Art Education

BS Architecture, Pennsylvania State University, Master of Architecture, Yale School of Architecture

LAKE was raised by The Woods, The Cranberry Bog, The Climbing Trees, The Brook, and The Pond in Connecticut, where as a child she led hiking expeditions in the forest with the intention of getting lost. Though she still gets lost, she also finds her way. Named by a lake in Maine called South Pond, she has come full circle back home to the woods where she was raised to share what she experienced as a child. With the support and inspiration of the more-than-human world and the Wabanaki land that she lives on, LAKE works to heal the human and more-than-human relationship by nurturing nature ecology, inner ecology, and community ecology—in the field and forest and around the table—through forest therapy guiding, the way of council facilitation, forest tea ceremony crafting, practicing Shamanism, designing educational experiences, photographing nature, vegan cooking/baking, and designing community meals. The gift LAKE brings to children is seeing their true nature and nurturing that nature. Like children, she holds a sense of curiosity and wonder when it comes to understanding the world. This curiosity keeps her on an endless path of growth. She sees herself as a guide who nurtures individual growth by creating consensual, spacious, safe, deep, and inspiring learning experiences where all can thrive and bloom. LAKE has worked with young adults and youth in various programs using project-based, place-based, and experiential educational approaches—as a Field Instructor in a wilderness therapy program in the mountains of North Carolina; as an Architect/Educator/Curriculum Developer and a Kayak Instructor in the wilds of NYC, and as an Elementary Art Teacher and an Undergraduate Architectural Studio Instructor in inner-city Atlanta. She has also been trained in Wilderness First Aid and CPR, Compassionate Communication, Leave-No-Trace Principles, and Non-violent Crisis Intervention. A lover of stories and with several ideas for children’s books up her sleeve LAKE looks forward to finding time and space for writing as well as learning more about her ancestral Mi’kmaq roots and imagines sharing these interests, among others, in her educational offerings.

Meg Gilmartin, LCSW

BS Environmental Studies, University of Vermont, MA Social Work, UMaine

Wildlife Track & Sign Level I, First Aid, CPR

Meg lives on occupied Wabanaki territories in the wooded lands of Leeds. They have been tracking, birding and developing naturalist skills for the past fifteen years. She has experience mentoring a wide variety of nature immersion skills with adults and youth. She is deeply committed to youth autonomy and has supported the organizing of many youth-led efforts. She has taught tracking to a diverse group of audiences, including public school children, after school groups, and a wide variety of adults. Her approach is based in biocentrism, ecology, self-determination, and moving back towards a decolonial way of life. They are grateful to their mentors, ancestors and the inspiration they receive from their plant and animal companions. When she is not mentoring, she enjoys foraging for wild foods, especially seaweed, making plant medicine and studying mammals and birds.

Daniela Vargas

Daniela is grateful to have been born at home with a midwife, in the unceded territory of the Payaya (San Antonio, Tejas), and to have had many mentors and wise people guide them towards self-healing and wholeness. As a healer, wilderness guide, ecstatic dancer, and democratic facilitator, they have over 15 years of experience mentoring and empowering young people, with 5 of those years focussed on facilitating self-directed education for youth in outdoor and wilderness settings. As a descendant of Native (Coahuiltecan, Tlaxcaltecan, Mexica, Zapotecan) Revolutionaries and French and Scottish (Celtic) Rebels, they feel enlivened by resisting oppression created by a pathological colonial culture of exploitation. By challenging hierarchy, patriarchy, gender-conformity, and authoritarianism, they seek to empower others to return to their roots, become self-actualized, and build a earth-based community of free human beings. Having lived through childhood trauma and adversity, Daniela brings special awareness and sensitivity to the process of healing the spirit, body, and mind. Letting go of the fear of becoming their true whole self has moved them into the work of transforming their life in relationship to the elements, the land, and their community. By focusing on their relationships with all of Creation, cultivating gratitude, and practicing self-care and love, Daniela invites others to discover what transformational spiritual work can look like for humans and communities in Yanaguana.

Leigh Seeleman

Wilderness First Responder, BA Environmental Studies, Biology Concentration, University of Pennsylvania

I grew up on Lenni-Lenape land with my parents and grandparents who joined me in wandering up brooks, marveling at crickets, lightning bugs, chickadee, black eyed susan and dandelion.  My love for the wild and my grief for environmental destruction led me to the concrete jungle of Philadelphia and the tropical forests of Costa Rica and Nicaragua to study environmental science.

While living in Philadelphia I supported students to connect with nature through teaching in a variety of settings including on a sailboat with Philadelphia CitySail, with Philadelphia Outward Bound, Girl’s Leadership Camp, Environmental Education Camp, and in classrooms and afterschool programs.  I also began to study and play at creative movement, song and music-making, wilderness awareness, women’s blood mysteries, rites of passage guiding, urban farming, herbalism, dreaming practices, massage therapy and healing arts. Participating in Niyonu Spann’s Beyond Diversity 101 curriculum gave me tools for the ongoing life-work of uprooting systematic oppression and taking actions toward creating a culture of equity.

I enjoy tending plants, weaving story, poems, performance art, song, music and dance, praising the wild ones in nature and giving my heart to the story of collective liberation. I love creating spaces for young people to be free, curious and connected with the wild within and around. I have a professional healing arts practice in the midcoast area and Philadelphia offering massage, bodywork, energy healing, mentoring & dreamwork.

Jason Millis Chandler

Wilderness First Responder, Maine Master Naturalist
Registered Maine Guide, BA Philosophy, Vassar College

I grew up following my imagination in cliffy spruce woods, roaming tide pools in rocky sandy shores, kayaking in my father’s hand-built boats, marveling at the sky, role-playing in games and on stage, seeking acclaim where I could find it, and sometimes obeying my mother and picking sweet peas and strawberries in the garden above a peninsular harbor in Small Point, ME. I learned inextricably from a young age that all life on earth is both completely amazing and in danger due to our human actions. As soon as I could, I got out of school and walked from Maine to Georgia on a footpath popular even in the gruesome yet budding 21st century. I found myself soon back in classrooms at the dream-realm of Vassar college and studying abroad in Tibetan communities, reveling as an outsider in language and old culture, glimpsing some of the faces of active genocide. Sickened by grief on my return, and emboldened by the practices of living outdoors, I sought life outside of the U.S. for some perspective that might help me, help us. I lived as a student, outdoor educator and Peace Corps volunteer in Armenia for two years. I taught at Chewonki. I led teenagers on expeditions along the coast of present Wabanaki land, to the mountains on foot, and into northern Maine and Quebec in that magnificent indigenous technology the canoe.

Then, somehow lost and wild and longing, I met Caitlin Thurrell and she asked me for a walk in the woods. I gave her a bowl carved of Apple wood. After nine years of study and the practice of farming, she was returning to Ladakh in the Himalayas to live. She said she was going alone. I wanted more than anything to be with her, and through some grace she finally said yes. We split our lives now between a small village there through a gorge above the Indus named Dar, where we help grow barley and wheat and take sheep and goats to the mountains, and coastal Maine where we have recently made a small cedar and straw and clay cabin we call home. Receiving and remembering such incredible gifts in life, I want to pass the best I can along to the coming generations, knowing that all we can do is prepare and practice for the unknown.

Caitlin Thurrell

Wilderness First Responder, BA Human Ecology, College of the Atlantic

I grew up a little queer in queer family among the foothills and waters of central New Hampshire, Abenaki Territory, mostly inside of doors and books. Only at last I turned outward to bring attention to rest (as it does still) in the greater-than-human world of root, leaf, and flower, track and skin and hollow bone. When I was eighteen I left high school and worked hard, supported by my parents, to earn money to travel to India.

The experiences of those ten months changed and opened many things in my mind and heart, including a beginning of my own journey understanding interdependence, suffering, whiteness, colonization, and capitalism, and also a deep hope that humans can live a different way, bringing more beauty and less harm. In the spring of that year I spent one month in Ladakh, returning then to the US with powerful desire to go back someday with more ability to be useful. Following this wish I left Brown University for the island called Mount Desert in English, Wabanaki Territory, to study Human Ecology, weave apprenticeship in sustainable agriculture with field natural history, art making, and wisdom-tradition philosophy. Finding work then as farmer and educator on a peninsula called Chewonki in corruption of its original name, I was given the office of Sunrise and came to love the mudflats and salt marshes, spartina and mink tracks in heavy clay. After these nine years training, I began to feel prepared.

Jason and I met and fell in love that year, traveled down the Kennebec River from its headwaters to the sea, and then continued our journey to the Northern Himalaya. Through volunteer teaching at the Students’ Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh (SECMOL) we met Chondol and came home with her to her village of Tar in Sham, western Ladakh, where apricot trees bloom in springtime over two-thousand-year-old fields of barley. In this village of thirteen households and many elders the strength and labor of our young bodies felt helpful, and we could learn some of the labors and songs of making life in this high altitude desert.

So far in my life I have served as reader and writer, quiet woods-walker, farmer (apprentice, journey person, and practitioner), teacher of soils, wood, forests, mountains, and waters, cooking on fires, and song. I strive to be a mindful student of solitude and death.

I love dancing and making art with natural materials, song, human and draft powered grain, vegetable, and medicine cultivation, and silent mountain sitting practices of attention. Being with young people out of doors, playing or working or sitting quietly watching and learning brings great joy and hope.