High-quality mentorship, social, active+unplugged time in the outdoors
The verdict is in:
Teens are having trouble. The recent book The Anxious Generation describes it in detail and even the Surgeon General is sounding an alarm. A couple of reasons stand out — teens are spending dramatically more time on screens that didn’t even exist a generation ago, and dramatically less time together in person. Teen Forest Adventures provides solutions to the modern-day teen emergency: consistent time outside in the natural world with peers. Away from screens, and guided by skilled mentors. Through mentorship and activities that have proven effective for generations around the world, Teen Forest Adventures guides kids on a journey that not only educates and entertains them, but provides a deep connection to Nature, themselves, and each other.
Some of the benefits of Teen Forest Adventures include:
Weekly time outside in Nature
Away from the distraction and addiction of screens
Guided by skilled and experienced mentors
Utilizing the 8 Shields model of Deep Nature Connection to follow natural cycles of energy, as well as teens’ natural gifts and interests, mentors encourage and support kids to grow and thrive in a way that feels fun and easeful.
Physical challenge + fun
Intellectual stimulation
Authentic relating that supports internal and inter-relational reflection + depth, empathy, and communication.
Director and Mentors
Tiffanie Pope, Director
Tiffanie Pope is a homeschooling mom, passionate cook, gardener, artist, and craftsperson who lives outside of Asheville with her husband, daughter, and landmates, both human and other. After building a diverse background in performing arts and cooking, she was led to nature connection, cultural mentoring, and rites of passage work in 2012.
She quickly dove in. She trained and served on staff with Jon Young and the 8 Shields Institute, as well as the Helpers Mentoring Society, co-facilitating live and online events, and performing administrative duties for several years.
She also served on the Board of Directors of the Earthskills Rendezvous organization 2018 through 2024.
Tiffanie believes a deep personal relationship with the natural world is profoundly and fundamentally important - accessing awe and wonder, meaning, inner and outer fulfillment, creativity, belonging, and love while simultaneously healing the past and finding a way to the future. Through Teen Forest Adventures, she is thrilled to be able to connect quality mentors to teens in the Asheville area.
Luke Cannon, Mentor
More than a botanist, Luke Cannon is a long-time pursuer and teacher of our astounding natural world. Over the last two decades, Luke has instructed numerous wilderness awareness programs and led hundreds of classes, walks, and workshops. An avid naturalist, he blends biological studies with ecology, ethnobotany, animism, permaculture, survival skills, and experiential education.
He has taught for the North Carolina Arboretum, the Blue Ridge Audubon Society, Organic Growers School, the Finger Lakes Native Plant Society, the Asheville Mushroom Club, Wild Abundance, and the Appalachian School of Holistic Herbalism to name a few.
In 2011, he founded Astounding Earth - dedicated to helping people deepen their relationships with the our living planet. Luke currently lives in the mountains of North Carolina studying and teaching relational Appalachian Ecology and animism. He offers regular public walks and workshops to share his knowledge and love of local plants, birds, mammals, mushrooms and ecology. Find out more at: www.AstoundingEarth.com
Kerensa Bartlett, Mentor
Kerensa got her first taste of nature connection mentoring when she was a young homeschool student at Vermont Wilderness School. Her passion for sneaking, crafting, critters, stories, and firemaking later bloomed into teaching roles at expeditionary and nature-based schools across southern New Hampshire and Vermont. Kerensa found her way south by way of Warren Wilson College, where she studied printmaking, worked on the forestry crew, and took advantage of the school’s paddling club and vast hiking trails. After graduation in 2019, she returned to the Northeast to teach at Vermont Wilderness School during the height of the pandemic.
In spring of 2022, she was called to return to the mountains of Western North Carolina and has been happily mentoring kids at Forest Floor, hiking, painting, and dancing ever since. She is excited for another season with Teen Forest Adventures.
Chelsea Spitzer, Mentor
Chelsea is an artist, a musician and a lifelong student of the natural world. Her first and most impactful teachers were the birds, trees and creeks in the ecosystem where she grew up: an island of protected forest within the urban sprawl of Baltimore city. Her mother instilled in her a deep respect for nature and helped nurture her budding passion for learning about plants and animals by sending her to various camps at the local nature center. In college, Chelsea began to find her identity as a facilitator and teacher, as president of the hiking and camping clubs and as a supplemental instructor. After graduating with a psychology degree, she realized she needed to find work that expressed her love of the natural world and began her path as an outdoor educator. This began first with an after school program she created, and continued in a forest program at the Waldorf school of Baltimore based in the pedagogical lineage of Jon Young. She went on to work year round programs for the DC-based school Ancestral Knowledge where she was introduced to earthskills gatherings and community. As a counselor for their summer camps, she was also introduced to working with teens through training them to be counselors. She deepened her mentoring skills in 2019/2020 supporting Michael Ismerio with the teen programs at the Falling Leaves and Florida Earthskills gatherings, and discovered how meaningful and important it felt to work with this age group. After these experiences, Chelsea was thrilled when she was invited to start a teen program in Maryland in collaboration with the Remembrance Park project. This ran successfully for several seasons, until she decided to move to WNC to be around more people living closely with the earth through earthskills. While in WNC, she has continued to create programming for youth of all ages, including teens, through her work with earthskills gatherings, such as the Firefly Gathering, where she coordinates youth and teen programs. She is very excited to continue on this path of mentorship with Teen Forest Adventures in the coming year.
Nico Piedrahita, Mentor
Since he was a kid, Nico's always wanted to live in the woods. Beginning with the immersive living experience at Wild Roots Community, for the last 12 years, he's been fulfilling that dream, living off-grid in the mountains around Asheville, and studying the skills and knowledge it takes to meet his own needs from the land. That “simple" act, of meeting a need for himself, ties him closer to the land and all the beings around him. His main areas of focus have been hide tanning and woodworking, and he now runs a business tanning hides, carving spoons and bowls, and teaching these skills to the local community.
Nico’s playfulness, relaxed attitude and passion make him a favorite mentor for humans of all ages. He attended Wild Leaders in 2017 to deepen his mentoring skills. He has instructed through Asheville area nature connection programs and Earthskills gatherings for nine years. Nico also leads our Teen Improv Club.
Jen Friedman, Mentor
Jen strives to support young people in the tremendous task of growing up in this world by working collaboratively in building meaningful connections to nature, self, and community. She enjoys hikes that are detoured by interesting finds, living communally, making improvisational music, telling stories about goblins and toads, and gardening. She loves to learn and share skills on crafting with natural materials, plant ways, communication, emotional inquiry, and sensory awareness. Jen has served as an educator and mentor in various contexts for nearly ten years. For the past few years, Jen has been involved with ReTribe in Vermont as a mentor at their youth forest school as well as their teen rite-of-passage programs. She's excited for the opportunity to engage and learn with the folks at Teen Forest Adventures and with all the other beings we'll meet along the way.
Scotty Karas, Mentor
Scotty’s first experience with plants was growing up with his mother in her suburban Maryland garden. He received his degree in Industrial Engineering from Penn State University in 2007. When Scotty was introduced to Permaculture on a WWOOF farm in 2008, he realized he was able to apply his engineering brain to living systems. Scotty received his PDC in 2009 and immediately started getting hands-on experience.
Scotty moved to Asheville in 2010 and has been learning alongside the mountains and the ecologies here ever since. Scotty deepened his knowledge of plants in herbalism school with the Chestnut School of Herbal medicine in 2011. In 2016, Scotty and four other friends founded Sun Song Community in Barnardsville, NC. The purpose of this community is to tend the Earth together, raise children in community, and contribute to life through healing and holistic community events and workshops.
Scotty is passionate about nature connection and mentoring children and adults to feel more connected to the natural world. He has spent 8 years working for Forest Floor Wilderness programs as a nature connection mentor. Scotty is also passionate about young men’s rites of passage work and has been working with Mountain Wisdom and Boy’s Sacred Fire since 2016.
Scotty and his wife Maayan run Soul Gardens which aims to connect people to the cycles and rhythms of the Earth, facilitate folks gaining a deeper understanding of themselves, and to celebrate beauty. He is a proud father, community member, mentor, and earth tender.
“For me the door to the woods is the door to the temple.” — Mary Oliver, Upstream
☽☼☔︎☾♢☆♡
Register for
Spring+summer 2025
Spots still available!