Our 2025 Instructors
Check back for updates as we add
confirmed instructors
Tim Swanson
Fishing Hand Lines (carving, cordage, bone hook)
Kid's Woods Walk
Trade Blanket
Archery Competition
Tim Swanson is the founder of Owl Eyes Wilderness Survival , a “traveling” nature connection and wilderness survival school for people of all ages. He holds a double Bachelor’s Degree in Adventure Education Leadership and Adventure Therapy (Unity College). He is a Level 1 Certified Animal Tracker (CyberTracker) and a Wilderness First Responder (SOLO). He is passionate about educating our children/teens/adults about nutrition, natural awareness, equality, and hopes to spread his love of nature through the practice of wilderness survival.
Emma Markowitz
Intro to Survival for Teens
Carving Wooden Animals
TBA
Emma hails from the wild prairies of Chicago. Since migrating East she has lived many lives including being a fermenter, wilderness social skills teacher and the Assistant Director of TimberNook Middlesex County. Emma believes in empowering children and facilitating self-discovery through child led nature play. As an educator in progressive education for over 15 years, Emma is an advocate for taking risks, getting dirty and allowing kids to do what they do best, play! When she isn’t teaching in the woods, Emma likes to fish, hike, and hang out barefoot and carving things in the woods with her kids.
Arthur Haines
Classes TBA
Arthur Haines is a Maine hunting and recreation guide, forager, ancestral skills mentor, author, public speaker, and botanical researcher. He grew up in the western mountains of Maine, a rural area that was home to swift streams known for their trout fishing. He spent most of his childhood in the Sandy River Valley hiking, tracking, and foraging. Arthur now runs the Delta Institute of Natural History in Canton, Maine, where he teaches human ecology, focusing on the values of foraging, wildcrafting medicine, and primitive living skills. He continues to spend a great deal of his free time practicing his skills as a modern hunter-gatherer. In 2017, he authored “A New Path”, a comprehensive work on nature connection and rewilding, detailing how to incorporate ancestral practices into modern living. As a research botanist for the Native Plant Trust, he completed an inclusive flora of the New England region titled “Flora Novae Angliae” and has authored over twenty publications in peer-reviewed journals and books, including naming species of plants new to science.
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Bob Berg
Classes TBA
Bob Berg of Thunderbird Atlatl (the world's foremost atlatl designer and producer!) has been interested in all things primitive for the greater part of his adult life. He is skilled in many of the primitive arts and enjoys passing his knowledge on. Bob enjoys a few hobbies both in and outside the atlatl business, among them spear fishing, atlatl hunting, oil painting, and inventing mechanical devices designed to save the world.
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Grace Krupkowski
Medicinal Teas & Herbal Extracts
Herb Walk
Trilogy Herbalism is founded by Grace Krupkowski, herbalist and educator. Trilogy Herbalism is located in Keene, New Hampshire and serves all of Northern New England and beyond. Trilogy Herbalism seeks to weave the power of personal agency, health justice, and medicinal plants together into cohesion. These three links bring forth an awareness not only of how you can better take care of yourself, but also of the natural world, its forces, and the medicine it provides. Through herbalism, we establish resilience and an awareness of interconnectedness between all aspects of the self. Grace's innate and learned knowledge fosters a connection across many herbal traditions. In 2015 she began an exploration into the world of herbalism and plant connection which has since blossomed into a lifelong passion. Since 2020, Grace has served as an educator teaching courses in person and online while managing an herbal product line. Grace also offers one on one herbal wellness consultations that encompass the whole individual, their ailments, and goals for healing and balancing the body.
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Cheeny Plante
Knots
I am from Sanford Maine. I was a SERE (survival, evasion. resistance, escape) Specialist in the Air Force for eight years. I trained thousands of aircrew members how to survive in every environment in the world. I currently work in the trades (painting, general labor) and I am a registered Maine guide. When I'm not working, I'm backpacking, fishing and canoing.
Jackie Ryan
Morning Yoga
Botanical Illustration
Jackie “Rainbow” Ryan is an artist, wilderness instructor and yoga teacher who is dedicated to using creativity to help cultivate relationships between people, their bodies, and the magical earth they come from. She has been teaching Hatha Yoga for 10 years and also loves facilitating ecstatic dance and contact improvisation. Jackie started teaching wilderness skills 7 years ago and opened Rainbow’s Nature School in 2021. Jackie has a BA in Studio Art from the University of Vermont. Her paintings are an abstract world of color and serve to transform energy and emotion. Jackie’s teaching style embodies a combination of calm presence, silliness, improvisation, and curiosity.
You can find Jackie’s artwork at visionfaerie.com and her nature school at rainbowsnatureschool.com.
Mike Dube
Tracking
Native Story Telling
Come learn the Ancient Art of Tracking with Mike Dube'. Mike teaches Traditional Native Skills through his School, "Taconic Challenges". This will be his 6th year at Moose Ridge Gathering, teaching Tracking Classes and telling traditional Native stories around the fire.
You'll learn side-tracking, aging with Wisdom Keepers, 10 step drill, Stalking Circle, patterns, Cutting Sign, and track casting. Your connection to Mother Earth will expand.
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Doug Householder
Classes TBA
"Arkansas Doug" Householder has trained in and taught survival from the tropical jungles of South America and Hawaii to the Sonoran Desert, but calls the Ozark Mountains home. He is a highly skilled outdoorsman who teaches at top survival schools. You may recognize him as founder of Earth Trekker Bushcraft.
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