News & Updates

Coyote Mentoring: One School’s Lessons in Earth Observation

A feature story on Earthzine.org by Julia Cechvala, published on August 3rd, 2009

"In a contemporary society in which multimedia skills and social networking savvy are highly valued, the ancient skills of animal tracking and making fire from sticks may seem obsolete. The staff of the Wilderness Awareness School near Duvall, Washington, however, makes a case for the continued relevancy of these ancient skills..." Read the full article

Wilderness survival for the rest of us
Courses teach life-saving skills; outdoorsmen (and women) pushed to limit

A feature story on MSNBC.com by Mark R. Bryant, published on July 29, 2009

"One guy had reached his limit.

We’d been hiking and foraging for three days as part of a weeklong wilderness survival course. We had dug up bitterroot and caught a rattlesnake, making a pot of stew the night before which we passed around like an oversized beer mug..." Read the full article

The New Outdoor Education -
ENN feature with our staff and student!

A feature story on the Environmental News Network website on the new face of outdoor education featured comments from Wilderness Awareness School Program Director, John Chilkotowsky, and a student in our Community School, Emily Brodie! Read the article

On-line Video Available of our Panel Discussion: 'Raising Children with Connections to Nature'

Richard Louv's landmark 2005 book, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder, continues to make waves among parents and educators who want to help reconnect the young people in their lives with the natural world.

We organized a very successful evening panel discussion on the topic on January 8, 2007 at Seattle REI with representatives from 7 leading local organizations. Now you can see an on-line video with highlights from the 2-hour program, or read more about what the standing-room-only crowd learned that night and access contact information for the organizations and presenters involved (details).

Do you or your kids have 'Nature Deficit Disorder'?

Author Richard Louv, in his book Last Child in the Woods coined the term "nature-deficit disorder” to describe the increasingly indoor and technologically-focused lifestyles of today's kids which is resulting in an unhealthy disconnection with the natural world for many children (and adults).

Our 2-minute on-line 'Tourist Test' with photos is a fun and easy way to help you determine if you have this common condition in our society (don't worry, we have a cure available)...

Wilderness Awareness School in the news!

In case you didn't catch the front page of the local section of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer on January, 6, 2007, there was a feature article about Wilderness Awareness School and photos of Youth School!

This article helped spread the word about an important roundtable discussion we organized at Seattle REI. This discussion, Raising Children With Connections to Nature: Facing Nature Deficit Disorder, was attended by over 100 people and featured panelists from several leading local organizations. You can now see a 30-minute on-line video of highlights from that evening

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