Finding Baseline: How One Mother’s Journey with the Wilderness Awareness School Led to a Lifetime of Deep Nature Connection and Community Leadership
For many participants, the realization arrives quietly, often wrapped in the rustle of a Western Red Cedar or the sudden, sharp shift in the behavior of local wildlife. "Better late than never!" That is how one dedicated alumnus describes the day she finally registered for The Immersion program at the Wilderness Awareness School. Occasionally, graduates reflect on choices they might have made differently had they completed such a life-changing curriculum decades earlier. Yet, they often heed the timeless advice found in Galway Kinnell’s poem, Wait: "Distrust everything if you have to. / But trust the hours. Haven’t they / carried you everywhere, up to now?" In truth, entering The Immersion program happens at precisely the right juncture—at a specific point in an individual’s life when they are fully prepared to receive its profound teachings.
The relationship between this family and the school stretches back to the summer camps of 2010. That initial summer season served as a gateway to many more engagements with the organization over the years. Most notably, it included a pivotal year when the alumnus’s son participated in the Friday Community School program while he was in the sixth grade. At the time, he felt woefully underwhelmed and unchallenged by his standard middle school environment. However, those Fridays spent out on the land filled him with a joy fierce enough to protect and sustain him through the remainder of the regular school year. It proved to be a transformative, almost life-saving experience for the young student—and it sparked a desire in the parent to seek out that exact same connection for herself, ultimately leading her to enroll in The Immersion at the Wilderness Awareness School.
One of the enduring philosophies absorbed during the program centers on a vital awareness mantra: "Just because I didn’t know about something until now, doesn’t mean it wasn’t there all along." That perspective can apply to a multitude of scenarios in both the natural world and human society. It might refer to a barred owl perched quietly on a limb just overhead, a cougar silently stalking along the edge of a pond, a teenager subtly and desperately calling out for adult attention, or even a harmful pattern of privilege and unconscious bias that someone gently—or firmly—asks an individual to recognize and release. Developing this heightened state of perception is a core pillar of the time spent in The Immersion. While practitioners readily admit they remain imperfect in their application of these skills, the practice continually nudges them forward, fostering a deeper sense of curiosity, humility, and connection to their surroundings.
After successfully graduating from The Immersion in 2018, this alumnus did not step away from the community. Instead, she deepened her involvement by continuing into the Youth Nature Instructor Training program, becoming an active and contributing member of the school’s Equity Council, and regularly volunteering for both summer programs and school-year offerings. More recently, her dedication to the institution expanded further as she joined the Adult Nature Instructor Training program, stepping into a supportive role for the incoming cohorts of Immersion students.
This deep, ongoing dedication naturally raises a question: What is it about this specific program and community that continues to draw participants back year after year? The answer, veterans note, invariably comes down to two foundational concepts: awareness and camouflage.
Navigating daily life in an urban environment like Seattle involves balancing a diverse array of circles and responsibilities. This particular alumnus wears many hats within her local community: she serves on the board of a local outdoor preschool, remains active as a philanthropist, participates in parent-teacher associations at her children’s schools, and sits on the equity committees of three distinct organizations. Furthermore, she maintains a deep personal commitment to anti-racism work through ongoing self-reflection, participation in white caucus groups, and engagement in mixed-race communities of practice and action. Above all else, she identifies as a mother to three emerging adults—young people who are ultimately best served when she actively notices, listens deeply, and protects them for life’s challenges rather than trying to shield them from those inevitable experiences.
Before embarking on The Immersion, her understanding of camouflage was entirely conventional, bringing to mind clothing printed in splotches of green, brown, and tan, paired with similarly colored face paint caked onto the skin for tactical concealment. However, her perspective underwent a radical shift through her training. Today, she wryly notes that she considers herself to be in full camouflage when she is wearing a classic black dress and a string of pearls. Her instructors taught her that true camouflage is about blending seamlessly into the baseline of any given environment. Whether she is nestled quietly in a clump of sword ferns beneath a Western Red Cedar, sitting unobtrusively by a campfire surrounded by a circle of teenagers, or handling a salad fork with understated grace at a formal dinner inside a high-end hotel, the underlying principle remains the same. By mastering this art of blending in, an individual can accomplish remarkable, impactful work without causing unnecessary ripples or concentric rings of disturbance in their social or natural ecosystems.
Looking back across a decade of active participation, learning, mentoring, and community-building, the gratitude for the spaces found at the Wilderness Awareness School remains profound. It is a shared journey that began with a mother and her son, evolved through years of outdoor education and equity work, and continues to shape professional and personal endeavors alike, with many more years of growth and connection anticipated on the horizon.
