An Invitation Back to Belonging
Reclaim Your Belonging. Remember Your Role. Tend the Forest with Reverence and Skill.
There’s a longing to return—to remember our place in the web of life, not as visitors, but as active participants.
✱ Someone who finds your clearest thinking, deepest peace, and strongest sense of self under an open sky or in the shelter of trees
✱ Ready to become part of a living network of guides, stewards, and culture keepers working to restore right relationship between people and place
Indigenous, Cross-Cultural & Place-Based
A Living Practice, Not Just Lessons
You’ll be out in the field, in your own ecosystem, practicing seasonal tending, ecological observation, and reciprocal harvesting—not just learning concepts on a screen.
We bring fungi into the center of forest stewardship—using them for soil repair, biodiversity support, and food sovereignty—so your tending is ecological and practical.
Myco‑Regeneration & Forest Healing
Year One brings you home to your own belonging. Year Two gives you the tools to ethically guide others—making you a living bridge between people and the land.
From Personal Transformation to Community Impact
True Community & Mentorship
At the end of Year One, you may choose to participate in a 4-day fast, alone, in the forest, held within a 9-day ceremonial encampment at The Forest Farmacy in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Optional: Forest Rite of Passage
This is not about becoming an expert.
Grow something that grows you back
Grapevine Road
Marshall, NC, USA
Cherokee Homeland
© 2025 Design and Developed by Ezycourse
It’s about belonging—becoming an active, reciprocal part of the wild systems we tend. - weaving ourselves back into the web of life.
✱ Somewhere deep inside, many of us know:
✱ We’re not meant to live cut off from the land.
✱ We’re not meant to consume nature from a distance.
✱ We’re not meant to simply endure modern life.
✱ To tend the forest in a way that nourishes it, and allows it to nourish us.
✱ To walk a path that is ancestral, embodied, and alive with belonging.
“Kat's gifted way of opening a portal to the divine and guiding my connection with the bigger picture of my life's unfolding is grand. I feel very blessed to be a participant in her orb!.”
Many programs talk about “rewilding.”
For us, it’s about belonging—becoming an active,
reciprocal part of the wild systems we tend.
This is a guided path of remembering, skill‑building, and forest relationship.
Like the threads of mycelium beneath the forest floor, the skills you learn here weave you into a living network—connecting you to land, lineage, and community.
Not theory. Not performance.
Wild Co‑Tending is not about going feral or retreating from society.
It’s about learning to listen again—to land, season, story, and spirit.
It’s about becoming a good ancestor, through the way you walk, grow, forage, harvest, and give back.
DEBUNKING “WILDERNESS”
Wild Co-Tending is also about remembering the truth erased by the “pristine wilderness” myth.
Truly, these forests were once abundant gardens, tended for countless generations by Indigenous peoples to provide food, medicine, and materials for life.
That knowledge still lives—in the land, in the stories, and in people who carry the skills to bring it forward.
A living practice rooted in Indigenous principles of reciprocity, Two‑Eyed Seeing, and embodied stewardship—where belonging is both the path and the outcome.
Led by Katherine Parker, eco-psychologist and ancestral practitioner, and Christopher Parker (Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians), a culture keeper and regenerative forest farmer, and this two-year journey blends:
✱ Ecological knowledge with ancestral wisdom
✱ Field-based practice with community accountability
✱ Spiritual reconnection with grounded, skillful action
Through a mix of online lessons, seasonal field assignments, community gatherings, and deep mentorship, you’ll not only learn what to do—you’ll learn how to be in the forest in a way that renews your own belonging and strengthens your role in the ecosystem of people tending it
“Kat creates a very intentional and safe space to explore a greater connection to nature and self, allowing everyone to be their authentic self wherever they are at. She weaves poetry, somatic experiencing, movement, ceremony, creativity and the power of being witnessed and held in a sacred space, beautifully.”
✱ A spiritual seeker longing for a practice that grounds your path in the living world—rooted in ritual, reciprocity, and belonging without appropriation
✱ A healing or healthcare professional—therapist, herbalist, bodyworker, chaplain—looking for nature-based ways to deepen your own restoration and bring land connection into the care you offer others
✱ A landowner or homesteader who wants to learn how to tend your place so it regenerates abundance for people, forests, and the more‑than‑human beings who depend on it
✱ Interested in weaving together ancestral wisdom and practical skills in service to your community and ecosystem
Rooted in Cherokee homeland this program carries forward indigenous forest‑tending traditions woven together with British earth-honoring heritage. It's a meeting of cultures, sciences, and stories - braided into a path that restores belonging while regenerating the forest.
Wild Co‑Tending is not a generic “rewilding” course or a weekend immersion.
It’s a two-year guided path designed for people who want to move beyond inspiration into embodied, long-term relationship with the land—and then share that work with others.
Here’s what sets it apart:
Small cohort size, live circles, and 1‑on‑1 mentorship mean you’re never walking this path alone. You’ll be learning alongside peers who share your values, with guides who walk it every day.
“Kat is a wonderful facilitator who draws from her rich background to co-create a healing experience that feels much more profound and transformative than the relatively short duration would suggest possible. From the moment I passed through the gate onto her land, I felt I had crossed a threshold into an enchanted world, a respite from the busy-ness of my modern life, sacred and mysterious.”
The first year is about rooting and re‑membering. It’s a deeply personal, place‑based journey—one that reconnects you with your body, your land, and your own inner knowing.
You’ll explore:
✱ Land‑Based Ritual & Earth‑Honoring Practice
✱ Ancestral Listening & Storykeeping
✱ Seasonal Awareness & Ecological Observation
✱ Grief, Gratitude & Ceremony in Place
✱ Wild Tending & Reciprocal Harvesting
✱ Myco‑Regeneration & Co‑Creation with Forest Ecosystems
✱ Mapping Your Local Landscape—Spiritually, Ecologically, Historically
This first year culminates in a Final Project —your own act of reciprocity, created in relationship with the land you call home.
It might be a medicine garden, a seasonal ceremony, a community offering, or a written reflection—whatever reflects your journey into belonging.
Graduates of Year One may apply for the second year—a facilitator training for those called to help others reclaim their belonging to the living world.
You’ll learn how to guide others—ethically, skillfully, and with deep spiritual integrity—into connection with the natural world.
You’ll explore:
✱ Relational Facilitation & Circle Leadership
✱ Designing Nature‑Based Experiences & Rites
✱ Trauma‑Aware, Earth‑Centered Mentorship
✱ Tending Group Process in Outdoor Spaces
✱ Indigenous‑Informed Ethics & Cultural Respect
✱ Creating Offerings Rooted in Place, Lineage, and Relationship
It’s about becoming someone who listens deeply—to the land, to others, and to the invitations of belonging.
You’ll complete a practicum, receive 1‑on‑1 mentorship, and graduate ready to guide others into their own return to the web of life.
✱ Weekly video lessons blending spiritual, ecological, and cultural teachings
✱ Monthly live Forest Listening Circles with Chris, Katherine, and guest mentors
✱ Seasonal field assignments and embodied practices
✱ Three four-day, in-person campouts in Western North Carolina wilderness
✱ Community connection through our private learning portal
✱ Final Project guidance and feedback
✱ Optional Rite of Passage (additional cost)
✱ Live facilitation training and practice sessions
✱ Mentorship from experienced guides
✱ Practicum project with real-time feedback
✱ Ethics and safety frameworks for guiding spiritual land connection
✱ Certificate of Completion for Forest Co‑Tending Facilitation
✱ A lived, spiritual relationship with the land where you live
✱ Real skills in seasonal tending, wildcrafting, and place‑based ritual
✱ A deeper sense of ecological belonging and orientation
✱ A Final Project that anchors your learning in service and reciprocity
✱ Confidence to guide others into deep nature connection
✱ Tools to design and hold powerful forest‑based experiences
✱ Community with other guides walking the path of belonging
✱ Certification as a Wild Co‑Tending Guide
“Kat is a very genuine and compassionate person. Spending an afternoon forest bathing was absolutely transformative in feeling grounded, in touch with nature and my body. I highly recommend it to anyone working though an internal or external issue or just wanting to experience going deep in nature and new ways of being/thinking”
We’re not meant to walk alone.
We’re not meant to forget the forest.
We’re not meant to consume, extract, and move on.
We are meant to remember, return, and reweave.
Wild Co-Tending is a path not just back to the Earth—but back to yourself. And back to a way of life that can sustain all of us—body, soul, and soil.
Your ancestors knew this path.
The land remembers you, even when you forget yourself.
The future needs people who remember how to belong.
Join the waitlist to be the first to know when applications open.
Your belonging is not a question. It’s a path.