Learn from experience with Wilderness Awareness School’s courses – from one evening to a whole year spent outdoors! We offer dynamic courses in wilderness survival, outdoor instruction, wild edible plants, bird sounds interpretation, wildlife tracking and more.

Wilderness Awareness School is a national not-for-profit environmental education organization established in 1983 and based in Duvall, Washington. We are dedicated to caring for the earth and our children by fostering understanding and appreciation of nature, community and self.

Our dynamic courses combine ancient and modern ecological wisdom, and empower people of all ages to become stewards, mentors and leaders.

Over the past two decades, Wilderness Awareness School has grown from a small group of visionary individuals to a leading national organization impacting the course of nature education, and inspiring many schools and individuals across the country and the world to share our teachings and curriculum.

Our mentoring approach honors individuality, encourages self-sufficiency in learning, and awakens a kinship with nature as it trains youth and adults to blend the awareness of a native tracker with the knowledge of a wildlife biologist.

Our courses draw on traditions from indigenous cultures world-wide, emphasizing nature as teacher, routines to enhance awareness, storytelling, self-motivated learning, and tracking as an interpretive tool.

Wilderness Awareness School’s ongoing intensive mentoring courses for youth and adults as well as our home-study naturalist training courses provide opportunities for ongoing study of the natural world that allow nature education to be a part of daily life, rather than an isolated event.

Our vision is to reach out with our teachings until there’s a related nature awareness school in every region, a mentor in every neighborhood, a naturalist in every family and compassion for each other and the earth in every heart.