Wilderness Skills

We have been hard at work recreating our offerings for Teens at Through the Trees. After holding a brainstorming session with several teens who have been active in our TTT community, we have come up with some awesome new programs for the 13-16 age group:

• Oak Outing Club - weekly explorations including ocean dips and beach campfires, ropes courses, hiking, community service and more!
• Wilderness Trips - multi-day trips to different parts of Maine for white water rafting, wilderness survival sk…

We have been having a blast in our Youth Nature Immersion Programs (both Homeschool and After School), playing in the snow and the  mud, skating and sliding on the pond and exploring the magical Frost Gully Brook. We've been making bird feeders; sailing across the pond using a tarp for a sail and sled for a vessel; making pine needle tea; practicing fire building; cooking over the campfire (have you ever roasted an orange?!), working on whittling and carving skills; and ending our days with a ci…

There are likely many wild edible and medicinal plants, that are considered weeds, growing right in your backyard! Our Guide, Kendall, shares a few plants growing wild in her backyard in Maine including yarrow, lamb's quarters, dandelion and red clover. If you are interested in learning more about how to use wild edible plants in the kitchen and for medicinal purposes, look for classes from Through the Trees HERE and try our Wildly Mindful Community online for weekly foraging classes, a monthly …

If you enjoy foraging wild plants to use as food or medicine, you will love knowing how to make an oxymel. An oxymel is a sweet and tangy extraction made with apple cider vinegar and honey. Honey is know for having anti-bacterial, anti-fungal and anti-viral properties and the apple cider vinegar is good for the gut and does a wonderful job of extracting nutrients from the plant material. This extraction also stores well and keeps for indefinitely. An oxymel can be taken straight by the spoonful …

Whenever my kids and I take a walk in the woods, especially in the winter, we almost always want to collect some evergreen needles to bring home for tea. Eastern White Pine is our favorite and makes a fragrant, woodsy tea that is full of vitamin C, so it's wonderful to have during illness or to support overall health anytime.

The white pine (pinus strobus) is easy to recognize with it's long (approximately 3 to 5 inch) needles in clusters, or fascicles, of five. Young trees have smooth, greenis…

Learning how to find food in the wild is a hobby for some, but it can mean the difference between life and death if you are ever caught in a survival situation. While foraging in your backyard or woods can be enjoyable, resourceful and a beautiful way to connect with the earth, knowing some basic information on how to eat should you ever need to find sustenance is an important skill to have. There are many plants that are edible, but one food source that is often overlooked is the bark of trees.…