Nature and Wilderness

Ann and Guiding

 

Since Ann took her three-year-old sister, Margaret, on the back of her bike one mile out of town to Seven Springs to look for crawdads and minnows, she has cherished sharing the wonders of the natural world with others. She was 12 years old.

At age 16 she was a counselor at a summer YMCA camp in Minnesota and took 8-year-olds on overnight canoe trips. And on it went—schoolteacher, U.S. Forest Service naturalist, leader of Sense of Wonder workshops for parents and children, kayaking guide, wilderness vision quest guide, land trust tour guide.

For an update on what Ann is doing now, go to her new website:  https://www.annlinnea.com/

Brief history of Ann’s wilderness guiding, including our Cascadia Wilderness Quests

For many years Ann and PeerSpirit led kayaking adventures in a variety of settings: on Lake Superior (MN), Puget Sound (WA), Desolation Sound (BC), Glacier Bay National Park (AK) and Magdalena Bay (MX).

For 8 years, with Anne Stine, she co-led the Elder Quest for women 50 and older in the Inyo Mountains in California. Then in 2010 she joined with Christina Baldwin and Deb Greene-Jacobi to lead a wilderness vision fast at a private retreat center near Carlton, WA. In 2022, the three guides came to the tender-hearted conclusion to stop offering the wilderness fast known as Cascadia Quest. Their announcement of this closure came with the following list of gratitudes.

 

• We give profound thanks to the land, the sacred mountain, the far peaks, the forest, the meadow.
• We give thanks to all creatures from the bees, to birds, to bear, cougar, and wolf who made space for us and accompanied us over all these years.
• We give thanks to the Methow people, traditional holders of this territory. And we thank Lindsay Swope who tended us the first eight years, and Benjamin Pixie and Maeyoka Brightheart who are the current stewards of this valley.
• We give thanks for each courageous person who traveled to this place from across the US and Canada, Germany, Great Britain, Slovenia, Australia, seeking a vision of wholeness for themselves and our world and with their presence and prayers, honored this land.

Tribute to our dear friend and wilderness co-guide, Deborah Greene-Jacobi

For eleven years it was our privilege to co-guide Cascadia Quest with Deb. She was skilled in all aspects of wilderness guiding: ceremony, cooking, hiking, nature skills, and deep heart. On November 18, 2022 Deb succumbed to her valiant battle with cancer. Our lives and the lives of those who quested with the three of us are the richer for our time with Deb. We miss her. We thank her for her generous heart.