Wildtender offers immersive, educational wilderness programs that cultivate kinship with the natural world, embody earth-based wisdom traditions, nurture authenticity & wholeness of self, engender meaningful community, and foster ecological stewardship.

Upcoming Programs

WILD PILGRIMAGE
Gestalt Backpacking Pilgrimage to the Esalen Institute

Big Sur, CA

April 20–26, 2026

In the mountains east of Esalen, an enchanting, ecologically diverse, and psycho-spiritually fertile wilderness awaits. Over four nights and five days, we will engage in a contemporary form of pilgrimage, and immerse in practices and perspectives from Esalen's Gestalt lineage, while backpacking as reverent seekers through these ancestral lands of the Esselen Tribe, now known as the Big Sur backcountry. Our journey will conclude at the coastal grounds of Esalen Institute with a weekend of reflection and integration…

WILD DHARMA
Zen Backpacking Pilgrimage to the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center

Big Sur • Carmel Valley, CA

May 9–16, 2026

Following in the philosophical footsteps of the ancient, hermetic Zen sages, we will turn to the mountains in pursuit of a wild Dharma (timeless Buddhist wisdom) that is embodied and expressed by boulders, grasses, trees, and all aspects of the wild landscape. Our four-night backpacking journey through the mountains will deliver us to Tassajara to participate in a three-night sangha retreat including formal Zen instruction, light service work (three hours per day), hot spring baths, delicious vegetarian cuisine, integration, and rest…

BOWING TO THE WILD
Embodied Animism & Zen in the Tassajara Wilderness

Tassajara Zen Mountain Center • Carmel Valley, CA

May 19–24, 2026

In this retreat, we will embrace gestures of reciprocity and kinship with the wild. We will form a Sangha of mutual support with the land, our wild relatives, and one another, cultivating relationships for our collective ecological and personal well-being. Through contemplative hiking on rugged and diverse wilderness trails, we will attune ourselves to the living presence of our more-than-human kin—plants, animals, boulders, waters, winds. We will engage in Buddhist and non-Buddhist practices to cultivate awareness of the world as it actually is: alive, aware, and interconnected. And we will encounter ourselves as members of a vast, sacred family of beings, communing in the temple of the wild that has awaited our return.

REUNION WITH THE WILD EARTH
Hiking and Nature Connection in Big Sur

Esalen Institute • Big Sur, CA

June 8–12, 2026

How would it feel to move into a meaningful relationship with the living world? Beyond a mere passive appreciation of nature? In the long arc of human history, people across all cultures and traditions have lived in communion with the lands they called home. Though this intrinsic connection has been largely severed in our modern age, the perspectives and practices common to our respective Earth-reverent ancestors are not lost. They lie dormant in the land, among the wild beings, and in our own animal bodies, waiting patiently to be remembered and renewed.

EARTH-BODY
An Eco-Somatic Backpacking Journey and Retreat

Big Sur, CA

October 13–18, 2026

Rooted in the Gestalt traditions of Esalen and the emergent field of eco-somatics, our four-day backpacking journey will guide us through the wilds of Big Sur—Esselen tribal territory—in an immersive exploration of belonging, awareness, and interconnection, followed by a weekend of retreat and integration at Esalen Institute. While trekking through awe-inspiring wilderness, we will engage in somatic practices that reawaken our felt kinship with the natural world. Embracing slowness and spaciousness, we will attune to gravity, breath, and the sensuous aliveness of place. Silent hiking, intuitive movement, meditation, and earth-based ritual will dissolve the false boundary between self and landscape. Exploring embodiment as an intimate community, we will move beyond notions of individual self-care to a lived experience of healing as relational and ecological. Through this retreat, we step into a different rhythm—one guided by the living world around and within us. As we listen with our whole bodies, we begin to sense the reciprocity woven into all things. What emerges is not just connection but remembering—a return to a relationship as ancient as our true body: the Earth.