Join Wildtender for our very first alumni gathering in the SF Bay Area!
After nearly a decade of partnership with Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, Wildtender is heartened to announce the continued evolution of our relationship with our dear friends at San Francisco Zen Center. We are honored to extend our circle of practice further north to their Green Dragon Temple in Marin County, gathering for the first time with alumni at Green Gulch Farm Zen Center.
Nestled among Coastal Redwoods, chaparral headlands, and the Pacific Ocean, Green Gulch Farm Zen Center is a place where land and dharma have been tended together for more than 40 years. The mission of Green Gulch Farm is to awaken the bodhisattva spirit—the spirit of kindness and realistic helpfulness—as a living enactment of Buddha's Way. At the heart of Green Gulch is a living practice of cultivation, care, and stewardship.
This alumni gathering is an invitation for Wildtender alumni to reconnect with friends in practice, participation, and presence. This intimate event embodies our vision of weaving meaningful community beyond our programs, exploring and facilitating more direct service to landscapes, and engaging local allies in land stewardship.
Our day together will include:
Zen practice & Dharma talk with residing Tanto So-on Eli Brown-Stevenson
Social tea time with old and new like-hearted friends
Service work in the historical Green Gulch Farm & Garden
Nourishing lunch prepared by the Green Gulch kitchen with farm-grown food
Embodied hike around the local wildlands led by Wildtender Guides
Wildtender visioning talk led by co-founders Fletcher Tucker & Noël Vietor
Featured teachers:
So-on Eli Brown-Stevenson
So On Eli Brown-Stevenson serves as the Acting Tanto of Green Gulch Farm and the Belonging and Inclusion Liaison at San Francisco Zen Center, where he also serves on the Board as Governance Committee Chair. His work supports the rhythms of practice and community life, helping to cultivate an environment where sincere practice can take root and flourish.
Eli’s teaching emphasizes direct, embodied engagement with the present moment, encouraging a deep study of the conditioned self and a return to what is most immediate and true. He is especially interested in how Zen practice supports a felt sense of connection and ease within the complexity of modern life.
Eli received priest ordination from Rinso Ed Sattizahn in 2019 and has trained at all three of SFZC’s temples. He resides between Green Gulch and City Center with his daughter, Maya, and has shared mindfulness practice with 1st and 2nd graders for over half a decade. He is also one of the guiding facilitators for the Young Urban Zen program.
Fletcher Tucker
Wildtender Co-Founder Fletcher was raised by the foggy redwood ravines and fragrant chaparral bluffs of the Esselen tribal territory now known as Big Sur, California. Fletcher is a lifelong student of natural history, an ancestral skills practitioner, devotee of trail-craft and minimalist backpacking, an experienced teacher of adults and children, and a multidisciplinary artist.
Fletcher’s inner work includes ongoing exploration in Zen and Taoist practices/philosophy; over a decade of study in the Gestalt lineage of Esalen Institute co-founder Dick Price; and engagement with the Earth-reverent, spiritual practices of his own Celtic and Nordic ancestors.
Fletcher is a Wilderness First Responder.