“What we need is here.” – Wendell Berry
As autumn gives way to winter and the living world draws inward, we are delighted to invite you into Wildtender’s first online seasonal cohort—a way to continue the journey beyond the trail and tend the relationships, practices, and questions awakened through our time together in the wild.
Over six gatherings, we’ll return to the intimacy of an intentional circle and explore what this seasonal threshold has to teach us. As leaves fall, seeds settle into the earth, and perennial plants draw their energy down toward their roots, the passage from autumn into winter offers an invitation into our own processes of release, introspection, harvest, and renewal. Through Gestalt practice, seasonal ritual, and invitations into renewed intimacy with the more-than-human world wherever we each call home, we’ll create space for the inner and outer landscapes of our lives to meet. Together, we’ll revisit and deepen practices from Wildtender programs while exploring how the relationships and ways of being cultivated in the wilderness might continue to take root in everyday life.
At the heart of this cohort is an opportunity to remain in meaningful relationship—with fellow Wildtender alumni, with the living world, and with the particular places we each inhabit. As the weeks unfold, we’ll explore what it might mean not only to carry our experiences in the wild home with us, but to become more attentive participants in the lands and communities to which we belong: to listen, learn, tend, and discover our own local forms of reciprocity, belonging, and service.
Our gatherings will be co-facilitated by longtime Wildtender guide Ariel Johnson and Wildtender co-founder Fletcher Tucker. Ariel brings a deep background in Gestalt Awareness Practice, embodiment, somatic practice, and mindfulness; Fletcher brings more than fifteen years of Gestalt study alongside contemplative practices, natural history, and an ongoing exploration of human kinship with the more-than-human world. Together, they will hold a space for inquiry, practice, connection, and the continuing work of bringing our relationship with the wild into the places where we live.
Throughout the program, Ariel and Fletcher will also be joined by guest teachers (TBA), who will bring additional practices and traditions to our exploration. This program is a chance to gather again—to reconnect with Wildtender community, nourish our belonging to the living world, and tend the shoots and seeds from our journeys together. And we hope it will also serve as an opening or threshold: offering new entry points into the practice of wildtending, wherever we call home.
Program Schedule
This online cohort will meet online via Zoom and is open to all past Wildtender participants.
Opening circle (2 hours): Sunday September 20, 2026
Series (90 mins each):
Sunday, October 11
Sunday, October 25
Sunday, November 8
Sunday, November Nov 22
Closing circle (2 hours): Sunday December 6, 2026
Your Facilitators
Ariel Johnson
Ariel Johnson is an embodiment facilitator specializing in trauma-informed somatic practices. As a guide with Wildtender, Ariel supports participants to meaningfully immerse in the California wild, and to cultivate deeper relationships with the broader web of kinfolk. A practitioner of meditation and mindfulness practices, she is a dedicated student of Gestalt Awareness Practice in the lineage of Christine Price, as well as grief tending with Francis Weller. With extensive training in ballet and modern dance, yoga (E-RYT 500), and Gyrotonic Level 1, she helps students cultivate greater presence and intuition in their connections with self, community, and the earth-body. Ariel is a Wilderness First Responder.
Growing up in Japan, Washington, and California, Ariel inherited from her father a deep love of the natural world through camping and hiking. Now living with her family in Pacific Grove, California, she finds joy in studying natural history, literature, and Japanese tea ceremony.
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.
Will you join us?
Please save your space in our online cohort by filling out the below RSVP form!