Forest Floor Wilderness Programs

Forest Floor has served the Asheville Area with Nature-Connection Mentoring programs since 2011. We work to reconnect youth and adults with the natural world, while also coalescing a vibrant nature-based community. The roots of our programs and the heart of our curriculum is what we call Deep Nature Connection, which utilizes the methods of Coyote... Mentoring, the design elements of the 8 Shields model, and the concepts of Culture Repair, as they have been developed and taught by Jon Young, founder of the Wilderness Awareness School and co-author of Coyotes Guide to Connecting with Nature. Before developing and refining these mentoring models and techniques, Jon Young was trained as a boy by Tom Brown Jr., renowned outdoorsman, tracker, teacher, and author of 16 books, including The Tracker. For ten years, starting at the age of 7, Tom Brown was himself mentored in the skills of tracking, wilderness survival, and nature awareness by Stalking Wolf (Grandfather), an Apache elder, shaman, and scout. Afterwards Tom spent ten years living in the wilderness with no manufactured tools, perfecting these skills and teachings. In 1978 Brown opened the Tracker School, now the largest of its kind. As a young man, Jon Young worked off and on for many years at the Tracker School as an instructor, special guest and childrens program development specialist. Additionally, from 1984 to 1994, Jon was mentored as a naturalist, tracker, cultural specialist and mentor by the African Akamba elder M. Norman Powell (Ingwe). Ingwe supported Jon as the honored elder and co-founder of Jons newly founded Wilderness Awareness School (1983, Monmouth County, NJ). Inspired and encouraged by these two mentors, Jon went on to pioneer the blending of Native mentoring and cultural techniques from around the world with a broad array of modern tools for connecting with nature and developing refined and holistic tracking skills. The synthesis of all this has become what is now known as the 8 Shields Cultural Mentoring Model. This model has now ...Read More