Visionaries & Guides

Victoria Loorz, MDiv, is a "wild church pastor," an "eco-spiritual director" and co-founder of several transformation-focused organizations focused on the integration of nature and spirituality. She feels most alive when collaborating with Mystery and kindred spirits to create opportunities for people to re-member themselves back into intimate, sacred relationship with the rest of the living world.

After twenty years as a pastor of indoor churches, she launched the first Church of the Wild, in Ojai CA and began to meet others with the same sense of call to leave building and expand the Beloved Community beyond our own species. She then co-founded the ecumenical Wild Church Network.

Victoria is founder of the Center for Wild Spirituality which grew out of Seminary of the Wild, which she co-founded.

She recently had to move from Bellingham, Washington, a beautiful land along the Salish Sea on territory tended and loved for generations by the Coast Salish peoples, in particular the Nooksack and Lummi nations. She's now in a nomadic mode, following the lead of the sacred wild.

Victoria's young adult children -- Alec and Olivia -- are wise, creative, tender souls, dedicated to creating a more inclusive, compassionate, and just world.

Bryan Smith is Co-founder of Seminary of the Wild and a PCUSA pastor for over 30 years has been involved in anti-racism work for the past twenty years. He was a member of the Detroit Presbytery’s anti-racism team for several years and was a founding member of the Beloved Community in Canton, Michigan, which worked to promote justice and equity in the township public school system and police department. He has been a trainer in anti-racism work in various capacities throughout the metro Detroit area.

Michele Walker is a settler who grew up in the unceded mountains and waters of the Sinixt people (Rossland, BC) and still hold those mountains and waters in my being. She now wanders the hills and grasslands of Secwepemcúĺecw and lives on the unceded lands of Tk’emlúps te Secwe̓pemc (Kamloops, BC). She is an artist and a Jungian Coach who works with women to find their soul's longings, discovering feminine ways of knowing, creativity and nature based spirituality. She is also a cofounder of Wild Church BC and an eco-ministry guide who graduated from the first cohort of Seminary of the Wild.

Designer, creative seeker and lover of nature. My journey has taken me to far away places, lived in several states and hiked many trails. I travel now with my son and dog as companions and am drawn to expansive places to admire great beauty. Difficult roads have expanded my vision and broken my heart open to receive more. I look forward to supporting the efforts of Center for Wild Spirituality and accompany all of you on this journey.

Ashley is a recent graduate of the Eco-Ministry Yearlong Program, educator and mother to three kids. She has her BA in Communication and a Master's in Education. As a student and listener of Mother Earth, she weaves her creativity, love of humans and non-humans and desire for community into her daily life. She's an amateur tinkerer of herbal teas and medicine, loves to create beauty using graphic design, and bringing people together. She recently moved from Texas to Washington State, following the call of the trees and longing to be a part of something greater than herself.

Jessi Geier is an apprentice to ancient trees, ancestral and collective grief, embodiment practice, slow time, dreams, and the blank page. She holds a master’s in counseling from the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, where she deep sea dove into learning about interpersonal healing, embodiment and contemplative spirituality, with specialized study in the wild feminine and calling.

As a Licensed Mental Health Counselor in Washington State and a certified professional coactive coach, Jessi supports people to find home within their bodies, their lives, and the greater world so that they may live more authentically from the inside out. The threads of her professional roles have also included church leadership, workplace chaplaincy, social work, and the restaurant industry. She is also a graduate of the Seminary of the Wild Eco-Ministry Yearlong program. The Pacific Northwest is her current home, the ancestral homelands of the Coast Salish Peoples in the North Cascades watershed.

Jessi is committed to holding space for eco-ministry certificate participants as they deepen into their own sense of wild belonging, tune into their own remembering, and step into their creative edges. She sees herself not as an expert, or even “guide”, but as a fellow pilgrim along on the way.

Aram Mitchell (he/him) is a Registered Maine Guide and Wilderness First Responder with a Master of Arts degree in Religious Studies from Chicago Theological Seminary.

Aram was born in New Brunswick, Canada just a stone's throw from the Saint John River. He grew up a short bike ride away from the White River in Indianapolis, Indiana. And now he saunters most days alongside the Presumpscot River in southern Maine, where he lives on a little plot of land with several mammals and some chickens.

Aram moved to Maine in 2015 to serve as the Executive Director of Renewal in the Wilderness, where he worked for five years planning and facilitating retreats designed to help sustain the vocations of care providers, justice workers, and faith leaders. From 2021-2022 Aram worked as the Director of Partnerships & Formation at The BTS Center, an organization focused on spiritual leadership for a climate-changed world.

Prior to his move to Maine, Aram served as the Congregational Minister for Children at Claremont United Church of Christ. During his time at Chicago Theological Seminary he worked as a coordinator of The Crib, an emergency overnight shelter for LGBTQ youth experiencing homelessness.

Aram continues to guide folks to the confluence of wildness and spirituality through retreats, courses, conversations, and reflections.

Ashley Rodriguez is a Seattle-based award winning food writer and photographer. She is the author of two cookbooks; Date Night In and Let’s Stay In. She is also the host and co-creator of the James Beard nominated series, Kitchen Unnecessary; an online series which uncovers the world of wild foods through foraging, fishing and regenerative harvesting then uses these ingredients to prepare a feast over the fire.

Ashley and her work has been featured in Outside Magazine, Food & Wine, Saveur, Epicurious, Edible Seattle and many more.

She is a graduate of Seminary of the Wild through the Center for Wild Spirituality and a certified Nature and Forest Therapy guide through the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy Guides.

When not eating, or talking and writing about food you can find her foraging, fly fishing, feeding her sourdough starter and spending as much time outside as possible. She believes the outdoors is a place to be fed both physically and spiritually.

Becky Traptow is a Therapeutic Bodyworker who uses parts therapy, various forms of bodywork, and nature based practices to help people turn toward, befriend and heal their inner worlds. You might also call her a modern day medicine woman, a guide at the crossroads and a lover of our fruitful unraveling. She brings with her 10 years of experience in nature-based wholing and healing practices with Animas Valley Institute, training as a Wild Mind Guide as well as training with Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS), Rosen Method Bodywork, Craniosacral Therapy and Healing From the Core. She is mother to 6 grown kids and 3 grandkids and lives with her 3 youngest in the majestic coastal forests of Vancouver Island, Canada. Becky believes that you can only take people as far as you have gone yourself and so she is always continuing her own healing and wholing work and believes bodywork, parts therapy and nature-based spirituality to be key in her own unfolding. She looks forward to supporting you in this year long journey of discovery and transformation.

Corinne London is a licensed marriage and family therapist and a shamanic practitioner. She loves both types of work. In the healing arts as a shamanic practitioner, she has enjoyed working in this realm for the last decade. She is fiercely in love with the earth and all that she inhabits. She is a deep believer that personal healing can happen with the help of our spirit guides and earth guides. We all have guides that are calling upon us to listen, “hear”, and heal any wounds that remains inside of us. There is so much love and support that is available to us in the spiritual realm if we are to only ask and receive. Receiving can be harder than it sounds. She assists clients to connect with their personal guides which can repair and restore issues around spiritual crisis’, suffering or distress.
As a licensed marriage and family therapist she works with clients holistically, meaning tending to their mind, body and spirit psychologically. She has worked clinically for various agencies as a LMFT, as well as a clinical supervisor. Currently, she has a private practice where she uses an eco-psychology approach working with clients with issues around trauma, anxiety, and life transitions. She believes the earth can help clients feel more embodied, aligned, and alive in therapy sessions. She draws upon nature and all she inhabits to be a part of the conversation with my clients. We are not separate from nature but are one with it. Mother nature is our greatest ally in the mending of a life.

Melissa Fritchle is a licensed psychotherapist in California, a Certified Mindfulness Meditation Teacher and Mindfulness Coach, and a dedicated Embodiment teacher. She has served on faculty for graduate programs in Holistic Psychology, Expressive Arts & Transpersonal Psychology in the Bay Area and currently teaches for Stanford University’s Healthy Living program. A vibrant speaker & workshop leader, she has presented at conferences worldwide & co-founded a women’s group for sacred ritual & nature connection which met for 17 years. She is an award-winning educator for her ground-breaking work in international sex education for Catholic clergy & the author of The Conscious Sexual Self Workbook. Her connection with her teacher Ram Dass continues to inspire her. She is a student of the Radiance Sutras & Bhairava Tantra, 5 Rhythms Dance practice, and all mystic poets. She lives in Santa Cruz, CA with her husband and bossy cat.

Timothy R. Eberhart is the Robert and Marilyn Degler McClean Associate Professor of Ecological Theology and Practice at Garrett Theological Seminary in Evanston, IL, where he directs the seminary's Center for Ecological Regeneration. He teaches in the areas of theology, ethics, and public ministry, concentrating on the relation of Christian teaching and spirituality to environmental, economic, political, and social change theory. Eberhart earned his Ph.D. from the Graduate School at Vanderbilt University, his Master of Divinity degree from the Vanderbilt Divinity School, and his B.A. in Religion from St. Olaf College. His publications include Rooted and Grounded in Love: Holy Communion for the Whole Creation (Wipf and Stock, 2017), The Economy of Salvation: Essays in Honor of M. Douglas Meeks (Wipf and Stock, 2015), and chapters on mission, ecclesiology, and ecotheology. He is an ordained elder in the United Methodist Church, a trained permaculturalist, and an activist/organizer, participating with students in a variety of protest movements in Chicagoland and beyond, including Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, Standing Rock, and Fridays for Future Climate Strikes. He, his spouse Rebecca, and their three children live in Evanston, IL, where he has been active with Citizens Greener Evanston, Environmental Justice Evanston, and the city’s Equity & Empowerment Commission. His growing interests are in nature spirituality, indigenous wisdom, and land-based teaching and learning.