Hi, I’m Maria

aka Sky, I have extensive experience supporting people to deepen their connection to nature, including our own inner nature as part of the larger natural landscape. I am the co-founder of GIFT (Global Institute of Forest Therapy) and the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy. Aswell as designing and directing the organizations training programs, I have personally trained and mentored 100s of people to follow their passions of becoming forest therapy guides. 

As a nature connection guide, I draw on my trainings as a Work-That-Re-Connects (as founded by Joanna Macy) and an 8-Shields (a pan-cultural model for deep nature connection and cultural repair) facilitator, continue to actively learn from indigenous cultures and wisdom-keepers, as well as many other influences and my own on-going personal journey of remembering and embodying my most enlivened natural state of being.
As a facilitator, my passion is to offer people the experience of 'coming home', that is remembering that as a human we are embedded in this complex and infinitely diverse web of life on our beautiful planet Earth. I am deeply moved and nourished by supporting and witnessing others having this embodied, innately human, experience of returning home to wholeness.

Within my nature connection work I also have a deep passion for supporting women's journeys of returning to the wisdom of their bodies through teaching fertility awareness/natural family planning and womb wellness.

I love to get elemental! What makes me feel most vital is communing with the Earth in various ways, such as wild-crafting with my hands, tracking animals, wild swimming and sitting quietly and listening out on the land. I really enjoyed getting my Level 2 Track & Sign cybertracker evaluation with the San people in Namibia. I love to sing.

I also love to work with co-facilitators, to bring gender equality, a diversity of skills and different leaderships styles. Below are some of the teachers I’ve had the honour to work with in the past.

Lynx Vilden

Lynx has traveled, explored, and researched the nature and traditional cultures of arctic, mountain, and desert regions from Hudson Bay to the Kalahari Desert. She emerged from her first sweat lodge ceremony in 1989 with the realization of the calling back to the Earth, learning, sharing, and teaching the old ways. She has been practicing and teaching primitive living skills with passion both in the US and in Europe since 1991. Instructor at Boulder Outdoor Survival School in Utah for several years she has taught workshops at primitive skills gatherings, including Rabbitstick and Winter Count. 

She's contributed regularly to the American publication Bulletin of Primitive Technology. She's lived in a Sami village in Scandinavia and has lived and studied in the desert Southwest of Arizona and New Mexico, the Rocky Mountains of Montana, and the North Cascades of Washington.

In 2001 she started the Four Seasons Prehistoric Projects program dedicated to sharing the ancient skills of primitive living. Her goal is to form a group prepared to live for a full year in a Stone Age living experiment. She runs international classes through 'Living Wild' www.lynxvilden.com

Dr. Sharon Blackie

Dr Sharon Blackie is an award-winning writer of fiction and nonfiction, a mythologist with a specialisation in Celtic Studies, and a psychologist who has specialised both in neuroscience and narrative. Her unique approach to working with myth, fairy tales and folklore highlights the insights these traditions can offer us into authentic and meaningful ways of being which are founded on a deep sense of belonging to place, a rootedness in the land we inhabit. In early 2017 she founded The Hedge School: both an online space and a physical location in Connemara, for teachings in myth, wild mind and enchantment.

Her nonfiction book If Women Rose Rooted offers up a new Heroine’s Journey for this challenging age of social and ecological crisis, and was described by bestselling novelist Manda Scott as ‘mind-blowing in the most profound and exhilarating sense … an anthem for all we could be … an essential book for this, the most critical of recent times.’ If Women Rose Rooted was a 2016 Nautilus Book Award winner. Her latest nonfiction book, The Enchanted Life, was published in February 2018. She is now completing a collection of original fairy tales about shapeshifting women, Foxfire, Wolfskin, which will be published in autumn 2019. A further collection of stories about bird-women for young adults, Old Crane Woman’s Guide to Becoming a Bird, will be published in late 2020.

She is now completing a collection of original fairy tales about shapeshifting women, Foxfire, Wolfskin, which will be published in autumn 2019. A further collection of stories about bird-women for young adults, Old Crane Woman’s Guide to Becoming a Bird, will be published in late 2020. For more information about Sharon visit www.sharonblackie.net 

Marc Barker

Even a single experience in nature can truly touch someone for a lifetime, leaving a lasting reverence and appreciation for the Earth, life and their role in it. In 2004 – on the slopes of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado – Marc found himself enveloped in a timeless moment of deep nature connection. From then on, he knew in his heart that cultivating a robust relationship with the natural world was going to be the “compass” for living his life.

Born and raised in California, USA, Marc spent much of his childhood wandering the rolling hills and oak woodlands that give the San Francisco Bay Area its character. He always preferred being outside, no matter the weather, and earned a degree in Forestry from the University of California, Berkeley to best align this desire with a career in environmental stewardship. He soon came to realize, however, that the only way to truly safeguard the Earth was to restore people’s connection to it.

In 2011 Marc moved to the Finger Lakes Region of New York State and joined a local community of nature mentors. He started out volunteering with Earth Arts and later joined Primitive Pursuits as staff, both of which are well-established nature connection organizations in the Ithaca, NY area. Marc’s passion for outdoor education was shaped by his co-workers and friends, as well as his students and their families – finding mentors in many along the way. Over the years, Marc was taught, trained, challenged and supported by his community and in time answered his life-long calling in the seemingly endless mixed hardwood forests that make up the North East United States.

For the past 8 Years, Marc has been working as a Nature Mentor. He has experience with all age groups, in all seasons and types of weather – in preschool, primary and secondary school, homeschool, teenage programs, summer camps, university, and adult training. His responsibilities included program creation and development in all of these fields, as well as staff training, management and mentoring.

Upon moving to Ireland with his family in the Summer of 2017, Marc set out to continue the work he loves through developing networks and collaborations in the environmental and alternative education field – offering his skills as a nature-mentor for organizations and individuals alike. He has plenty of stories to share too.

Marc is a certified Wilderness Skills Instructor, holds a Bush-Craft Skills Apprenticeship, and has attended the Art of Mentoring training as put on by the 8-Shields Institute. He holds a 4H Archery Instructor Certificate and a Permaculture Design Diploma and continues ongoing training and consulting work in Human Ecology/Social Biology with researchers at Cornell University, NY, USA. In addition to his previous qualifications, Marc is a Certified Forest School Leader in Ireland and member of the Irish Forest School Association.

Through founding NatureConnect, Marc hopes to leave people with a sense of awe and inspiration for nature and a motivation to seek out and share more experiences in connection with the Earth, themselves and their communities. Marc prefers to spend his time outdoors – though today he gets to share his wonder for the natural world with his two-year-old daughter – Milana – as they explore the hedges, fields, woods, and shores around Newcastle, Co. Wicklow.

Anna Swisher

anna is a wilderness and rites-of-passage guide, ecopsychologist and nature-based mentor, Work That Reconnects facilitator, and community activist from California.  She is also a wild dance enthusiast and movement teacher, singer/songwriter, permaculturist, youth advocate, fire-tender, ritualist, horsewoman, and writer. Her work over the past 10 years has revolved around guiding young people and adults into deeper connection with themselves, their emotions and innate gifts, the land, soul, spirit, and the wisdom of their bodies.  She carries an M.A. in Psychology and Spirituality, and has studied, trained and apprenticed in various indigenous and earth-based lineages, wisdom traditions, conscious movement modalities, and contemporary approaches to healing, all of which inform her work. Anna is currently deepening her understanding of ancestral healing, service, community building, social justice and authentic activism, as she spends her time between Latvia, Ireland, and California.  She is an eternal student of the forest, the children, and the mystery. She always brings a good dose of silliness, depth, curiosity, and song. You can read more about some of her work here.