Fire

Winter Break – Reflections From the Fall Quarter

It was time to gather our small, newly formed community for our final day of the Fall Quarter. We sat shoulder to shoulder in Malalo, one of our outdoor classrooms, as a fire burned high and bright in the center of our group. I was proud of that fire because I took part in creating […]

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snow shelter

Snow Shelters

One powerful part of The Immersion is the projects and adventures that each individual student chooses to engage and create for themselves. Due to the fact that we have only 3 scheduled class days a week, that potentially gives us 4 days where we are free to fill with whatever passions move us. Many take that time […]

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Snowshoe John

Life After The Immersion

I’m John Gasparich, a graduate of the 2008-2009 Immersion program, and an apprentice the following year in the Nature Instructor Training program. I also met my wife, Khylynowey, during the program. After my apprenticeship, my wife and I moved to Canada, to the farm where she was raised. In the first year of living on […]

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Anake students in Eastern Washington

Naturalist Studies in Eastern Washington

It’s become quite a familiar job: packing up my backpack for an overnight trip with The Immersion at Wilderness Awareness School. I no longer have the dilemma of trying to decide how many pairs of socks, wool pants, or extra sweaters to bring. Now it’s a quick job with fewer items that need to be […]

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Jon Young storytelling

Plant Medicine, Land Stewardship, and Jon Young

This week at The Immersion, we touched briefly on the delights and gifts that the plants offer us if we so choose to learn how to harvest and process them in the proper ways. We then were taught how this plays into the bigger picture of stewarding our school’s land in a good way that […]

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brain tanning

Brain Tanning a Deer Hide

by Mireille Evans Immersion Student 2015-2016 This week we had the honor to be blessed by deer. It was the week where we got to dive into the magical transformational process of working with the hide of deer to make buckskin. The deer were purchased from a woman who has a relationship with hunters in her area. The hunters bring […]

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camo eye

The Immersion Blog – Winter Guild Week – The Way of the Scout

During Guild Weeks at The Immersion students can choose from a variety of passion-based skills, such as entering the mind of a Scout. This past week I had the awesome opportunity to participate in three amazing days of training in “the ways of the scout”. The scout is a member of any tribe who acts […]

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Camouflage and Concealment

The year at The Immersion is coming to a close. We gathered for our last week of “normal” class time before embarking on the final three weeks of class; also known as the ‘The Gauntlet’. The Gauntlet is the time where we are put to the test to see how ingrained our skills are that we learned this year. But before […]

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Anake Students

The Immersion’s Fall Village Week

Village Week – October 27-29 2015 What a week full of fun! We gathered with our class this week for our first of three Village Weeks we will have throughout the year. We all headed into the week with a sense of mystery and unknown as there was not much telling of what we would […]

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Class of 2016

The Immersion Graduation and Reflections

The past 9 months at The Immersion has been quite a plethora of new experiences, adventures, crafting, external and internal explorations, and the fortification of our connections with the earth, the natural world around us, ourselves, and each other. This Immersion year has been nothing at all of what I expected, and at the same […]

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Wilderness Awareness School