Jaime Taylor

A life-long learner, Jaime recently graduated from Eastern Oregon University with her Bachelor of Science degree in Early Childhood Education. Jaime has spent the last five years working for Clark College in their Child and Family Studies program, serving as a lead teacher in their outdoor classroom. She has had the honor of mentoring ECE students, presenting at the Washington Association for the Education of Young Children conference in 2019 on the implications of nature deficit, and participating in a research study on children and the benefits of nature-based play. Jaime spent over a decade as a volunteer for BSA, where she continued to develop camping, hiking, and wilderness skills, as well as her appreciation for the great outdoors. More recently, she has given her time to the monthly TreeSong Circle Keepers program and the Run Wild event.

Her approach is hands-on, child-lead, and inquiry-based. Jaime acknowledges the unique contribution that each child has to make to the learning community and is looking forward to
co-creating meaningful experiences with children, families, and mentors at TreeSong. She views the world with natural curiosity and a child-like sense of wonder, and hopes to share that with those around her.

For over 20 years, Jaime has resided on the Washougal River, the place she calls home and where she raised her three children. Jaime credits her deep connection to nature to early life experiences with beloved grandparents growing and preserving the harvest, camping, and fishing. In her free time, Jaime enjoys gardening, reading, dancing, camping, kayaking, exploring, learning new things, and spending time with her family, friends, and canine companion.

Jaime is a Forest School Teacher at TreeSong.

BRENTON SPRATLEN

Spending his early years in the dry riverbeds east of Paso Robles, CA, Brenton evoked his natural passion for the outdoors at 5 years old, while tracking and hunting Jack rabbits on horseback. At age 7, his family moved to the mountains of Colorado where he spent every available moment of his next 10 years exploring the 40 acres of land he lived on. The countless forts and fires he built, mixed with trails and his own wild imagination, accounted for his deep desire to become proficient in the arts of wilderness survival, primitive living and bushcraft. Brenton has spent many of his adult years following this path, and being self-taught in these types of primitive arts has led to a great amount of self awareness and loads of information to share with all who will listen.

Brenton recently spent 4 years mentoring children and adults at Trackers Earth in Portland. From his time with Forest School Kindergarten, Homeschool and Apprenticeship programs, to his Adult Immersion programs and Director-level experiences, he has had the pleasure of learning from many other students, parents and educators and hopes to continue sharing what he has learned so that others can benefit.

Brenton believes nothing is greater than the connection we have with nature and strives to teach this and other primitive skills to all. The self-discipline, drive and attention to detail he obtained from his days in the US Navy's Presidential Guard, including the experiences from traveling abroad and learning different cultures, reflect in his teachings.

Brenton is a Wilderness Skills Instructor at TreeSong.

rasheena fountain

Rasheena Fountain is a poet and essayist whose work focuses on Black environmental memory. She is originally from Chicago but now lives in Seattle. She has been published in Hobart Pulp, Penumbra Online, Mountaineer Magazine, The Roadrunner Review, ZORA, HuffPost, Jelly Bucket and more. She has partnered with environmental organizations like the National Resource Defense Council to highlight Black stories through writing profiles about Black environmental professionals; and has worked as a digital communications manager for the Doris Duke Conservation Scholars program alumni network where she supported young environmental professionals of color as they acclimated to the environmental field. She is a former Walker Communications Fellow with the National Audubon Society. In 2018, Fountain started an online project, Climate Conscious Collabs, in response to the need for more Black environmental relationships in the media. This work has engaged a “nontraditional” environmental audience, as well as mainstream organizations like the North American Congress for Conservation Biology, which used her work during their annual conference in 2020. She has a B.A. in Rhetoric from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, an M.A. in Urban Environmental Education from Antioch University Seattle, and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington Seattle. She is currently an MA/PhD student in English.

Awards: National Audubon Society Walker Communications Editorial Fellow, 2017; Outstanding Civil Service Staff Award, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2016; Illinois Community College Journalism Award, 2002; The Richard J. Dunn First-Year Teaching Award, 2020.

mark fitzsimons

Mark grew up in Minnesota and his favorite 4-H project as a kid was entomology. Since then he has been a teacher, hiking and paddling guide, and educational program developer for several organizations. He is currently the Program Coordinator for Tualatin Riverkeepers and also volunteers for the Johnson Creek Watershed Council and is a North Clackamas Urban Watershed Council board member. His other interests include nordic skiing, traditional archery, and paleo-archaeology. A constant through all of this has been a love of insects that has grown into passionate advocacy for our native pollinators.

Janene Ritchie

Janene Ritchie trained as a certified Forest Therapy Guide with the Association of Nature and Therapy in 2018. She founded Wildish Nature Connections shortly thereafter, which provides nature-based experiences that invite us to rest in our innate desire for connection. She has an extensive background in environmental and place-based education and is also the Executive Director of forest collaborative on the Gifford Pinchot National Forest in Southwest Washington, where she lives with her spouse, three human-children, and one fur-child. Learn more by visiting Janene’s website.

cader olive

Cader Olive has been studying, living, and teaching connected living in nature for the past 40 years. He has a Doctorate in Ecology and spent years researching animal behavior and populations. For 20 years he owned and operated a green building and contracting business, helping people find sustainable ways to provide homes for their families. For 15 years he taught workshops at a non-profit education center he founded in Northern Wisconsin. The mission of this center was to connect local residents in learning about the landscape they lived in, their human neighbors, and ways to live there more conscientiously, locally, and sustainably. The center was a living demonstration of passive solar home design and energy use, permaculture and organic gardening, gathering food and materials from the land, and simple living. Since coming to Portland in 2011, Cader has taught numerous classes for local organizations and consulted with families and individuals trying to live more locally, sustainably, and connected to their own landscape. His passion is in helping local people find ways to live a satisfying, integrated, quality life with their family and their wild and human relations. Cader currently spends part of the year in Portland, Oregon and part of the year in Cornucopia, Wisconsin.

daniel winkler

Daniel is the author of two field guides to edible mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest and California (Harbour Publishing, 2011 and 2012), Amazon Mushrooms (2014, co-authored), Field Guide to Medicinal Mushrooms of North America with Robert Rogers (2018), and the brand new MycoCards Boletes of Western North America, co-authored with Gary Gilbert.

Daniel grew up collecting and eating wild mushrooms in the Alps and has been foraging for over 20 years in the PNW and beyond, sharing his enthusiasm as a mushroom educator and guide, and as past PSMS vice president. In his presentations he combines his stunning photography with an often funny blend of entertaining stories and scientific information that he likes to refer to as "edutainment.”

Having been in love with mushrooms since early childhood, Daniel has managed to bend his career as an ecologist and geographer focused on High Asia toward researching rural Tibet's enormous fungal economy. His Cordyceps research has been featured in The Economist, National Geographic, The New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, BBC World Service, and more. With his travel agency MushRoaming, Daniel has been organizing mushroom-focused ecoadventures to Bhutan, Tibet, the Amazon, Colombia, the Austrian Alps, and the Pacific Northwest since 2007. In the last decade, Daniel has started exploring neotropical fungi.

Click here to check out MushRoaming.

tony mcmigas

As a lover of all things mycological, Tony has always wanted to share his passions with others and has taught mushroom cultivation classes since 2002. He started as a general hobbyist in the early 1970’s, exploring for fungi in the woods of central Wisconsin. Throughout the years, Tony has evolved from being a general hobbyist to a well known mycological resource in the Pacific Northwest. Tony’s credits include, past President of the Oregon Mycological Society, NAMA member, speaker and international researcher. Tony’s travels have taken him from the mountains of Tibet to many parts of Europe and Mexico.

joanie beldin

Joanie Beldin has been following her passion for wolves for over 40 years. She has worked on various levels to help protect and recover wolves nationwide. Drawing on her teaching background and her strong belief in the power of education, she co-founded WolfWays along with Jayme Burch in 2014. .It is her belief that planting today's seeds will bring hope to the wolves' future.

sheila redman

Sheila Redman is very passionate about wolves and has been studying and advocating for them for over 50 years. Sheila joined the WolfWays "pack" in 2016. She believes wolves have been badly misunderstood in the past and continue to be. However, new information has shown them to have many admirable qualities in addition to their important role in protecting the environment. Sharing this information is vital.

rosemary smith

Rosemary started her adventures here a little over 8 years ago, when TreeSong first opened and she was only 11 years old. Rosemary attended our monthly Circle Keepers program and attended summer camps each year. She began helping with the younger children when she was 13, where she immediately demonstrated the abilities and dedication of a natural born mentor.

Now she's 20 and attending Western Washington University in Bellingham where she’s majoring in Environmental Education.

To read Rosemary’s reflections on her time at TreeSong, click here.

gina roberti

Gina grew up exploring the wetlands and coastline of southern Rhode Island and then the rocky outcrops of New England through the earth science and geology program at Brown University. Gina’s passion for field-based education led her across the country, where she worked as a naturalist and educator in the Colorado Plateau, Snake River Plain, the Klamath-Siskiyou mountains, and the North Cascades. In each of these places she taught thousands of youth and adults about earth science in a variety of field-based and classroom settings. She received a Masters in Education from Western Washington University in a joint program with the North Cascades Institute.

Gina currently lives in Portland, Oregon where she works as an educator with the Mount St. Helens Institute, coordinating field trips and teaching about community resilience and volcanic hazards. Gina strongly believes in the value of education to inspire awareness, appreciation and stewardship for the natural world. When Gina’s not thinking about volcanoes you’ll most often find her enjoying the company of birds, foraging native foods, and riding her bicycle. Contact Gina at gina.m.roberti@gmail.com.

Rae Snyder

Rae Snyder was made and grown in Oregon. They care deeply about the earth; our relationship to it and to all species who share it—though, they are especially fond of birds. They believe in respecting birds as individuals and their habitats as their own—birds aren't here for us! Rae is passionate about creating and supporting safe spaces for birders of all abilities, cultures, genders, identities, etc. They offer their knowledge of birds which comes from years of experience in the field as well as wildlife rehab, but they believe that all, no matter their level of experience, have something valuable to offer.

virginia rayburn

Growing up in Georgia, Virginia had a passionate love of nature instilled in her by her mother. Adventures in the woods and swamps of her home sparked a curiosity about the Earth and all of her inhabitants, starting a lifelong learning journey. When she moved to Oregon her fascination with the outdoors led her to join a local group of birders for walks once a week. She was amazed by how welcoming the birding community was and wanted to do whatever it took to make that community thrive. For Virginia, birding has been a gateway to study, wonder, excitement, a way to mark the seasons and so much more. She looks forward to sharing her experiences and knowledge with anyone she finds along the path, believing that there is a magic that happens only when you are walking and learning. Virginia has a saying, "You learn to bird by birding with birders!" Let's test that theory!

Stephanie Flora

As a native Portlander, Stephanie grew up surrounded by the Pacific Northwest forests, mountains, and coastline. An avid hiker since childhood, she was inspired to learn about birds one day while walking through a local wetland. From there, birding became a passion that she devotes every weekend and most evenings to. She loves birding both alone and with others, and finds she learns as much from a beginner as from an expert birder. Stephanie’s favorite thing about watching birds is that it has taught her patience — you can’t predict what you will see, but it is always worth the wait!