Education and science has always been Barbara Russell’s passion. Now an empty-nester, she has taken this opportunity to focus on the natural environment and in so doing, has developed a passion for bringing traditional teachings to our modern world. With a dual undergraduate degree in both science and education, Barbara went on to obtain her M.S. in Cell Biology and Genetics. She became part of a Nobel Laureate team at Yale Medical School doing electron microscopy, then a Scientific Specialist for IBM, matching the needs of scientists within Fortune 100 companies to the capabilities of main frame computing. She has designed educational classes in scientific instrumentation for Finnigan Institute, Perkin-Elmer and IBM. In 1989 Barbara moved from Connecticut to Washington State, where she later founded a successful computer school for preschoolers. Barbara has designed and built her own Healthy House to return her daughter to health (it worked) and is currently planning an environmentally sensitive community of homes. A nature enthusiast, Barbara is a graduate of the Residential Program at the Wilderness Awareness School.
Roy Ashton / Instructor
Roy Ashton grew up in Britain and was educated at Cambridge University before coming to the U.S. in 2002. He is a student of the Wilderness Awareness School and Tom Brown's renowned Tracker School. He has written a Master's thesis on the use of survival skills to help reconnect people with nature. Roy has been bird watching since childhood and has traveled to 6 different continents to observe birds. He is particularly interested in the meaning of bird calls.
Emily Gibson/Instructor
Emily Gibson is a life-long resident of Redmond. As an only child she spent many hours in the woods finding bird nests, watching deer, and exploring the mountains and waters of the Pacific Northwest. Emily continued to pursue her interest in birds at the University of Washington where she took courses in the many aspects of wildlife biology and forest ecology. She has worked as a Research Assistant in the field studying the forest songbirds of Puget Sound. For the past two years Emily has been a Student and Apprentice at Wilderness Awareness School in Duvall where she has broadened her relationship to nature through the study of edible and medicinal plants, survival skills, and wildlife tracking. Emily enjoys sharing her knowledge and love of nature with others, and she likes to ask hard questions.
Greg Sommer/Instructor
Greg Sommer has spent the last ten years studying animal tracking and wilderness survival skills. He has also focused on ethnobotany, the study of how people of a particular culture and region make of use of indigenous plants for such things as food, shelter, medicine, clothing, hunting, and religious ceremonies. Greg most recently spent a year at Tom Brown's Tracker School as a Caretaker, where he lived in a primitive shelter made from materials gathered on site. He has a bachelor of science from Evergreen State College.