Headwaters Wilderness Program
For life fully lived
Our Aim
Bring together philosophy, education, and wilderness experiences to address the most pressing challenges of our time and, in the process, come to know a life fully lived.
We do this in three ways: Wilderness Voyages, Field Philosophy, and programs for Educators & Organizations.
More than just a wilderness trip, our programs for youth, adults, educators, and organizations aim to build good people. People who care deeply, who act intently, and who know the full richness of life. The conditions, we find, which enable this vibrancy of human experience are a relationship with nature and a relationship with community.
1
Relationship with Nature
A deeply known relationship with nature – based in a sense of wonder, awe, respect, and mutuality for the world around us – is the starting point for a life well lived. A prerequisite for engaging wholly in the world.
2
Relationship with Community
Being part of a community where feeling cared for and, in turn, caring for others is the foundation, enables the conditions for an individual to flourish. Challenge, accomplishment, and reflection are gifts when shared with others.
3
Life Fully Lived
A relationship with nature and a caring community establish the conditions for a life fully lived – for the mutual flourishing of all living beings. Too often denied in a technological, individualistic society, this can still be found in wild places and with caring others.
If caring for the natural world is a prerequisite not only for protecting it, but for a fully lived human life, and if caring first requires coming to know, then experiences in wilderness are indispensable for both the future of the planet and ourselves
Our Offerings
All of our programs are based in community and in nature. Taking place in areas governed by wilderness rather than technology, where moments of adversity are matched by moments of beauty, solitude is accompanied by coöperation, physical obstacles are met with mental ones, challenge is joined by triumph, emotions are paired with intellect, and the intentionality of every program is enhanced by nature's spontaneity. We hope you'll join us.
Our Promise
To facilitate community-based wilderness experiences with pedagogical intentionality and philosophical meaning, discovering a richness in life rarely found.
To teach and reproduce the values of care, respect, wonder, and awe. And to live by the attendant virtues of coming to deeply know, caring for, and playfully living with nature and wilderness, human and nonhuman communities, and ourselves.
To take the long-view, eschewing pervasive present-mindedness and valuing quality over quantity, reflection over speed; we aim for the Headwaters relationship to last beyond the end of each program. We invest in our programs so that we can invest in our community, providing an ongoing touch-point, open door, warm heart, and material support that aims to be reciprocal rather than transactional.
To nurture relationships with the near-in, both human and nature. In a world focused on "global impact," we find that the most profound impact is local. We invite the world to our doorstep, rather than making our doorstep the world.
Connect with Headwaters,
because nothing is done alone