Who We Are
Anaka Mines
Title, projectsAnaka (she/her) loves nature summer camp. She has always aspired to find a life that was as close as possible to summer camp. A place where there was sharing of food and laughter, attention to the details of the place, the birds, the plants, and where song and play are a daily part of life. Unfortunately she has found this not so easy to find in modern industrial adult life, but still trying. In the mean time she farms a few acres of land in the Methow Valley of north central washington, growing certified organic vegetable flower and herb seeds that she sells wholesale to seed companies, and gives away to neighbors around the local region. She tends a large collection of seed that she has grow in the last dozen years, building a strong regionally adapted catalogue of garden seed. She is working to build a network of seed growers, and an alternative to transactional economics with the seed gifting work.
In addition to farming, she has spent many years as an educator. She founded and directed a schoolyard garden at the local school district campus. She helps run a summer nature camp for kids each year, now in its 33rd year. She also has worked as a botanist and ornithologist, paying close attention to the world around her. She lives with her 9 year old son, Sage, and two rats, Obi-Wan-Kenobi and Lord Raz.
Darcy Ottey
Title, projectsDarcy Ottey (she/they) is a culture worker, facilitator, and writer. The descendant of Quaker settlers, British coalminers, and Ukrainian peasants, land-based cultural practices have been part of Darcy’s life since they took part in a coming of age program as a youth. Now in her late 40’s, Darcy identifies as a queer, white, class privileged from a mixed-class background, able-bodied woman. She lives in rural north-central Washington State, in the homelands of the mətxʷú people, in Twisp, Washington. She served as the first Executive Director of Rite of Passage Journeys and the founding staff member for Restoring Lifeways (formerly Youth Passageways). Through projects including Re-Calling Our Ancestors, Nourishing Futures, and Rites and Responsibilities, Darcy devotes their life energy to increasing access to healing practices rooted in ancestry, body, land, culture, belonging, and accountability. They received their Master’s Degree in Environment & Community and are a certified SomaSource Practitioner and Yoga Teacher. Darcy’s work is informed by her training in experiential and popular education, somatics, systems theory, rites of passage, leadership, nature connection and wilderness living, and transformative justice. Darcy is on the board of Methow at Home, an organization working to support elders in her community to age with dignity, respect, and the support they need. Darcy loves dancing (especially under the full moon), learning to make Slavic folks dolls, and harvesting, growing, and preserving food and plant medicines.
Scott Davidson
Title, projectsScott Davidson (he/him) is a wilderness rite of passage guide, consent embodiment coach, and cross-cultural land steward. A son of North Sea ancestors and born on Ohlone homelands, for nearly a decade Scott helped steward Payahuunadü lands back into Indigenous care at Three Creeks. After hospicing his mother through Alzheimer's and his dad through cancer, he’s guided hundreds of people through rites of passage with the School of Lost Borders, Rites & Responsibilities, and in private offerings. He has been supporting people into wholeness and belonging ever since.
As a consent facilitator, Scott sees the Wheel of Consent as an essential practice and believes this can contribute powerfully to anyone’s liberation and sovereignty. Scott works with diverse groups, couples and individual clients, and is often working with cis-het white men.
After living for nearly a lifetime along the wild California coast and eastern Sierra in Payahuunadü, USA, Scott is now in the Methow Valley near the North Cascades in North Central Washington. Scott serves on the Board of Directors for Methow Valley Interpretive Center, a local organization that fosters cultural awareness and understanding of Indigenous peoples and the natural history of the Methow Valley and Upper Columbia region. His grounded, wise and playful presence and his sound commitment to his work for future generations radiates vitality into everything he does. He is a bird whisperer, a lover, a brother and a village cook.
Shay Sloan Clarke
Title, projectsShay Sloan Clarke is a white American descended from northeastern Ireland, where the mountains meet the sea. As a student of justice and equity, she is committed to healing, repairing and reimagining social fields. She is co-editor of the book Protecting Wild Nature on Native Lands and co-author of “Cross-Cultural Protocols in Rites of Passage: Guiding Principles, Themes and Inquiry.” Shay is a practitioner of rites of passage, circle and embodied anti-racist practice. She loves nurturing communities of practice and ongoing inquiry. Her professional roles have included rites of passage practitioner, guide, trainer, convenor and facilitator; Consultant and Educator; Program Manager for Native Oceans; Founding Director of the Indigenous & Community Lands & Seas program for The WILD Foundation and World Wilderness Congress; Executive Co-Director of The Ojai Foundation; and Executive Director for the Global Center for Indigenous Leadership & Lifeways. Shay bridges worlds, working for inner and outer system transformation, be it bridging the movements for wilderness conservation and Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination, or supporting folx to strengthen their direct relationship with place and ancestors through research, practice and ceremony. Whenever possible, she gets clay covered in the ceramics studio or the garden with her son, Kian. When not working, Shay explores the Sacramento River Watershed in the unceded traditional homelands of the Mechoopda peoples, where she currently resides, in Northern California.
