Duration: Meets one weekend per month for 10 months.
Dates: Begins February 8-9, 2025.
View 2025 Immersion schedule here
View the current 2024 schedule here.
Cost: Early bird price of $2,250 with a $250 deposit if you sign up before the end of August 2024. After September 1, 2024, the cost will be $3000 with a deposit of $250.
Instructor: Filip Tkaczyk
The Course:
This is the path of the naturalist: a journey to deeper, richer and more alive connections to all of the life around you. This course takes students on a journey of enthusiastic engagement with the natural world, both as observer and participator. Through the studies of wildlife tracking, bird studies, basics of botany and ecological. This course is for beginners and experienced outdoorsmen alike. The course is a journey of rewilding, of learning who your wild neighbors are and how to have a better relationship with them. The course will include both lessons in different scientific disciplines such as zoology, biology, osteology, ethology as well as including discussions on nature-based psychology and the philosophy of the relationships of humans and the natural world.
This course will include exploring several of the major ecosystems in the Pacific Northwest, including lowland forests, high mountain habitats, wetlands, semi-arid sagebrush steppe and even suburban wildlands. Each weekend will be an immersion into different landscapes and different casts of characters that make their home around us. Each weekend will also have a central theme such as: wildlife tracking weekend, botany/mycology weekend and so on.
The naturalist immersion course includes the student as part of the experiential process, through both physical explorations of landscapes and lessons on what we encounter along the way. Students are encouraged to pursue their curiosity both in and outside of class. This course is the broadest course offered by Raven’s Roots, and promises to eye-opening and help bring students deeper in touch with their own innate curiosity and further their journey of learning and discovery.
Click here to download 2 handouts used during class as helpful visual aids.
(raccoon/possum/skunk handout)
Fil Tkaczyk, the instructor for this course, is also the author of the book, Tracks and Sign of Reptiles and Amphibians (click on the title to view it on Amazon). He has served as a mentor to our entire staff and has inspired countless people in his many years of teaching. Read more about him on our staff page here.
Here are some photos from past Naturalist Immersion Courses:
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