Earth Craft

Gap Semester

Join our village — ignite your life!

Fall 2024

September 12 - November 8, 2024

Earth Craft is an 8-week gap semester program for 18-26 year-olds, based at our two residential learning centers (Pompanuck Farm and Spirit Hollow) in the Taconic Mountains in the southwest corner of Vermont. This experiential learning immersion focuses on soul-centric personal development, cultivating practical living skills and enhancing deep connections to Earth, to create meaningful lives and life-enhancing communities. From organic gardening to ecological building, forest wanders to Buddhist meditation, wilderness tracking to herbalism, community building tools to movements for change, our team of resident-guides collectively draws from decades of experience in a range of crafts and skills, offering ongoing personal and small-group mentorship with a student to guide ratio of no more than 4 to 1.

We are now accepting applications for a maximum of 14 students.

Join us for an intimate and powerful experience that will support and shape your life for years to come.

“There's so much more to who you are than you know right now. You are, indeed, something mysterious and someone magnificent. You hold within you — secreted for safekeeping in your heart — a great gift for this world. Although you might sometimes feel like a cog in a huge machine, that you don't really matter in the great scheme of things, the truth is that you are fully eligible for a meaningful life, a mystical life, a life of the greatest fulfillment and service...”

―Bill Plotkin

Author of Soulcraft, Wild Mind, Nature and the Human Soul and The Journey of Soul Initiation

FOUR AREAS OF FOCUS

  • Individual Unfoldment

    To show up for our people, the earth and our own deepest calling we first tend to our own bodies and minds through self-care inquiry and tools of emotional resilience.

  • Soul-Centric Community

    By taking up the ways of life-affirming communication, conflict resolution, working collaboratively and collective visioning, we learn to share life together.

  • Other-Than-Human World

    Opening to our place in the wider web of life, we return to Earth to know the wild others who dwell there and to grow our capacities to be at home in the wild.

  • Deep Time

    Knowing how we are born for these very days, we extend our awareness beyond our individual lives and lifetimes - dedicating our actions to the past, present and future — our ancestors and those yet to come.

FULL CURRICULUM

LODGING, FOOD, AND DAILY STRUCTURE

  • LodginG

    Separated by only a few miles of the Taconic Range along the New York/Vermont state border, students will split time between our twin residential-learning centers: Pompanuck Farm to the west and Spirit Hollow to the east. We will spend the majority of our experiential learning days in the wilds of Spirit Hollow, retiring in the evenings to Pompanuck for shared meals, occasional evening sessions, and social time and rest in the cozy Roundhouse.

  • Food

    Our meals are healthy and delicious with Breakfast and Lunch prepared individually from our collective stores and Dinners cooked and shared communally, often with ingredients sourced from our own gardens. Kitchencraft is a key part of our holistic curriculum — offering each student the tools to feel confident to engage with the full life cycle of our food from seed to harvest, table to plate. Vegan, vegetarian, GF and kosher options available.

  • Daily Structure

    We strive to strike a balance between intentional structure and organic emergence, solo autonomy and group responsibility. Weekdays constitute the bulk of our hands-on learning time with a daily rhythm. After sharing our evening meal, we typically move into unstructured time, with further evening sessions sprinkled throughout the week. Weekends are for unstructured time, rest and attending practical needs as well as periodic outings or workshops.

DETAILS

MEET YOUR GUIDES

“What shape waits in the seed of you to grow and spread its branches against a future sky?”

— David Whyte

WHAT ALUMNI SAY

  • Valuable and Impactful

    I can’t recommend this program enough, which has been one of the most valuable, impactful experiences of my life. Be prepared to truly dive deep into your soul and open yourself up! It has helped me grow as an individual, emotionally and spiritually. The staff is so kind and supports every person on their journey, and the people you meet become your lifelong friends.

    Frances F., Massachusetts, Summer Sessions, 2021 and 2022

  • Healing and RevujvenatinG

    Earth Craft is one of the best experiences I've had in my entire life. There were so many supportive people, and I spent most of my time outside on the absolutely gorgeous land, which is very healing and rejuvenating. I received a ton of healing and growth through the time I spent at Earth Craft, something I feel very fortunate to have experienced.

    Archer C., Massachusetts, Summer Sessions, 2022 and 2023

  • The Deepest Parts of Myself

    Earth Craft has helped teach me so much about myself, my desires and goals, and my barriers/traumas that I allowed to hold me back. The tools this program have instilled in me have changed the way I live and have helped me take charge of my life. The guides are some of the most amazing people I have ever met, and they will help you connect to some of the deepest parts of yourself. I loved bonding with beautiful human beings, working on self-growth, and dreaming about the world we can create.

    Vicki R., upstate New York, Summer Sessions, 2021, 2022, and 2023

  • What my Soul Yearned For

    After a year of uncertainty, coming to Spirit Hollow was exactly what I needed to figure out what my soul truly yearned for. This experience was transforming. My peers and the inspiring guides really helped change my perspective. To dig deep and hold space is something I couldn’t do on my own before coming: to create a bond with the forest, to come back to Earth, and to feel what is REAL. When I came back home, I felt whole for the first time. My Being was so tended to and so loved. Now I have more tools that I can use every day to help me come back to wholeness.

    Sita W., Florida, Summer 2021

  • This is my Family

    Earth Craft was a beautiful experience—so peaceful, calming, loving, and everyone accepted each other. I met so many amazing people. We came together, and it was like we had met each other before, like we’d been together before. And I knew, this is my family; this is my soul tribe.

    Thomas C., St. Louis, Summer Session 2021

The gifts you bring to the table

Kimbers, one of your guides, shares who we are calling in—young adults like you!

A Synergistic Blend

Earth Craft Guide, Deer Ryder, talks about what makes our program so special.

The Tools are so Potent

Summer Session Alums Vicki and Emily describe what Earth Craft means to them.

“Earth Craft is a compelling, gorgeous offering . . . a socio-cultural acupuncture point for the health of the whole.”

~ Dr. Hilary Leighton, PhD
Ecopsychologist, Registered Clinical Counsellor, True Nature Counselling & Psychotherapy; Associate Professor, School of Environment and Sustainability, Royal Roads University; The Work That Reconnects Facilitator; Animas Valley Institute Board Member

Make a donation.

Dear Funders—

We are attempting to raise as much scholarship money as possible to make sure EARTH CRAFT GAP SEMESTER is accessible to everyone who feels called to attend, regardless of financial means. You secure donation is tax-deductible! Thank you from the whole Earth Community!

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