Through earth-living skills and group challenges, youth develop empowered self-reliance as well as the ability to serve as part of a team.

Nature serves as a powerful teacher of bravery, interconnected relationship, inner-resilience, and inspiration. Tracking, stalking, friction fire, tool-making, bird language, shelter-building, story, song, and more are tools to create caring and awake young adults.

At Atlatl we mix guided play-based learning with structured skill-building activities to help youth develop into capable, empowered, young men, supported by their connections to nature, self, peers and mentors.

Activities might include:
– Tracking
– Fire building and fire-by-friction
– Stalking and the art of camouflage
– Wandering with awareness
– Sensory games
– Navigation
– Storytelling
– Discovering natural mysteries
– Shelter building
– Making natural cord and rope
– Crafting
– Being outdoors through different seasons and weather
– Games and play
– and more!

Youth are given opportunities to learn and develop skills, test themselves in exhilarating situations and have new and fun experiences with mentors and other youth their age.

Our activities include a wide variety of team-building games, which require young men and masculine-identifying youth to flex their decision-making muscles, voice their ideas, and cultivate a plethora of leadership capacities, including awareness and sensory acuteness, self-care and care of others, quiet mind and patience, cooperation, empathy and embracing differences, puzzle solving, detecting patterns and tracking changes, and healthy assertiveness.

The name Atlatl (aht-lat) comes from the Aztec language meaning extended arm. Though Cortez and his men called them estólica (spear-throwers) and feared them for their ability to puncture their chain mail and cotton armor.

The oldest version of the Atlatl tool was used over 30,000 years ago to hunt mammoths, and is still a used today by the First Nations people of Australia and New Guinea. Other modern day uses of the Atlatl include spear throwing for sport, with awards for both distance and accuracy. The farthest recorded throw was around 850 feet.

To us, the Atlatl represents a symbolic extension of our own arms into the natural world, into our communities, into our ancestry and history, and into the youth, allowing us to propel ourselves further than we could possibly hope to alone.

Ages 9 to 14, Artemis – for femme identifying youth, open to all
Ages 9 to 14, Atlatl – for masc identifying youth, open to all
Ages 14 to 17, Ropes – for all teens in high school

Why are Youth Year-Round Programs gender-based?

We have polled our campers and staff and have learned that during this formative time being with a group of any gender(s), masc, or femme, identifying peers is what supports them most in feeling safe, seen and celebrated.

Though these groups have different names the curriculum arcs are similar throughout. We trust all campers and families to choose the group that most supports their identity and needs.

Wild Earth strives to make our programs accessible for all. If you have a disability and are interested in attending this program, please reach out to discuss with our team to see what may be possible.

Wild Earth Office | (845) 256-9830, hello@wildearth.org