Past Teachers
For decades, Lost Valley Educational Center has been bringing in leading voices in regenerative agriculture, permaculture, interpersonal communication, rewilding, and ancestral skills to teach our students and community.
Sobonfu Somé
Destined from birth to teach the ancient wisdom, ritual and practices of her ancestors to those in the West, Sobonfu, whose name means “keeper of the rituals” travels the world on a healing mission sharing the rich spiritual life and culture of her native land Burkina Faso, which ranks as one of the world’s poorest countries yet one of the richest in spiritual life and custom.
Recognized by the village elders as possessing special gifts from birth, Sobonfu’s destiny was foretold before her birth, as is the custom of the Dagara Tribe of Burkina Faso and was fostered by early education in ritual and initiation in preparation for her life’s work. “My work is really a journey in self discovery and in building community through rituals,” says Sobonfu. Dagara rituals involve healing and preparing the mind, body, spirit and soul to receive the spirituality that is all around us. “It is always challenging to bring the spiritual into the material world, but it is one of the only ways we can put people back in touch with the earth and their inner values.”
It is this reliance on spirit, community and ritual that has allowed Sobonfu’s personal and professional path to become one. Since the beginning of her journey in the West Sobonfu has traveled extensively throughout North America and Europe, conducting workshops on spirituality, ritual, the sacred and intimacy. Her work has moved African spiritual practices from the realm of anthropology, to a place alongside the world’s great spiritual tradition, with a message of profound significance and practical application in the lives of Westerners.
Sobonfu has written two books, “The Spirit of Intimacy” (William Morrow) and “Welcoming Spirit Home” (New World Library), her newest offering which draws on rituals and practices involving community, birth miscarriage and children.
Joanna Macy
Joanna Macy is an environmental activist, author, and scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory, and deep ecology. She is the author of twelve books.
Macy graduated from Wellesley College in 1950 and received her Ph.D in Religious Studies in 1978 from Syracuse University, Syracuse. Her doctoral work, under the mentorship of Ervin László, focused on convergences between causation in systems thinking and the Buddhist central doctrine of mutual causality or interdependent co-arising. She is an international spokesperson for anti-nuclear causes, peace, justice, and environmentalism,[1] most renowned for her book Coming Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World and the Great Turning initiative, which deals with the transformation from, as she terms it, an industrial growth society to what she considers to be a more sustainable civilization. She has created a theoretical framework for personal and social change, and a workshop methodology for its application. Her work addresses psychological and spiritual issues, Buddhist thought, and contemporary science.
Jon Young
For over 40 years, Jon Young has been a leader in the field of nature-based education, implementing vital advancements in the understanding and benefits of effective nature connection modeling. Jon is a deep nature connection mentor, wildlife tracker, peacemaker, author, workshop leader, consultant, inspiring public speaker and storyteller.
Jon Young has appeared as an expert in numerous documentaries concerning nature and ecology and travels to teach widely throughout North America, Europe, Australia and southern Africa. He has authored and co-authored several seminal works on deep nature connection and connection mentoring, including What the Robin Knows: How Birds Reveal the Secrets of the Natural World (2013), and Coyote's Guide to Connecting to Nature (2007).
In 2016, he received the Champion of Environmental Education Award for his innovative work, which has inspired positive developments in the field, and fostered the growth of the nature connection movement on a global level. Jon appeared as a presenter at Notre Dame University’s Center for Social Concerns Sustainable Wisdom Conference (2016) and contributed a chapter to the text from the proceedings entitled Indigenous Sustainable Wisdom: First-Nation Know-How for Global Flourishing (2019).
As co-founder of the 8 Shields model, Jon Young has established a best-practices process for nature connection mentoring. He is a leader in an international network of consultants and trainers working to cultivate effective nature- and people-connection mentoring programs in communities and organizations, and is dedicated to aiding and promoting nature-based cultural regeneration for the benefit of current and future generations. Jon is currently part of a global design team founding an innovative enterprise to scale self-, people-, and nature-connection modeling through a collaboration of digital platforms, media, a global network of practitioners and a team including original San Bushman cultural elders.
Penny Livingston-Stark
Penny Livingston-Stark is internationally recognized as a prominent permaculture teacher, designer, and speaker. She holds a MS in Eco-Social Regeneration and 3 Diplomas in Permaculture Design. Penny has been studying the Hermetic Tradition of alchemy and herbal medicine making in Europe, Indonesia and the United States. She has taught hundreds of Permaculture Design Certification courses worldwide in addition to advanced courses.
Penny has sat on the board of the Permaculture Institute of North America as well as the Building Appeals Board for the County of Marin, after being unanimously approved by the Marin County Supervisors. She was also a founding board member for the Redwood Empire Chapter of the US Green Building Council.
She has studied, taught with, hosted and learned directly Bill Mollison, and David Holmgren the co-founders of Permaculture and the developers of the Permaculture Design Certification Course curriculum.
Hazel Ward
Hazel is a long time resident of the Southern Oregon/Mount Shasta bioregion first settling here in the early 70’s, and has been advising farms, stewarding forests, and teaching Environmental Sciences for more than fifty years.
Their focus for this 21st century has been Social Forestry, restoring Oak/Pine Savannah in Little Wolf Gulch near Ruch, OR, demonstrating natural building, fuel hazard materials utilization, multiple products woods-crafting, wildlife support and desert forest water management.
As a youth, Hazel grew a vegetable garden from age five, trained in wildflower gardening with god-grandmother May Barton, taught two summers in the Nature Lodge at Camp Wakapominee, was an active participant in the life of their traditional culture, performed in a folk music trio with brothers Tim and Josh, and sang in choir and school sectional choruses.
During college, Hazel became an experienced winter mountaineer, water safety instructor, rock climber and caver, studied abroad and performed folk music in France during 1968, participated in Vietnam medical relief efforts, and managed to graduate under political duress.
After having earned degrees in Forestry and Systematic Botany from Syracuse University and SUNY College of Forestry, 1969, Hazel taught Wild Edible Plants and Woods-lore at Laney College in Oakland CA in the early 70’s. After helping Bill Mollison teach the first Permaculture Design Course at Evergreen State College in 1982, they have been instrumental in teaching and spreading Permaculture practices. They have taught at D-Q University in Davis CA, Thlolego Learning Centre in South Africa, Earth Passengers in Taiwan, Heartwood Institute in Northern California, Aprovecho Institute, and The Wilderness Charter School at Ashland High School, as well as at many other institutes and communities.
Toby Hemenway
Toby Hemenway is the author of Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture, which was awarded the Nautilus Gold Medal in 2011, was named by the Washington Post as one of the ten best gardening books of 2010, and is the best-selling permaculture book in the world.
Toby passed away in late 2016 after a battle with pancreatic cancer.
His last book on urban permaculture, The Permaculture City, was released in July, 2015.
Toby was an adjunct professor at Portland State University, Scholar-in-Residence at Pacific University, and taught over sixty 72-hour permaculture design courses. He presented lectures and workshops at major sustainability conferences such as Bioneers, SolFest, and EcoFarm, and at Duke University, Tufts University, University of Minnesota, University of Delaware and many other educational venues. His writing has appeared in magazines such as Natural Home, Whole Earth Review, and American Gardener. He contributed book chapters for WorldWatch Institute and to several publications on ecological design.
After obtaining a degree in biology from Tufts University, Toby worked for many years as a researcher in genetics and immunology, first in academic laboratories including Harvard and the University of Washington in Seattle, and then at Immunex, a major medical biotech company. At about the time he was growing dissatisfied with the direction biotechnology was taking, he discovered permaculture, a design approach based on ecological principles that creates sustainable landscapes, homes, and workplaces. A career change followed, and Toby and his wife, Kiel, spent ten years creating a rural permaculture site in southern Oregon. He was the editor of Permaculture Activist, a journal of ecological design and sustainable culture, from 1999 to 2004. He moved to Portland, Oregon in 2004, and spent six years developing urban sustainability resources there. Toby passed away in December 2016.
Jude Hobbs
Jude is an internationally recognized permaculturist with 35 years’ experience in the design and teaching fields. She utilizes whole-system design techniques providing environmentally sound solutions in urban and rural settings which promotes sustainable actions.
Through her business, Ago-Ecology Northwest, Jude specializes in encouraging farm management practices for optimizing resource conservation, biodiversity, watershed enhancement and income diversification.
As an educator she conveys her passion for permaculture by providing curricula developed to encompass diverse learning styles with teaching techniques that are accessible, inspiring and information rich. Her courses offer a safe place for learning, the strategies to understand whole systems design and the confidence to get out there to do awesome work via a tool kit for action.
Jude’s intention is to empower people to creatively change their everyday patterns so as to care for the earth and each other.
As a co-founder of the Permaculture Institute of North America (PINA) and Cascadia Permaculture Institute (CPI) she actively supports the next generation of permaculturists through continuing education and professional development.
Michael Pilarski
MICHAEL “SKEETER” PILARSKI is a life-long student of plants and earth repair. His farming career started in 2nd grade and his organic farming career began in 1972 at age 25. Michael founded Friends of the Trees Society in 1978 and took his first permaculture design course in 1982. Since 1988 he has taught 36 permaculture design courses in the US and abroad. His specialties include earth repair, agriculture, seed collecting, nursery sales, tree planting, fruit picking, permaculture, agroforestry, forestry, ethnobotany, medicinal herb growing, hoeing and wildcrafting. He has hands-on experience with over 1000 species of plants. He is a prolific gathering organizer and likes group singing.
Starhawk
Starhawk is an author, activist, permaculture designer and teacher, and a prominent voice in modern earth-based spirituality and ecofeminism. She is the author or co-author of thirteen books, including The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess and the ecotopian novel The Fifth Sacred Thing, and its sequel City of Refuge.
Her most recent non-fiction book is The Empowerment Manual: A Guide for Collaborative Groups, on group dynamics, power, conflict and communications.
Starhawk founded Earth Activist Training, teaching permaculture design grounded in spirituality and with a focus on activism. She travels internationally, lecturing and teaching on earth-based spirituality, the tools of ritual, and the skills of activism.