Meet Our Staff

Founder, Director & Field Staff

Neill Bovaird has been practicing and teaching wilderness skills since 1998. He has a B.S. in Natural Resource Conservation from UMass Amherst and holds a Track and Sign Professional certification and a Trailing Level III certification through the CyberTracker Conservation. Neill has been a facilitator at Art of Mentoring since 2001 and has studied under Jon Young, Mark Elbroch, Errett Callahan, and Steve Watts.

In addition to being the founder and director of Wolf Tree Programs LLC, Neill has taught wilderness skills at countless private and public schools, nature centers, museums, conferences, elder hostels, and camps. Neill’s passions include flintknapping, bow making, hide tanning, tracking, megalithic construction, hunting and wandering in the wilderness.

Director of Youth Programs & Field Staff

Since 2011, Kyle has been working in outdoor and environmental education, leading experiences in backpacking, canoeing and kayaking, caving, climbing, leadership development, naturalism, teambuilding, tracking, and wilderness skills. Kyle holds a Bachelor’s degree in Ecopsychology, as well as a Master’s degree in Environmental Studies - Conservation Biology, and has taught courses in Earth Science, Mammalogy, and the Physical Sciences at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

Kyle has worked with participants of all ages and backgrounds from local schools, colleges and universities, non-profits, libraries, corporations, homeschooling groups, and summer camps.

Family is most important to Kyle, especially his two daughters and his wife. He is also passionate about learning, reading, hunting, tracking, wilderness skills, music, and mindfulness.

Field Staff

Erica grew up as a participant in nature connection programs, practicing ancestral skills in community since the age of 8. It was a natural transition to leading nature programs, which she started at the age of 12 and hasn't stopped since! She has traveled all over the world, staffing programs such as the Art of Mentoring, running various programs with Wolf Tree, and leading her own nature connection group in Santa Cruz, CA for a year.

Her homeschooled upbringing allowed her to follow her passions, which include singing (she is part of a singing group which has been gathering for 1000+ consecutive days), basket weaving, animal raising, sewing, crafting of all kinds, and dancing. She lives on Brooks Bend Farm, where she raises cows, sheep, chickens, pigs, and bees.

Field Staff

After several years working for Earthwatch Institute Eric left the office. He continues to assist Earthwatch researchers in the field and has facilitated fifteen teen expeditions. He began staffing Wolf Tree programs in 2015. His two children participate in Wolf Tree’s camps and the Tupelo weekends.

Eric earned a BA in English from Washington and Lee University and a MSEd from the University of Pennsylvania. He is certified as a Wilderness First Responder and holds a Level III Track and Sign rating. A favorite honor was once overhearing his daughter designate his profession as Adventurer.

He often wanders off trail - especially when deer, moose or a local carnivore’s tracks reveal another path. He believes in a mentoring style that similarly goes “off trail” and he strives to inspire other adventurers young and old.

Field Staff

Luna moves through life with a playful yet attentive attitude. Her skills and passions lie within educating others and encouraging their interests. She has been an educator of young children since 2009. Over the years, she’s gained experience in and out of the classroom working with diverse learners, gracefully sewing together academic learning with emergent experiences outdoors. Luna lives in Harrisville, NH where she relishes the grounding effects of nature and outdoor adventure with her family.

Field Staff

"Grace grew up playing in the woods at Wolf Tree. She first started as a participant in 2007, and later joined as a staff member in 2016. Grace now staffs the very programs she grew up in, teaching both adult and youth programs and assisting in various workshops throughout the year.

Through Vermont Wilderness School, Grace has been deeply involved in the intergenerational Art of Mentoring program since the age of 5, where she attended this yearly-gathered community until she became a staff member in 2017.

Grace became passionate about working with leather in 2018 when she made her fist quiver. After apprenticing with a local leatherworker, she opened her own leather goods business where she now crafts custom knife sheaths, quivers, wallets, belts and more. She is passionate about mythology, leather crafting, hunting, tracking, food processing, and hide tanning."

Field Staff and Administrative Assistant

Eliza began her connection to the natural world as a child, upending rocks and logs in search of salamanders and going for endless explorations of the woods of Colrain, MA with her brothers.

For the past many years, Eliza has been working with youth in the outdoors in various settings including environmental education programs in the Poconos and after school programs in MA.

Eliza is enlivened by making music and crafts, cooking for big crowds, and deepening her connection with the natural world and the people in it. She loves to deepen community through skill building and aims to bring love and kindness wherever she goes.

Field Staff

David would like to thank his parents for sending him outside until sundown as a child. During this time he would run through the swamps of Eastern Mass turning over rocks and finding wild raspberries. Over the years of exploring New England he became aware of the innate healing that comes with connection to beings both human and other-than-human.

He is grateful to be a part of this journey alongside the youth with whom he works. David is passionate about tracking, working with fire, wild edibles, stillness, bark tanning, sense awareness, and having a blast. When not at Wolf Tree, David is with a nature-based outdoor childcare center in Western Mass.

Field Staff

Cat has a bachelor’s degree in Philosophy from Vassar College. She first discovered a love of working with children during a year spent teaching English to kids in the foothills of the Himalayas. Before moving to Montague in 2023, she spent 5 years working at an addiction recovery center in the Berkshires, where she guided hikes and camping trips, taught yoga and meditation, and facilitated therapeutic gardening, storytelling, music, and dance classes. Cat is passionate about holding space for kids, teens, and adults to cultivate a deeper connection to nature, their own bodies, and one another. In addition to her work with Wolf Tree, she works with Hearth, a wilderness rites of passage program for teen girls. She is also a visual artist & small business owner whose paintings celebrate cycles of nature, the moon, the seasons, herbs & fungi, the menstrual cycle and more, under the name Heart of the Earth Arts. In her free time, Cat enjoys gardening, reading, playing music, drinking tea, biking with her partner, swimming in the rivers, petting her two pet rabbits, and practicing ancestral skills like herbalism, foraging, woodworking and pottery-making.

Field Staff

Phoebe grew up homeschooled with plenty of time to play in the dirt. Her childhood backyard was a place where stray cows wandered and springtime sap buckets were set. Both Vermont Wilderness School and Flying Deer Nature Center played a large role in Phoebe's early life (she didn’t know it at the time, but she would come back to both their communities as a mentor). Big questions kept her mind humming as an adolescent, so she decided to study philosophy at a Great Books college in sunny Santa Fe. With that under her belt, she began nature connection mentoring and hasn’t looked back. This year, she’s adding to her plate science teaching at a Waldorf high school, learning to play the piano, and singing in 4-part harmonies!

Field Staff

Bryn lives in Greenfield, Massachusetts, and is in her senior year of high school where she is part of her school's Climate Club. Outside of school she enjoys reading, making art, music and spending time outside. Bryn has been participating in Wolf Tree programs since 2016, but has been involved with nature programs since she was 7. Some of her favorite things about Wolf Tree include riddles, learning about the plants and animals of western Massachusetts, and spending time with those who are also passionate about nature. She hopes that she can continue to share her love and passion for the natural world with others well into college.