SkyEarth Host/Co-Founder

Scott is the owner of Prairie Haven Texas, the land upon which SkyEarth takes place.  After years of attending other gatherings and having his life positiviely impacted, it became clear to him that offering his land for a gathering could make an impact on other people's lives as well.  Scott started SkyEarth in 2018 with help from Rabbitstick/Wintercount founder Joshua Sage and has been sole operator since 2020. 

Scott has plans to reclaim the land in a way that will nurture and heal it following previous conventional land management practices. To regenerate his land he raises cattle and intermittently smaller ruminants using holistic management and permaculture design practices to restore the native landscape. 

Scott, a Lonesome Dove cowboy at heart, also keeps horses and teaches riding lessons on his property. 

The generosity of Scott and his family is evident as they share this special land with SkyEarth guests each year.

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"Uva Uvam Vivendo Varia Fit"

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Kids Camp Leader

Born and raised in Texas, Chris has spent his whole life wandering and exploring the wild places. Fishing along the coast in Corpus Christi, hiking the trails of State Parks across Texas, exploring the piney woods of Big Thicket and discovering all that nature offered as mysteries along the way. After high school Chris traveled across the country taking classes from dozens of different outdoor schools that focused on modern, native and traditional skills of living, as well as leadership, homesteading and permaculture. Beginning in 2009 Chris began working in environmental education for youth and adults teaching outdoor leadership skills, archery, bow making, wildlife tracking, edible plants and survival skills. In 2014 Chris opened Natureversity to help homeschool communities around Austin and Dripping Springs reconnect with nature through the practice of hands-on and passion-led learning while being outside. He lives in Austin Texas, he enjoys traveling to new locations in Texas, making bows and arrows, primitive hunting, fishing and tracking wildlife. 

Chris will be leading our children's education component of SkyEarth.

Camp Mom

As SkyEarth Camp Mom, Lacey Proffitt assists wtih registration, class scheduling, and event management and logistics.  Have a question? She probably has an answer...or will at least make something up!

Lacey is the part-time Agriculture Lead at Jourdan-Bachman Pioneer Farms, a living history museum showcasing 1800s living in central Texas. Her role involves caring for the longhorns, horses, donkeys, chickens, heritage turkeys, and homestead site gardens and crop fields, as well as making spaces for future livestock such as goats, sheep, and pigs.  Always attracted to the outdoors, she has been fascinated by the interactions and connectivity in natural systems which led her to study biology and the natural sciences in college. She uses this background as well as her Permaculture Design Certificate and study of Holistic Management to create thriving agricultural systems at Pioneer Farms. In addition to caretaking and land management/planning, she also teaches the farm and garden classes through Pioneer Farms' Folk Arts School.

In her spare time she raises her own chickens, dairy goats, cares for her mother's beefmaster cattle, and is a "lazy gardener" who appreciates the value and purpose of the "weeds" growing in the nooks and crannies of her garden.

Doug is from NE Arkansas and is the Founder and Owner of Earth Trekker Bushcraft.  He is trained in:

• woodland survival in the Arkansas and Missouri Ozarks

• desert survival in Arizona and Utah

• jungle and coastal survival in Costa Rica and Hawaii; northern woodlands of Maine

Dave Holladay is coming again to teach at SkyEarth! He is widely regarded as one of the country's foremost educators in Stone Age living skills, David is a frequent lecturer, author, and consultant on primitive technologies, edible/medicinal plants, and pre-Columbian culture. He served for 18 years as head instructor at the Boulder Outdoor Survival School and was education director of Anasazi, a wilderness program for teens. David has served as a consultant for products such as Cast Away, Survivorman, Man vs. Wild, Road Rules, and numerous others, and was most recently featured on No Man's Land, a History Channel production.

Kristina Tourtillott grew up in the Midwest and still calls the same area home, where she spends her days with her children, foraging, making beautiful ‘Bushcraft Creations’ and writing. She loves to travel and is always up for an adventure. When she learned of primitive skills, her world drastically changed. A closer walk with nature produced a life change that lead to better nutrition and wellness, beyond what she had ever thought possible. She went on to attend several gatherings and schools to learn skills and to broaden her new thought process. Kristina has been teaching wild edible cooking at survival schools and gatherings for several years.

Please join our Cooking with wild edibles class, we have a fantastic menu planned!! Kristina will also be teaching us how to use English Ivy and conkers to wash our clothes, our body and our hair. This will be a FUN class, come spruce up with us! In another class, we’ll be making all natural lotion bars and black drawing salve. The bars are luxurious and good for your skin! The black salve is perfect for throwing in a pack or purse for adventure. We will also spend some time picking dandelions and make an amazing dandelion jelly!! It is DELICIOUS!!

Largely inspired by his Native American heritage, Phil spends a lot of time in the wild with minimal gear to further his connection with nature. He is the owner and lead instructor of “Primitive Wilderness Survival” and teaches the primitive portion of the Pathfinder instructor course. He has taught alongside and learned from many of the greatest instructors on the planet and put his skills to the test in the Canadian Arctic for a month on the show Alone: The Beast.

Robin owns and operates Earth Knack Stone Age Living Skills in Crestone, CO and has been working in the outdoor field since 1978 when she began leading horse packing trips into the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness for Adventure Unlimited Ranches, eventually directing their mountaineering program. She began teaching for Larry Olsen’s School of Urban and Wilderness Survival in 1984, the National Outdoor Leadership School and Outward Bound. She holds a B.A. in English Literature, a minor in Spanish from the University of Colorado, Boulder, as well as a B.S. in Education with a Colorado elementary teaching certification. Currently she also “moonlights” as the 4th and 5th grade teacher at the Crestone Charter school, which she helped to establish in 1995. She is the author (and illustrator) of How To Play In The Woods, published in 2016 by Gibbs Smith, Publishers, and co-authored and illustrated Earth Knack Stone Age Skills for the 21st Century, also published by Gibbs Smith in 1996. Robin made a friction fire for Katie Couric on The Today Show, has been featured in publications including Outside Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, The Denver Post, and appeared on Channel 4 news programs in Denver featuring self-sufficient and sustainable lifestyles. All her Air b-n-b listings on the Earth Knack property are self designed and architected, hand built, homemade, alternative and eco-friendly buildings; methods that she also teaches through her Earth Knack programs.

Matt's primitive skills background started like most as a kid.  He was lucky enough to grow up out in the country and spent all his summers running wild - fishing, hunting, and building shelters (forts in the woods).  When he was 19 he was introduced to archery and spent the next 10 plus years bowhunting everything possible.  His favorite time of the year has always been September in the mountains chasing elk.  Around 2012 he heard about the Rabbitstick gathering in Idaho.   In 2018 he made the long trip and it changed him for good.   Now September is spent in Idaho not elk hunting.  The skills and community he found there are 2nd to none.  Since that trip he's been to seven other gatherings.  He looks forward to teaching and learning new skills at SkyEarth this year.  Some of his favorite skills are fire, camp crafts, atlatls, and knife making.

 Tony Pike is the founder of Ancient Wisdom Survival School and has been teaching survival skills for over two decades. You may have seen him on a season of Bushcraft Build-Off on the Discovery Channel. He grew up in a family that lived a lifestyle of self-reliance, a fact he directly attributes to his intense passion for thriving in a minimalist environment. His father challenged him every day, testing his resolve, something he explains was crucial to the mental resolve needed to survive challenging situations and created the drive to become a nationally ranked power lifter. Because of this self reliant lifestyle he soon developed a deep respect for the ways of the Native Americans' ability to live off the land. 

The youngest of 5 siblings, Tony helped his dad trap, hunt, and fish from a very early age, and takes pride in the fact that he helped feed his family as a young boy. He found his first arrow head at age 7, at which time he became fascinated by seeing how such beautiful creations could be crafted from simple rocks. He went on to explore many primitive skills from that point in his childhood until today. Much of his free time is spent with experimental and amateur archeology.

Alfonso has been a firearms instructor since 2017 in pistol, rifle, shotgun, and carbine.  He became a law enforcement designated marksman in 2018 and currently has over 500 hours of SWAT training. He is TCCC and TECC qualified, a Certified Wilderness first responder since 2019and a member of East Texas Search and Rescue. In July 2021 he became a Certified Law enforcement Active Shootee response instructor. 

All of this experience makes him especially qualified to teach a special class at SkyEarth on Mindset: Surviving an Active Shooter Event.

Justin  was born and raised in east Texas, grew up on 105 acres, where he and his siblings and cousins played cowboys and Indians and pony express all on horseback. He had a love for the land and always felt he needed to learn to use it, not just live on it.  His grandfather taught him things like primitives traps, making bows and arrows from trees and shrubs, which trees to use for headaches and toothaches. and on and on. These little things began to form his love of learning primitive skills and ways of living whic guide him today.

Dan and his wife Carolyn enjoy raising cows, goats, and chickens, keeping bees, tending an orchard, gardening, and enjoy practicing a wide range of primitive living skills from harvesting wild foods, butchering and preserving meats, drying and fermenting fruits and vegetables, blacksmithing, etc.   ​

Carolyn Fauber lives with husband Dan and raises goats and cattle and a few chickens. Her passion is to become and to help people be resilient, healthy, and self-sufficient.

Carolyn has been instrumental in our animal dispatching class at SkyEarth. She and Dan have donated a goat to be dispatched and processed fully in our classes the last few years.

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Jen is a proud member of Earth Trekker Bushcraft and an herbalist currently studying natural integrative medicine at the American College of Healthcare Sciences in Oregon. She is a long time nature/ outdoor enthusiast and grew up learning folk medicine from her grandmother. She has many years of experience camping with her military-family childhood.

Courtney Taylor has been foraging wild food for 20 years, in a variety of ecosystems and climates from the tropical jungles of Hawaii to the arid hills of Arizona and northern California, but the majority of her experience is in North Texas, which she has called home for most of her life. She’s been teaching foraging classes for 10 years, and has compiled her North Texas teaching and foraging experience into an ebook--North Texas Edible Wild Plant Basics--and runs the Wild Foraging North Texas Facebook group. When she’s not foraging, she’s enjoying time with her husband and two children, hiking, backpacking, camping, gardening, reading, and writing.

Willow Ann Iives in the high desert mountains of Colorado. Thriving, Serving, Teaching, learning and growing along side her teen daughters. This year Willow and the girls will be back at SkyEarth guiding the Archery range, teaching “The basics of bare bow”

for all ages.

As a child, Willow had the unique opportunity of traveling and competing in archery tournaments all over the US, learning from her father a professional archer of forty years.

Willow now uses archery as a meditation, she’s thrilled to share her life long knowledge to the SkyEarth family

Ash Wiecek has been cooking at SkyEarth for years. This year she’ll be teaching for us! She is a homeschooling mom, homesteader, naturalist, farm-to-table chef, local and slow food entrepreneur, horticulturist, herbalist, and forager. Life forever changed for her in 2011 when her son was diagnosed with a rare genetic condition that was healed through supporting his body with proper nutrition rather than conventional medical treatment. From this point on, her priorities changed and grew into educating others on how food and plants can be a natural medicine to support them in the journey through life as well. Her passions include connecting other humans, especially tiny humans, with the natural world around us. As an educator at Greenbriar Community School, she loves teaching others to grow, produce, and process food and plant medicine in relation to their nutritional needs and overall health/lifestyle. She also feels that living within community is a big part of raising and supporting our children and helping to heal the world from trauma. She thoroughly enjoys working with people to build strong relationships to themselves and others through nature and community. Her current projects include operating the Greenbriar Community Garden and her new start-up herbalism apothecary: Full Circle Botanicals. She lives, works and thrives with her family in an off-grid homestead nestled in the woods at Greenbriar’s surrounding intentional community.

Natalie Simmons started Silva Outschool, a permaculture & sustainability homeschool co-op, in the fall of 2020. She received her Intro to Engaging Children in Permaculture Certification  in 2021 & her Permaculture Design Course for Educators of Children in 2022 from Children in Permaculture. She received her Professional Permaculture Design Certificate from OSU in 2022. Continuing her education, she is currently taking the Soil Regen course from Matt Powers and the Fungi Ecology course at Fungi Academy. 

Kristy Knight lives with her husband and 3 children in rural Colorado. For the past 11 years she and her family have been passionate about sustainability and live in an off the grid home they built themselves. They raise not only their 3 children but beautiful gardens, goats and chickens. Kristy is a homeschool leader, Children’s Art Educator- 20+ years, Herbalist, Gardener and Earth Lover. Kristy currently teaches Art Education and Herbalism at her local charter school, a K-12 school community focused on experiential learning and outdoor education. She will be bringing the 4th and 5th grade students to SkyEarth this year and teaching children’s classes such as Pottery, Felting, Salve Making and Nature Sketching.

Jonathan Burton is an outdoorsman, brand ambassador/influencer and wilderness skills instructor, that loves to share a campfire with anyone who would welcome him.

Canoeing, kayaking and camping since a young boy, working and living off grid in Alaska as a canoe guide and naturalist, he does his best to document it all as a content creator under the brand “TheBeardedBurton.”

Ryan Copeland has been working with land owners to make their properties more abundant for food production and wildlife since 2014. In Texas that usually means earthworks for water retention. It also includes using animals to improve the quality of the land with active management. Perennials, like trees, are a large tool used in making the landscape productive. Coaching clients into understanding the ecosystem as a whole system is key in managing the land effectively. He has used his understanding of working with nature with: homesteaders, urban homes, orphanages, churches, and refugees at UN settlements.

TJ Fabby is a Texas plantsman who has spent over 20 years studying, collecting, and growing all kinds of plants and trees. His goal is to naturalize as many edible and medicinal plants on his property as possible. He has owned Liberty Tree Service in Waxahachie, Texas for 13 years. When he's not working with his crew, TJ enjoys gardening, foraging, spending time with family and friends, and lending his voice to the cause of individual Liberty.