Kevin D

Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, Kevin had wilderness all around him. Summers of family camping and fishing trips to the mountains, forests and beaches of Washington and Oregon were the norm, but it wasn’t until his early twenties that Kevin discovered backpacking. On an eleven-day hike of the Wonderland Trail around Mount Rainier, the simplicity and self-sufficiency of carrying everything he needed on his back made a lasting impact on him, and he knew this was an experience he wanted to continue.

After graduating from Washington State University with a Bachelors in Social Sciences, he spent the next ten years working and living outside, finding a deep connection between his mental and physical well-being. Whether commercial fishing in the Bering Sea, sheep farming in rural Ireland, cattle ranching in the high desert of Eastern Oregon, riding motorcycles across the country several times, or backpacking over 10,000 miles of trails throughout the forests and deserts of the continental U.S., the stripped-away immediacy of performing life’s functions outdoors has kept him grounded and engaged with the people and places around him.
Kevin has volunteered and worked with young people throughout his life, and found it especially rewarding to impart some of the life lessons he’d learned while volunteering at an outdoor school for eight years. When he first discovered wilderness therapy, it seemed the ideal place to continue living, learning, and teaching life lessons in a setting distilled through the filter of the outdoors. He views every encounter at Elements as an opportunity for both he and the students to learn more about themselves and their relationships with others.

You will either find Kevin out on a trail or making bad puns, obscure movies references, and difficult decisions about which Clifford Brown album to listen to next.