About Us
Western Mass. Wilderness Rites is a nonprofit organization created and run by women. We offer nature-based programs and rites of passage ceremonies in Western Massachusetts.
We began with a vision of a girls’ rite of passage that arrived during a four day solo fast. Seeing and feeling a need within our own community we began the work of bringing this into being. Together we hold many years of experience counseling, guiding, teaching, mentoring, mothering, making, learning, and wandering; and from all of this Western Mass Wilderness Rites has emerged.
Our goal is to provide ceremony and programs to help repair our culture and strengthen our communities by supporting and guiding individuals toward more profound relationships with place, people, and self over multiple years.
Staff
Grace Martenson
Grace grew up walking through the woods every Wednesday to attend Wolf Tree programs. She has been attending the Art of Mentoring since she was 5, and participated in two solos when she was a young teenager. 2 years ago Grace participated in a 4 day wilderness vigil fast, and has since become passionate about working to create Rite of Passages for the young women of the community. Grace is First Aid and CPR Certified.
Eliza Hollister
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, currently with Wolf Tree Programs. Eliza is enlivened by making music and crafts, and deepening her connection with the natural world and the people in it. Eliza is First Aid and CPR Certified.
Erica Martenson
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 Wolf Tree programs, 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. Erica is First Aid and CPR Certified.
Natasha Rose Diamondstone-Kohout
Natasha Rose Diamondstone-Kohout was born at the foot of Black Mountain and the banks of the West River in what is now Southern Vermont. She was raised by an herbalist and a birch bark canoe builder and spent much of her youth clambering along the banks of streams and rivers and even more time in them. Her love of painting, sculpting, travel, nature connection work, fire building and the rhythms of the natural world have brought her across the globe and back home again. Natasha has worked as a white water and bikepacking guide in South America and a nature connection teacher with many programs spanning New England and the British Isles. Natasha is a certified Wilderness First Responder (WFR).
Kaitlyn Cronin
Kaitlyn’s work lives in the intersection of ecology, creativity, spirituality and the integration of Death in the sacred cycle of Life. Through embodied listening and deep reverence to the more-than-human kin, she embraces the unfolding path with reverence and curiosity. With the mycelial web as her greatest teacher and creation as her devotional practice, Kaitlyn weaves stories through visual art, immersive experience and somatic knowing. Kaitlyn lovingly acts as a threshold keeper for those amidst transition. By restoring ritual and rites of passage as a vital piece of the human experience, she hopes to embed us into our ecosystems and guide us to remember our interstitial and unique place within the expansive web of life.
Cat Tween
Cat Tween is a visual artist & small business owner whose paintings track cycles of nature, the moon, the seasons, herbs & fungi, the menstrual cycle and more, under the name Heart of the Earth Arts.
Cat has been working as a facilitator and guide in healing & transformational spaces for over 7 years now. She worked for 5 years in the wellness department of an addiction recovery center in the Berkshires where she taught yoga, qi gong, and meditation, facilitated therapeutic gardening, music, and dance, guided hikes and camping trips, and held sweat lodge ceremonies. Cat loves holding space for those navigating thresholds of great change in their lives—whether they be children, teens, or adults—and she is passionate about cultivating connection to nature, body awareness, and safe containers for emotional intimacy in community. In addition to her work with Hearth, she currently works in nature programs for young children through Wolf Tree.
Cat enjoys gardening, playing the guitar, biking with her partner, swimming in the rivers, cuddling her two pet rabbits, and practicing ancestral skills like herbalism, foraging, woodworking and pottery-making.