Tatiana Ashbel
Teacher for The Elderberries
The forest and nature are a part of all my childhood memories.
Wild blueberry bushes were giants back then, tall enough to provide a perfect hiding spot. I would fall right into them, instead of picking berries, and lay quietly on my back, looking up at the sky through the branches in awe of the way the forest filters the sun, until my family would start looking for me frantically. I thought it was really funny :)
We lived in the capital city of Belarus, but the forest was all around us, and since not everyone had a car back then, we would often take a train to go picking - a paint bucket in each hand, one for berries, one for mushrooms, rain or shine…
When I was of walking and talking age, my mom signed me up for a forest school. Unlike regular schools, this was a 7 day, year round program, with parents visiting us on the weekends. Here, parents send their kids to boarding schools as a punishment, there - it was a really cool thing to do, it wasn’t easy to find a spot at a school like that, they were very popular.
We would hike, kayak and play among trees all day long, learn navigation skills, pick fresh, wild berries in the summer. I stil associate the smell of pine with the smell of my childhood, because of how much time I spent in the forest.
When I was seven or eight, my mom moved to the United States, with the idea that I was soon to follow, but things didn’t quite work out that way, and I stayed behind until I turned seventeen years of age.
In the meantime, she was able to send some money to my grandparents and they would sign me up for more forest schools and more travel camps.
I lived in a forest school in Bulgaria, then in Czech Republic, where we also studied architecture and traveled throughout Europe to visit famous castles, churches, iconic structures and natural caves.
Later, I was an exchange student in Spain, where I lived with a local Spanish family in a small town, in the mountains that border with Portugal. Travel was also a big part of that program. I got to explore all around Spain, visiting big cities like Cordoba, Malaga, Madrid and Grenada, equally spending time in small towns in the mountains, where everyone knew each other. It took one half a day to walk across the street, because of how many times one would have to stop and kiss everyone three times on the cheek (local custom) to say hello. Everyone knew each other… My assigned family owned an olive tree farm and taught me how to gather olives.
When I turned 17 I was finally given a visa to join my mom in the United States of America. She lived in New York City. It was a new world. A BIG change.
I attended my last year of school in Manhattan International High School in New York City, once again, exposed to the multicultural view of the world through the eyes of my peers, all of whom recently arrived in US from Belgium, Poland, Chad and Japan.
I fell in love with the Central Park, which was only a few blocks away from my school. Skipping classes quite often, I’d go listen to the birds in the park instead, explore caves, and trees, and rock formations, but mostly, find solace in this magical pocket of nature within this super busy, big, new place.
When I was 25 I flew with a friend to Los Angeles and in one trip we drove through all of California!
I remember getting a severe altitude sickness after deciding to snowboard off of Mammoth mountain (11,000 ft above sea level) on the same morning after leaving our campground on the Death Valley floor (280 ft below sea level) - the lowest point in North America. That was a bad call, please don’t ever do that. But aside from this one unfortunate event, I got to see giant sequoias, drive through a redwood tree, eat freshly harvested oysters by the shore in Drakes Bay, swim in hot springs in the middle of the desert and pick fresh dates in a desert oasis, eat prickly pears right off the road in Malibu, ride a bike through Calistoga, Napa to visit a petrified forest and we were even kindly invited to join a Thanksgiving dinner with a family who owns Frey vineyards in Mendocino. The moment their kids came back from the forest carrying freshly foraged chanterelle mushrooms - I knew - California was my place. For the first time I felt at home and knew where my own children will be raised.
I moved to LA soon after, met my then husband and became a mom to three magical boys. My oldest Evan is about to turn fifteen and my identical twins are eleven years old.
Since early age I have been taking them to all the hidden nature spots around LA and all around California, to show them this wonderful world - the Dunes of Malibu, the white sands of Carmel, the seals and cows of Point Reyes, the giant Redwoods and then… then we found Mount Shasta, which we now call our second home. We do not own a property there, most of the time we stay in the forest camping, and we always bring with us all of our kid friends.
Gradually, nature persuaded me to leave behind my career as a clinical pilates instructor and to focus solely on reconnecting children with her.
During these trips I saw clearly how much they need each other, children miss nature and she, nature, misses them.
Seeing the positive impact our outings have on children’s lives and their development, I understood that bringing children and nature back together would be my top priority. I made a choice to make that my mission, my life’s goal.
Since 2017, I have been spending a great amount of time in the open air with my kids and all of their friends. Learning alongside them about California animals, fungi, plants and activating remembrance of all the outdoor skills that were once a part of my own childhood.
In a way, I lead a forest school all on my own, just without pay, purely out of love.
I have organized many mushroom forays with kids and local foraging guides up north. I have taken children camping and hiking, waterfall jumping, mountain biking, paddle boarding and kayaking and on many plant identification walks.
In addition, I have organized multiple volunteering trips with the kids where we helped propagate and replant local mountains with the native California plants at SAMO Fund in Satwiwa Ranch. We built planters from scratch with old recycled wood and helped plant a garden at WTI foundation, and repainted a school in downtown with Big Sunday. We cleaned abalone shells while listening to the stories about original families who called this land home before we came, at Wishtoyo Chumash Foundation gatherings.
I am extremely passionate and very knowledgeable about fungi and specifically about edible mushrooms. Aside from studying on my own, I have been volunteering with the Los Angeles Mycological Society for several years now, and they have recently asked me to lead some of their forays.
Aside from hands on experience in the forest, I learn about foraging, plant identification, bushcraft skills and how to process and prepare wild, edible fungi and plants with Pascal Baudar and Christopher Nyerges, and it is during one of these classes that I have met Kat and learned about her beautiful mission, which happens to be in such perfect harmony with everything that I am and everything that I have been doing for the past 10 years.
It is a precious gift to be able to have an opportunity to work doing what you love, as so many of us are deprived of that.
Kat, her team and her family have established a place that so many of us wish we could have created for our children and I am grateful to her for that, and honored to be a part of this amazing Wild Kin community. Together we will share the knowledge and combine our skill sets to create and nourish the most important connection we have - a connection between us, our children and nature.