CAITLIN MCNEELY grew up exploring the gentle sandy beaches of the southern Gulf coast and the giant sprawling oak trees in her urban Houston neighborhood. In the summer, her favorite time was spent road-tripping to the magical tide pools and rocky beaches of a small island off the coast of Maine, where she fished for seaweed, made forts of driftwood and talked to the small colorful creatures tucked in the pools.  

Since those days, deep nature connection has continued to be the thread that brings her back to her most true self, and she has dedicated herself to providing youth the opportunity to have the same wild, timeless experiences in epic nature. Since 2021, Caitlin has been guiding youth in exploring the outdoors and themselves through organizations like Vilda, Love Your Nature, Wilderness Awareness School and Back to Earth. She has been trained as a nature-based mentor by Wilderness Awareness School and as a Rites of Passage guide by Wilderness Reflections. From the Sierras to the coast and everywhere in-between, Caitlin loves sleeping under the stars and encouraging teens to connect with their natural selves and their more-than-human relations.

In 2022, Caitlin co-founded a 3-year rites of passage program at Heartwood Waldorf school, where she guides teens in multi-year coming-of-age journeys through wilderness skills, ancestral arts, backpacking trips and nature-based ceremony. She has been leading Love Your Nature groups in Marin and Davis since 2023, Vilda summer backpacking trips since 2022 and is a certified Wilderness First Responder.  

Caitlin holds a BA in Creative writing from the University of California, Santa Barbara and is currently pursuing an MA in Mental Health Clinical Counseling from Naropa University.   During university, she travelled to Ghana for a year abroad to experience more intact indigenous cultures. Since then, she has continued to follow a path of learning from and supporting earth-based indigenous cultures and wisdom, including joining indigenous-led water protector camps in West Texas and in Anishinaabe territory in Minnesota, spending several months living with and supporting Dine families at Black Mesa and learning from local California indigenous leaders at the Buckeye Ancestral Skills Gathering.
When not guiding, Caitlin loves dancing, singing, gardening and working on endless herbalism and craft projects.