Programs, Purpose, Staff
Program Groups and Frequency
- Gatherers – 5 & 6 year olds: Weekly 3:30-5:45
- Builders – 7,8 & 9: Every other week 3:30 – 6:00
- Keepers – 10 & up: Every other week 4:00 – 6:30
Program Dates
Programs run from the first Thursday in October through mid-May.
Additionally, our older groups have 4 camping trips and our scouts who are 10 & up do a 3 day backpacking trip.
Our Mission
The Intention
Fire Scouts is a program based in Wilderness survival and nature connection programming. It is a fun opportunity for children to learn about growing into good, well balanced, adults. And adult instruction, for parents, is available at most of the camp outs. Our mission is to create a community of families that are bonded in their connection to nature, if you have no experience camping, we will teach you the basics so you can take your family out camping without us.
As scouts we will do camping trips, fishing, carving, fire making, leadership training, fort building, knot tying, tree identification, tracking, learn how to use nature to restore your brain, bird language, storytelling, etc.
At campouts we ask parents to step away from solving any difficulties or conflicts their child experiences, and to inform our staff of their observations. We consider this a golden opportunity for parents to observe their children in a new way, to analyze new ways of interacting with them, and to take the time to reflect on our own interactions as families. We have a culture that we set with Fire Scouts and we want the whole family to be a part of it. The best way to see if that resonates with your family, is to watch it happen in real time.
Through our work with the 8 Shields Model (Wilderness Awareness School), the Peacemaker Principles (Haudenosaunee Confederacy), and the Thanksgiving Address (as shared by Jake Swamp); these are the values we are looking to emphasize:
Focus – We have persistence to solve complicated problems, and the discipline to overcome obstacles with confidence.
Integrity – We do what we say we are going to do. We admit when we are wrong and work to make things right.
Respect – We listen fully. We respond thoughtfully and authentically.
Empathy – We seek first to understand. We are willing to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes, and we exercise good boundaries.
Service – We seek to improve ourselves, our families, our homes, and our communities.
Caretake Attitude – We are committed to leaving spaces better than we found them. And to approach all landscapes and living things with the intention to help them thrive if we can.
Observation – We are engaged fully in our senses, and are paying attention to what is happening around us.
Unity – We work to bring people and communities closer to each other, and to nature. Community building is our best survival tool.
Thankfulness – An attitude of gratitude is our greatest ally for staying present and capable. This was our second most reported value. Learning to engage in a practice of thankfulness and counting our blessings during trying times helped many scouts remain calm and avoid excessive frustration during their daily lives. Those who spoke on thankfulness usually mentioned it in combination with “Observant” as a combination that can help us remember the good things in life at any point, even if it’s the sunset, a breeze, or a bird song.
Smores – The kids have spoken and this new value has been added to our list. We didn’t have the last “s” previously, but they decided that because a scout needs community to be effective that it was necessary to include the plural form in our values. I like to think that this pertains to cooking around a campfire and sharing food as a community in general, but I’m fairly certain it refers specifically to smores and eating them at campouts.
Our Team
Braden DeLonay – Director / Co-Founder
Braden has been working with youth outdoors for since 2009. His work began in educating youth about sustainability and has evolved over time to focus on social emotional learning, team building, and survival skills. Braden has worked with multiple Montessori Schools, the Whole Life Learning Center, the Amala Foundation, the Maine Primitive Skills School, Earth Native Wilderness School, Camp Ketcha, and others.
His love of all things outdoors began at a very young age with his Nana and Papa. He planted his first garden at home at age 5, and caught his first fish big enough to eat at a small campground named “Little Grassy” near Joliet, IL at age 6. Braden studied permaculture and natural building while working as the education director for a sustainability non-profit called The New S.H.I.R.E. Institute in Manor, Tx and eventually made his way to the Maine Primitive Skills School to complete an extended apprenticeship about nature mentoring and living off the land in the most direct way possible. Braden has been a volunteer associate director for the Amala Foundation’s Global Youth Peace Summits here in the states, as well as in Meru, Kenya. He is trained in survival skills, appreciative inquiry, nature connection, mentoring, team building, non-violent conflict resolution, restorative justice, rhythm facilitation, permaculture practices, and natural and conventional building methods.
Braden’s biggest passion in life is watching his student’s faces light up when they figure out how to solve a problem for the first time, he loves to play the guitar and sing, and is loving his time in Austin.
Ehren Siegenthaler – Lead Instructor
Ehren has been working outdoors with youth since he was one himself. He started as a camp counselor at age 14 and has continued sharing his gifts in this way over the last 20+ years.
The only thing Ehren has devoted more time to in his life is the study of the plants of central Texas. Which he begain learning about at the age of 5 from his aunt, who is an accomplished herbalist.
Ehren has been a rock climbing coach, a professional herbalist, and herbalism teacher, in addition to trail keeper and other stuff. I don’t man, your turn. Lets get another 5-8 sentences in here.
Sage Jacote – Youth Mentor
For the past thirteen years, Deb has been engaged in the pursuit of examining the wonders of a very large world with her two sons – a love of mentoring she also explores
by teaching handwork to Upper Elementary students. Fortunate enough to grow up in the Middle of Nowhere, Maine (with no activities or cable television available) she and her best friend spent their first ambulatory decade wandering the woods trails and wading in streams and ponds.
She spent her teenage summers as a camp counselor, specializing in riflery and the dramatic arts. Beneficiary of the values of extraordinary educators, she has backpacked through the White Mountains of New Hampshire and white water rafted down the St. Croix River.
Following a month of Outward Bound and a year of inner city internships she found herself at Antioch College in Ohio, where equal semesters of interning and academics are required to graduate. She studied abroad at National Chengchi University, Taipei, Taiwan, fencing for their school team and hitting the railways to explore on the weekends. After a semester spent backpacking through Australia researching a diversionary program for juveniles she found herself attending law school in New Mexico and spending a busy decade working on legal minutiae for the Chief Judge of the Maine District Court.
Deb likes to hike solo, cook everything from scratch, read contemporary poetry, and share the country with her sons as they drive home to Maine every summer.
A Final Word
We do not cover or discuss politics during scouts and we carry no religious affiliation. We will discuss and process public tragedies when they happen, but we do so without blaming political identities. As a mentor it is important to understand the influence we carry with the people we work with, and it would be both unfair and unethical for us to push any political agenda during this program regardless of how we personally feel about its’ merits. We encourage interested scouts to discuss these things with their families.