Walking With the Light

A Seasonal Parent-Child Program

Walking With the Light is a seasonal parent-child program intended as a participatory experience for parents and their young children, birth to six years old.  The program brings families into a relationship with the natural world by engaging a practice of intuitive parenting through deep observation and ensouled participation in the changing light of the seasons.

Open to parents with one or two children, ages birth-6 years old

Maximum: 6 families, Minimum 5 families

Held Monday mornings, 9:30 am – 11:30 am at Sacred Mountain Sanctuary

96 Rocky Cove Rd, Candler, NC  28715

Fall Season (12 weeks):  Sept. 16 – Dec. 9 (except Oct. 14); 

Parent Orientation Sept. 13, Parent evening conversations on Oct. 11 and Nov.  8

Cost: $360

Winter Season (8 weeks):  Jan. 27 – March 23 (except March 2); 

Parent Orientation Jan. 24, Parent evening conversations on Feb. 7 and March 13

Cost: $240

Spring Season (8 weeks): March 30 – June 1 (except April 6); 

Parent Orientation March 27, Parent evening conversations on April 17, May 8

Cost: $240

Led by Avery Sumner

Avery Sumner grew up on a wild and unkempt homestead in north Florida where she cultivated a love for barefooted living. As an adult she took this lifestyle to a remote island on the edge of Everglades National Park where she spent summers leading adults and children on backcountry swamp walks as an interpretive ranger at Big Cypress National Preserve. Avery later followed the inspiration of her bicycle, which took her across the Atlantic leading multiple day bicycle trips through the French countryside. She lived between France and the Southern Appalachians for a year, before eventually settling in the Eastern French Pyrenees where her daughter was born. Though always a student of Earth and Spirit, motherhood led Avery to a formal study of human development in relation to the Earth and Cosmos. She completed her Waldorf early childhood teacher training at Hawthorne Valley’s Alkion Center in 2018.  Avery also holds a BA in English Literature from Roanoke College. She’s bi-lingual (English/French) and has been the Early Childhood Kinderforest teacher at School of Living Arts (SOLA) since September of 2018. She’s carried a well annotated copy of Thomas Berry’s Dream of the Earth with her across oceans and mountains since 1999. This little detail makes her presence at The Center feel like a meant to be homecoming.