Come rest in silence
For anyone tired, overstimulated, or screen-worn. Deep Listening Retreats and guided silence walks. No signing experience needed.
Are you seeking silence?The Wild Cypress guides people back into relationship with the land, with each other, and with themselves, through silence, sign, play, and presence, wherever we are invited.
Silence means different things to different people.
What It Is
What happens here, plainly put.
For some, silence is rest. For others, it has meant loneliness: being left in the dark, out of the conversation. Here, we explore silence as a healing pathway, full of sight, touch, and movement. A guide helps you find your way in, through the land, your senses, gesture, sign, and play. Silence and Nature share the same language. It allows you to be… you.
Silence is the practice
Much of the time is quiet. Without talking to fill it, your attention widens and you start picking up what was already there. We call it taking in silence: letting the quiet hold you while you take everything in.
Your senses are the way in
A guide offers simple invitations: notice what is moving, follow a smell, put a hand on bark. Nothing to achieve, nothing to get right. It is not a hike: a walk often covers less than a quarter mile in two or three hours.
Nature is the place
Forest bathing draws on ancient traditions and came to wide attention in 1980s Japan as an antidote to a national epidemic of stress. Called shinrin-yoku, which translates to “taking in the forest,” it needs no bathing suit or water, only nature. Done mostly in silence, it leads you back to yourself.
Summer Crider
guide, trainer, storyteller.
Summer Crider is a cultural studies educator, certified Forest and Nature Therapy guide, and founder of The Wild Cypress, dedicated to creating inclusive, healing experiences for Deaf, Disabled, and marginalized communities. With a background in Expressive Arts Therapy, Educational Media, and Cultural Studies, Summer combines academic depth with entrepreneurial creativity as a self-taught business owner, filmmaker, and media consultant.
- MA
- ANFT Trainer
- WFR Certified
As Featured In
PBS - Seek The World - Success Wisdom - All Humans Outside - Travelability - The Gainesville Sun
In partnership with ANFT
Forest is the therapist, Guide opens the doors.
Silence is our native landscape.
Two ways in.
Healing in our language
For Deaf, DeafBlind, DeafDisabled, and hard of hearing people, signing families, and future guides. Retreats and training held fully in ASL.
Are you seeking healing in your language?Every seat in silence helps open a seat in our language.
Get Started
Come sit with us in the quiet.
Sessions, retreats, and training for anyone ready to slow down, listen deeply, and let the land do its work.