Our guides are experienced mentors dedicated to building caring relationships that foster growth, connection, and self-knowledge. They hold space for both youth and adults, offering wisdom, support, and emotional presence at key moments of competency or transition.
With deep respect for nature, mystery, and the sacred gifts of each individual, they offer experiences to invite the remembering of wholeness while illuminating and celebrating the unique strengths of each participant that are so needed within our community today.
Alison DeLong, co-founder of Rites of Passage Sandpoint, is a seasoned Wilderness Rites of Passage guide.
After training with Anne Stine at Wilderness Rites, earth-based healing practices in 2001, she completed her Masters Degree in Ecopsychology at Sonoma State University. Since then Alison has co-facilitated Vision Quest programs for youth 16-18 years old, and for adults in California, Idaho and Montana over the past 24 years.
Inspired by her motherhood, Alison expanded her field of study to discover practices for growing families to navigate developmental passages and their impact on self-knowledge and parent/child relationships.
This led her to studying with educators and rites of passage advocates, Ba and Josette Luvmour, creators of the holistic relationship-based framework for child development and family wellbeing called Natural Learning Relationships (NLR) completing her certificate in NLR with the Transformative Learning Foundation.
For the past ten years, Alison has facilitated family rites of passage for youth under 15, while teaching parents to create meaningful rites at key passages for their child.
Alison is also a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner. For the past 6 years she has supported women and families to resolve trauma, restore nervous system regulation and wellbeing for youth and adults.
She lives in Sandpoint Idaho with her husband, son, daughter and their cat Buddy, where they attend festivals, make music, eat homemade soups, cross country ski, kayak and hike in the mountains and lakes of the ancestral lands of the Kalispel Tribe.
Larisa Noonan, co-founder of Rites of Passage Sandpoint, is an animist, ritualist, Ancestral Lineage Healing Practitioner, and certified Existential Kink coach. A lifelong nature devotee, Larisa graduated from Nature University, a Portland Metro naturalist training program, in 2009 where she guided nature connection excursions for youth.
Locally in Sandpoint, she co-guides the Women’s Wisdom Quest and the Rites of Passage weekend for 10-12 year olds. Like Alison, Larisa has worked with Ba and Josette Luvmour completing both a Rites of Passage course and an introduction to Natural Learning Relationships at the Transformative Learning Foundation.
Larisa also guides in-person ancestral healing immersions and monthly circles to support the healing of intergenerational trauma and reconnection to our beautiful Earth and other-than-human kin.
She is the founder of the Witchy Healer Wisdom School – an online school supporting witchy healers in growing Spirit-Guided businesses (not currently ennrolling as she has shifted her focus off-line, to her local community).
She lives with her husband and son in lovely Sandpoint, ID, where you can find her foraging cottonwood buds in the winter and yarrow leaves and flowers in the summer, on the ancestral homelands of the Q’lispe (Kalispel) tribe.
For more about Larisa visit https://www.larisanoonan.com
Dillon Banker holds a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Portland State University and a Master’s degree in social sciences specializing in Transformative Learning Communities from Antioch University.
He currently volunteers with PEAR (Portland Youth Advocates), mentoring youth experiencing homelessness and housing insecurity as well as co-leads ROPs Youth Rites of Passage for 10 to 12 year olds.
Dillon is a Natural Learning Relationships (NLR) Practitioner with over 10 years experience in NLR both as a personal discipline and professional orientation.
His work emphasizes learning as a relational, meaning-making process built around trust, and rooted in self-knowledge.
James Rees has spent time teaching, coaching, and playing with children of all ages and has been in his current role as a 4th grade teacher at a Quaker-based K-12 school for four years.
Though he enjoys teaching academic subjects, he gets the most meaning from exploring with his students how we can be together in friendships and community so that well-being can flourish for all.
James is a Natural Learning Relationships Practitioner who explores with families and educators the possibilities for transformation available for children, teachers, and caregivers in school settings.
In his spare time, you can find James playing soccer or a board game, sitting by the Eno River, or very slowly knitting a hat.
Yvette McGowan is a retired Waldorf Teacher, with a degree in Mathematics. Her green thumb and love of gardening is evident to all who visit her beautiful backyard!
Outside the classroom, she also directed her own youth summer camp for 14 years in Sagle Idaho.
Last year she completed the Women’s Wisdom Quest, as her first rite of passage experience. Recently, she has completed a 300 hour Wildcore dance and ayurvedic yoga teacher training.
One of Yvette’s passions in life is connecting with others, sharing meaningful conversation, exploring new ideas and finding new passions in this life.
You can find Yvette in the mountains, walking in the woods and being in all different elements of nature.
