Alaska 2010
Inside Passages Alaska 2010 Kayaking Retreats
Trip 1: July 29 – Aug. 5, 2010 (Institute for Jewish Spirituality)
Trip 2: August 9 – 15, 2010 (Open Trip)
The retreats this year will again be based out of the Keene Channel Lodge on the Wrangell Narrows, a sheltered and secluded location fourteen miles south of Petersburg at the junction of Beecher Pass and Duncan Canal. Keene Channel is five miles from the nearest road, with access by boat only. The combination of seclusion and ease of access makes it an ideal launching pad for explorations of the surrounding inlets and islands.
The lodge provides an excellent setting for day and overnight kayak trips in sheltered waters, and offers rustic, comfortable accommodations. Retreats include a multi-day kayak camping trip to the Castle Islands during the heart of the retreat. As with past Inside Passages retreats, the opportunity to explore meditation practice in a wilderness setting offers a superb chance to experience presence, both inner and outer, through a variety of contemplative disciplines.
The forests and waters around Keene Channel are home to many species of wildlife, including wolf, black bear and Sitka blacktail deer. The local waters harbor plentiful salmon and halibut, seals, porpoises and Stellar sea lions. The nearby Wrangell Narrows form an important link in the Inside Passage route from Puget Sound to Southeast Alaska.
Keene Channel Lodge offers comfortable accommodations for when we return from our kayaking adventures.
Inside Passages retreats are based on a practice of listening and paying attention. We engage in a variety of daily contemplative activites to help us fully “arrive” in the beauty of the place, and the richness of our own “inner wilderness areas”. Meditation, Qi gong, and periods of silent paddling are standard practice on these retreats. Most meals are enjoyed in silence as well, with some daily opportunities for conversation and dialogue. The many voices of the wild are added to our human voice to create a deeper sense of what it means to be fully human in a more-than-human world.
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Your Guides for the 2010 Season
As Head Guide, Kurt Hoelting brings fifteen years experience as a wilderness guide in Alaska. He has led over forty kayaking expeditions in Alaska, and has taught meditation for many years to groups as varied as clergy and rabbis, environmental activists, health care professionals and veterans at the VA Hospital in Seattle.
His book, The Circumference of Home, will be published in April of 2010 by Da Capo Press. It chronicles his year of living car-free within a sixty-mile radius of his home in Puget Sound during 2008.
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Trip 2: Aug. 9-15, 2010
We are pleased to welcome Rick Jackson as a co-leader with Kurt on Trip 2 (Aug. 9 – 15). Rick co-founded the Center for Courage & Renewal in 1997 with his wife Marcy and Parker Palmer. The Center nurtures personal and professional integrity and the courage to act on it. Rick consults and speaks with non-profit organizations and foundations on a range of topics, including sustaining the identity and integrity of teachers and leaders, the role of youth in culture, supporting community leaders, and fostering strategies for long-term social change.
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Institute for Jewish Spirituality Trip: July 29 – Aug. 5, 2010
Rabbi Rachel Cowan is the Executive Director of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. She was named by Newsweek Magazine in 2007 as one of the 50 leading rabbis in the United States, and was featured in the PBS series The Jewish Americans. She received her ordination from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 1989. She has been Director of Outreach at the 92nd Street YMHA; and from 1990-2003 was Program Director for Jewish Life and Values at the Nathan Cummings Foundation. She lives in New York City, near her two children Lisa and Matt, and two grandchildren – Jacob and Tessa.
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Rabbi Yael Levy was ordained as Reconstructionist Rabbi in 1995 and has been serving Congregation Mishkan Shalom in Philadelphia, PA. since that time. In her current position as the” Rabbinic Director of Spiritual Development” Yael leads mindfulness retreats and contemplative Shabbat services. She also works as a spiritual director at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. Yael has worked with the Institute for Jewish Spirituality co-leading mindfulness kayak retreats with Inside Passages and has begun leading mindfulness retreats in the deserts of the southwest. She lives in Philadelphia with her partner and 13 year old son.
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Trip Cost: $1975 (Open Trip), $2075 (IJS Trip – with an additional night at Scandia House Hotel in Petersburg)
Trip Cost includes six nights stay at Keene Channel Lodge with all meals, kayaks and kayak accessories, guide fees, and transportation to and from the lodge from Petersburg.
Cost does not include airfare to Petersburg from the Lower 48, or any lodging and meal costs in Petersburg before or after the retreat time at the lodge itself. Participants are encouraged to arrive the day prior to the beginning of the retreat, with an additional night’s lodging in Petersburg, to rest up from jet lag and to get your “feet on the ground” in Alaska prior to our retreat. We recommend booking your lodging at the Scandia House Hotel in Petersburg. They can be reached by email at: scandia@alaska.net.
To Register, go the the Registration & Planning page on this Web site. For more information contact Kurt Hoelting at insidepa@whidbey.com.
Inside Passages operates under Special Use Permit from the U.S. Forest Service, Tongass National Forest.
