About Kurt

Kurt Hoelting grew up in the Pacific NW, spending his youth in Seattle, WA, and Vancouver, B.C. He is a graduate of the University of Washington and Harvard Divinity School, and is a Zen practitioner and mindfulness teacher.

He has been a commercial fisherman and wilderness guide in Southeast Alaska, spending winters in Puget Sound and summers in Alaska since 1970. In 1994 Kurt founded Inside Passages, a sea kayaking outfitter-guide company that blended mindfulness practice with wilderness exploration. He served as Head Guide with Inside Passages until 2021.

Kurt lives on Whidbey Island, where he continues to write and teach mindfulness, work part time as a carpenter, and hangs out with his daughter Kristin and two young grandchildren, Neve and Ethan.

Since ending his kayaking expeditions in Alaska, he has continued to explore wild edges of a different kind. In 2022 he took a walking pilgrimage in rural Mexico, sharing pathways and camps used by illegal migrants from Central America heading north toward the United States.

Later that year he volunteered with Ukrainian refugees in Poland in the early stages of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, another moving experience bringing home the tragedy of displaced people that now has become a global epidemic.

Following on that experience, in July of 2023, Kurt was invited to co-led a week-long Zen peace vigil in Kyiv, Ukraine with his friend Szymon Olbychowski from Poland, in collaboration with the Dahk Theater of Contemporary Arts in Kyiv, Ukraine. This retreat took place in the midst of daily missile attacks, and offered a powerful window into the resilience of the Ukrainian people in the midst of a brutal war.

Kurt is the author of The Circumference of Home, which was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award in 2011. His forthcoming book Apprentice To The Wild will be published in early 2025 by Empty Bowl Press.

Contact information:

Email: kurt@insidepassages.com Phone: (206) 399-3898