About Our Founder

With over 30 years of backcountry backpacking and hiking experience, Yaakov Trek Reef (he/they) walks in the world as a guide and teacher of outdoor ethics, nature & forest therapy, and wilderness spirituality. They speak and lead trips throughout the Northeast for the public, congregations, retreat centers, and other organizations.
 
Trek has also led workshops and classes for the Adamah Farm Fellowship, Star Island Natural History Conference, Elat Chayyim Center for Jewish Spirituality, Keshet Boston, Hillel House at Boston University, Hopedale Unitarian Parish, First Parish in Billerica, First Church in Leominster, and Seaside Yoga Retreat Center in Oregon, among others.

He worked for the Star Island Conference and Retreat Center ten miles off the coast of New Hampshire for four seasons and served as a retreat director and the program manager at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center in Falls Village, Connecticut, for three years. 

In 2016, they completed a pilgrimage along the storied Appalachian Trail. Taking approximately five million steps over 2189.1 miles between Georgia and Maine, Trek found a deeper connection to our awe-inspiring natural world and a clearer sense of place in our unfolding story of our cosmos.

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They hold several outdoor and guiding certifications, including Certified Interpretive Guide by the National Association for Interpretation and Certified Nature & Forest Therapy Guide by the Association of Nature & Forest Therapy. Trek is also a Wilderness First Responder trained by SOLO Wilderness Emergency Medicine.

 

Presently, he is a seminarian at Meadville Lombard Theological School and is an Aspirant Minister in the Unitarian Universalist tradition. Trek lives in North Billerica, Massachusetts, on the traditional homelands of the Pawtucket and Massa-adchu-es-et Peoples of the Abenaki nations.