Meet our Team
Woniya Dawn Thibeault
Woniya Thibeault has dedicated her adult life to practicing, teaching, and living ancestral, land-based, and wilderness skills. At one time living a quieter off-grid life, growing and gathering most of her food, these days she has opted, somewhat grudgingly, to be more plugged in and visible. Her goal in this choice is to do more good in the world through her writing, consulting, and in-person and online teaching.
Practicing what she preaches, she is best known for her two appearances on The HISTORY Channel's hit self-filmed survival competition Alone. In her second season, Alone Frozen, she became the first woman to win this daunting challenge and now holds the record for the most cumulative days on the show- 123 between her two seasons.
Winning Alone Frozen allowed her to make her dreams come true- she purchased 90 beautiful, wild acres in her hometown region of Nevada County in northeastern California. She calls the land “Timeless Ways,” in recognition of the long legacy of humans living in deep, reciprocal relationship with the land around them, and the skills of land-based living. She considers it a “Wild Life” preserve- a place where humans can go to learn and to rekindle the wild inside themselves, and where wild nature and its inhabitants can also thrive.
In addition to teaching, Woniya and her family have been hard at work helping the land recover from a legacy of hydraulic mining, restoring the creek, meadow, and forests to thriving ecological health. The long-term vision is for the land to serve as a model for how humans can undo the many harms caused by an extractive relationship to nature and bring both the land and culture back into loving, reciprocal relationship. balance.
Looking to reconnect with place and your own wild nature through the skills and practices that helped countless generations before them live and thrive without modern conveniences? Timeless Ways is the place and the Flicker Gathering is your ticket to it. Joining our emerging village at Flicker 2026!
Hazel-Grace Yates
Hazel-Grace is an educator, facilitator, community weaver, and lifelong student of what it means to live in deeper relationship with one another and the living world. With a background in therapeutic recreation, outdoor education, relationship work, and more than 25 years of producing gatherings and immersive experiences, they are passionate about creating spaces where people learn through participation, connection, and shared responsibility.
Their work is rooted in the belief that many of the skills we need for the future are also some of our oldest: tending land, making things by hand, sharing food, navigating conflict, learning from the natural world, and building cultures of belonging.
Sava Swan
Sava is an astrologer, gardener, community builder, and systems designer who believes everything flourishes through relationship.
Raised by an herbalist mother in a small coastal town where modern conveniences were few, nature was her generous provider and greatest teacher. Food was medicine, herbs were gathered into handwoven baskets, and soaps and salves were crafted by hand—all while living in reverent relationship with the land.
Throughout her life, Sava has been drawn to building communities around causes she believes in—from leading statewide fundraising efforts for Environment California and the Human Rights Campaign, to leading Global Operations for Adventure EcoTravel companies. Today she can be found stewarding her Banner Mountain Commune’s garden, tending their flock of hens (and emus!), and co-hosting events on their land.
Through Flicker Village, Sava hopes to help people experience what becomes possible when we live, learn, and gather in deeper relationship with ourselves, one another, and the natural world.
Sarah Bellum
Sarah is a chef, herbalist, and small-scale homesteader whose work is rooted in seasonal food, ancestral skill, and embodied hospitality. Through nose-to-tail cooking, she honors the whole animal, transforming organs, blood, offal, and overlooked cuts into beautiful, nourishing meals while cultivating a deeper relationship with the land and what feeds us.
For Sarah, food is more than sustenance. It is medicine, ritual, offering, and communion. Her trauma-informed approach to herbalism and hospitality invites the table to become a place of remembrance, where people can feel held, nourished, and connected to one another, the land, and the timeless ways of gathering around the hearth.
Melissa Schwimmer
Melissa is a holistic chef, herbalist, and all-around creative human with a deep love and reverence for the natural world. Some might even call her a fairy—and she wouldn’t disagree.
Mel’s work is rooted in the belief that food, plants, creativity, and connection can all be powerful forms of care. Mel has an especially tender relationship with the natural world and can often be found talking to frogs, communing with flowers, and noticing the small bits of magic hiding in plain sight.
At the heart of Mel’s life and work is a simple intention: to deeply nourish the people around her. They believe that nourishment is about creating spaces where people can soften, reconnect, breathe, and remember that they belong—to themselves, to one another, and to the living world around them.