Deb Matlock’s work invites a powerful reimagining of our relationship with the natural world — one rooted in listening, reciprocity, and respect. Through her research and upcoming Your Wild Calling program, she supports practitioners in developing deeply personal, nature-based offerings that move beyond human-centered thinking. By blending ecological theory with lived experience, Deb is helping foster a growing movement of facilitators who guide others back into meaningful connection with the living world — reminding us that community extends far beyond ourselves.
Deb, your work and PhD research focus on integrating the “more‑than‑human voice” into nature connection practices. What first inspired you to explore the idea that humans can collaborate with and listen to the wider living world in this way?
This has really been a lifelong thread for me. As a child, I remember moving through the world with a quiet certainty that there were voices all around me that weren’t human, but that didn’t make them any less real. I felt the presence and depth of animals, the liveliness of plants, a kind of soulfulness in the land itself. It never occurred to me that humans would be the only ones capable of communication. That idea, honestly, feels like a very human-made story, and not a very accurate one.
As I grew older, that early knowing didn’t go away. It deepened. I started studying, practicing, and exploring these experiences more intentionally, and I also began to notice something interesting in my work with others. People would come up to me, often a bit quietly, almost as if they were confessing something, and say, “Can I tell you about this experience I had with a tree?” or an animal, or a place. There was often a kind of hesitation, even though what they were describing felt completely natural to me. It showed me just how much our culture tends to sideline or dismiss these ways of relating.
And yet, I don’t think this capacity is rare at all. I think it’s innate. Everyone connects in their own way, and when we bring more awareness and openness to it, that connection can grow and deepen in really meaningful ways.
At the same time, I think there’s a reason this way of being isn’t widely encouraged in modern Western culture. If we truly recognized that the more-than-human world has voice, agency, and presence and that we are in relationship with these beings, it would challenge a lot of how we currently live. It’s much harder to treat the world as a collection of resources when you experience it as a community of living beings.
That’s a big part of why this work matters to me. Especially now, when the natural world is under such intense pressure, reconnecting with that sense of relationship feels essential. My hope is that as more people remember and reclaim this way of listening and relating, it leads to a deeper care and a willingness to act not just for ourselves, but on behalf of the wider living world.
Ultimately, I think it asks us to expand what we mean by community. Not just humans, but the more-than-human world as well. And then the question becomes: how do we live within that community in ways that are respectful, just, and truly reciprocal?
You’re also preparing to launch a new cohort of your practitioner training program, Your Wild Calling, later this year. What is the core vision behind this program and the type of facilitators you hope to support through it?
The core vision behind Your Wild Calling is to create a container that feels both rigorous and deeply personal…something that mirrors a graduate-level cohort or a professional mastermind, while also holding space for a very intimate exploration of each person’s wild soul, ecological identity, and relationship with the living world.
At its heart, this program is for nature connection practitioners who already have experience working with clients or communities and feel a bigger vision stirring. They’re not looking for a set of pre-designed activities to replicate. They want to create something original. Something that weaves together their own journey, their spiritual and ecological relationships, and their experiences with the more-than-human world into offerings that are truly their own.
What I’ve seen over time is that many practitioners have these rich, complex, and innovative ideas, but they don’t always have the container or support to bring them to life. Sometimes the vision itself can feel overwhelming. This program is designed to meet them right there with structure, depth, and a strong support network that helps translate vision into tangible, grounded work.
The training really unfolds along three interconnected paths. One is bringing forward powerful bodies of theory, like deep ecology, ecopsychology, and spiritual and relational ecology, which are often kept within academic spaces, and making them accessible and alive in real-world practice. Another is a strong focus on program design and evaluation, and how to create experiences that are not only meaningful but also well-crafted, intentional, and responsive to the communities they serve.
And the third, which is really the foundation of everything, is the development of the facilitators themselves. Because ultimately, it’s not the activity that makes the work impactful. It’s the depth, presence, and integrity of the person guiding it. A simple practice in the hands of a deeply grounded facilitator can be transformative, while even the most beautiful activity can fall flat without that foundation.
So, we spend a lot of time exploring what it really means to be in right relationship with place, with community, and with the more-than-human world. How do we move beyond extractive ways of working, even in something like nature connection, and instead create relationships that are reciprocal, respectful, and generative? How do we support our clients in building those kinds of relationships as well?
By the end of the program, participants aren’t just leaving with ideas. They’ve created a tangible body of work. A portfolio of offerings, a clear articulation of their approach, and a pathway forward for how to share and grow their work in the world.
Ultimately, Your Wild Calling is about supporting facilitators who feel called to do this work in a deeper way, and helping them shape that calling into something real, grounded, and meaningful for both people and the wider living world.
The program emphasizes collaboration with plants, animals, landscapes, and natural cycles rather than positioning humans as experts over nature. Why is that shift in perspective so important in today’s world?
That shift feels essential right now because we’re living with the consequences of a worldview that placed humans at the center of everything. For generations, we’ve organized our systems around what benefits us in the short term, often without regard for the wider web of life. And we can see where that has led ecologically, socially, and spiritually.
What this program invites is not a diminishing of humans, but a reorientation. It’s about decentering ourselves without devaluing ourselves. As a species, we carry remarkable capacities such as self-awareness, creativity, and the ability to learn across generations. And with those gifts comes a kind of responsibility. We can recognize that we are not separate from the living world but are held within it.
When we shift into a collaborative relationship with plants, animals, landscapes, and natural cycles, we begin to remember something very old and very true: we only exist because everything else exists. Our food, our breath, our sense of belonging; all of it is made possible through a relationship with the more-than-human world. To ignore that isn’t just harmful, it’s fundamentally out of touch with reality.
There’s also a deeper layer here. A world without biodiversity isn’t just unsustainable, it’s unimaginably diminished. It becomes quieter, flatter, more isolated. Part of what makes life meaningful is that sense of being in a living, responsive, animated world.
So, this shift is really about returning to a way of being that our ancestors understood well: living in relationship, in reciprocity, in ongoing dialogue with the world around us. The question now isn’t whether that way of living is relevant. It’s how we consciously choose to embody it within the complexity of modern life.
At its heart, it’s a shift toward humility, respect, and reverence. And from that place, entirely new ways of living, creating, and leading become possible.
Participants in Your Wild Calling are guided to create their own “signature offering” rooted in sacred nature connection. How does helping practitioners develop their own unique body of work deepen the impact of nature‑based facilitation?
I really love this question because it gets to the heart of what makes this work so powerful.
Nature-based facilitation, in all its forms, is some of the most important work we can be doing right now. It is what helps people fall back in love with the places they live. It is what invites them into that deeper, more reciprocal relationship with the living world. And it opens the door to something many of us are quietly longing for, which is a sense of wonder, belonging, and connection to this extraordinary planet we get to call home.
When someone truly experiences that, not just as an idea but in their body and their life, it changes how they move through the world. They begin to feel both awe and responsibility. They begin to notice the quiet miracles happening all the time. And from that place, their choices naturally start to shift.
What excites me most is that there is no single way to guide someone into that experience. There cannot be. There are billions of people on this planet, each with their own way of relating, learning, and opening. So, if we want this work to reach people in a meaningful way, it has to be diverse, creative, and deeply authentic.
That is why supporting practitioners in developing their own unique body of work matters so much. It allows them to create offerings that are rooted in their lived experience, their voice, their place, and their way of seeing. It moves us away from replication and toward originality and integrity. And that is what makes the work resonate.
When practitioners are encouraged to trust their vision and bring it fully to life, the field itself becomes richer and more alive. It becomes responsive to different communities, different landscapes, and different ways of knowing. And that is where the real depth of impact happens.
For me, it is incredibly inspiring to support people who carry a genuine vision for a different way of being on this planet. Helping them shape that into something tangible, something they can offer and share, feels like a way of contributing to a much larger collective shift.
As interest in nature connection, ecological awareness, and spiritual practices continues to grow, what role do you hope programs like Yours Wild Calling will play in helping people rebuild meaningful relationships with the natural world?
My deepest hope is that programs like Your Wild Calling become a kind of catalyst for the people who feel called to this work but are looking for a place to root it, shape it, and bring it fully to life.
There are so many different landscapes, communities, and lived experiences on this planet, and each one asks for something a little different. This work cannot belong to one person, one tradition, or one approach. It asks for many voices, many expressions, and a deep level of cultural awareness and care in how it is offered.
So what I hope this program provides is structure, inspiration, and thoughtful guidance for practitioners to create something that is truly their own. Not a replication of what already exists, but a body of work that reflects their relationship with the natural world, their values, and the communities they are in service to.
When people are supported to build offerings like that, something powerful happens. We begin to see a wide range of pathways emerge for people to reconnect with the living world. Pathways that help them not only understand nature intellectually, but feel a sense of relationship, belonging, and responsibility within it.
And when that happens at scale, through many practitioners offering many different forms of this work, it contributes to a much larger shift. It helps move us toward a world that is rooted in compassion for all forms of life, a world that values empathy and integrity, and a world that recognizes that community extends far beyond the human sphere.
For me, being able to support others in creating that kind of work feels like a direct expression of my own calling. It is a way of helping bring forward thoughtful, ethical, and deeply meaningful nature connection practices that can reach people in all kinds of places, in ways that truly resonate.
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