This Has All Happened Before,
This Will All Happen Again

Long before “story camps” became a trend in outdoor education, Trackers was already building worlds in the forest where kids didn’t just hear stories from counselors—they stepped inside them.

We created our Four Guilds—Rangers, Mariners, Wilders, Artisans—years before anyone else was doing immersive role-play woven together with actual outdoor skill. That combination of story + badass skills + nature didn’t exist anywhere else at the time. We were inventing a model not to sell camps, but to use imagination to help kids challenge themselves.

 

The Trackers Equation:
Nerds + Nature = Awesome!

We pioneered these types of programs for over 20 years because we have a genuine passion for adventure and for kids learning real skills. Plus we think like kids. Ideally, we’re mature enough to run a world-class outdoor program, but we can also remember what it was like to be 7 years old watching Saturday morning cartoons, seeing your heroes and asking, “What if I could do that?”

At Trackers, the answer is: “With wilderness skills, you can!”

For two decades we’ve been training Secret Agents, Ninjas, Wizards, Elves, and even Time Traveling Cowboys in a School Bus. We’ve introduced more kids to fishing in one summer than most programs had done in a decade. We brought back Blacksmithing—a skill many think is too hard for kids—and immersed kids in the ancient rhythm of metalwork as living lineage, not a museum novelty. We’ve repeated that same pattern with bowmaking, field archery, woodcarving, and a host of other immersive story-and-skill programs.

We chose these topics not just because someone was buying, but because our magic equation is nerds + nature. We loved Secret Agent gadgets, gizmos, and traps. We reveled in goblin markets, wizards, elves, and costumes. We were obsessed with treasure hunting, riddles, and high adventure. Heck, we even created comic books to go along with our camps.

Classic Saturday morning cartoons blended with a deeper purpose and the skills to make the adventure real. We believe actual superpowers and real life adventure comes from building skills of independence, grit, and service.

Here’s what this means for your child (and your inner child): when you choose a Trackers program, you’re not choosing it because it’s popular or because it was the first. We want you to choose Trackers because of why we do these programs in the first place.

 

What Other Programs Can’t Copy

Here’s the thing about surface-level borrowing: you can put “quest” or “wizard” or “ranger” in your camp title. You can dress up a nature walk with props and costumes. But the bells and whistles without the deeper meaning, without the why? It’s the Star Wars prequels (and sequels) versus A New Hope.

You can read all about our Four Guilds on our website. But what you can’t see—what doesn’t transfer into a brochure or an AI-assisted program description—is why the quest structure matters for skill building. Why story isn’t just decoration, but is fundamental to learning. Why these specific elements, taught in this specific order, with this specific culture of Trackers Guides, create something kids feel in their bones. Something that feels not just fun, but real and true.

The other stuff we work really, really, really hard on at Trackers is also difficult to copy:

• The wilderness access. We were one of the first (and still one of the only) to take kids every day from the city into true wilderness—forests, rivers, mountains, lakes. That unique and often challenging design is what allows us to deliver real outdoors, real wildness, real challenge to kids. While most camps remain bound to a single park, we’ve been getting kids out to true wild spaces for a long time now. Someone can copy our camp titles, but they can’t copy over 20 years of tested safety systems, site knowledge, and wilderness access.
• The culture we build. The way stories help kids remember themselves and their connection to each other and to the land. The trust and safety we establish that asks kids to take real risks within the framework of imagination and developing competency. That comes from our people, our training, our philosophy—it’s not a curriculum you can download. It’s an apprenticeship.
• The innovation engine itself. As other programs attempt to tackle what we launched decades ago, we’re already moving on to new ideas. We are asking ourselves: How can we go deeper with our story immersion? How do we strengthen the outdoor skills we teach within those stories? What new experiences can we create that challenge and uplift the kids we serve?

We are constantly inventing and improving. We embrace the challenge of finding what’s new and truly useful for our kids. And that is really hard to copy.

 

We Won’t Stay Still Long Enough to Be Caught

At Trackers we have a saying: “You’re Doing It Wrong, Do It Better.” And yes, that definitely means us.

Every program we run, we find something that could’ve been done better. A moment in the story that kids did not dig. A skill progression that missed the mark. A guide that needs mentoring and help in a skill. We relentlessly build on those observations every day.

“You’re Doing It Wrong” isn’t an insult. It means we’re not chasing perfection, we’re chasing creativity, progress, evolution. The first version of our Blacksmithing camp 15 years ago is radically different from the version we have now. And our Rangers Adventure camp? We’ve revised Stealth, Archery & Wilderness Survival dozens of times since its inception nearly 20 years ago and we’ll keep on doing so.

“Do It Better” means next season isn’t about defending what we built—it’s about asking what it could become. How can we help kids learn more independently through better program design? What story haven’t we told yet? How do we create experiences that stick with a kid for decades?

This is the Trackers secret sauce. It’s why other programs are launching what we piloted decades ago, while we’re already stress-testing what comes next. We’re obsessed with being creative to help our kids and families connect to each other, many generations, nature, and the inner badass we know they possess.

 

Keep Outdoor Ed Creative!

We honor anyone working to reconnect kids to nature, story, and adventure. The world needs more of that. And if our work inspires others, we’re glad to be part of that spark. What we’d like to see is more outdoor education programs that embrace their own unique weirdness and creativity. More schools that are passionate about what makes them brilliant and fully unique. More schools that invent, innovate, and experiment with their own fantastic chaos to create beautiful nature experiences for kids and families.

That’s what we’re doing at Trackers. We know who we are, and we’re not slowing down. We’re not going to repeat ourselves (or others). And yes, we notice when our innovations become industry trends. And yes, we’re flattered, but we’re not sitting on our laurels. We’re too busy building what comes next.

Because that’s the actual secret: We’re not leading because we’re trying to stay ahead. We’re leading because we keep following the land deeper into the Great Great Unknown, and we’re bringing your family with us.

So go. Help save the world. Build your thing. Make it necessary. Make it yours.

Let’s create what comes next!

 

Keep On Tracking,

Molly & Tony Deis
Trackers Earth
Founder & Parents

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P.S. We do understand that creativity doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Before founding Trackers, Tony learned our particular style of transported mobile adventures working with Steve Robertson—founder of Wild Latitudes. Steve was one of Tony’s mentors and has been Trackers’s partner for national and international Youth Expeditions. That’s lineage. Being an apprentice for years, learning what works and why—that’s how craft gets transmitted, not borrowed from other websites. We grew Steve’s model to connect with our vision, and we always owe him a grand debt of gratitude.

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