Sam Summers

Founder, Coach

I grew up outside. Soccer fields, mountain trails, backpacking trips, snowboards, bikes. Nature was where my family went to reset, to find peace, to come alive. I learned the names of plants and animals before I learned algebra. My body knew what it felt like to be one small working part of everything around it, interconnected and breathing as one.

Then I lost it. A congenital knee defect ended my path to collegiate soccer. Injury after injury. Years of physical therapy. Holding on to any sense of the life I thought was supposed to be ahead of me, by coaching other people while my own body quietly fell apart. Eventually I couldn’t even work anymore. The surgery they said might not even fix the problem became my only option.

I made a decision that before going under the knife, I was going to build the strongest body I had ever had. I ate whole foods, prioritized protein and carbs, lifted weights, and gave everything I had to optimizing my health. The anxiety and depression I had carried most of my life started to fade. I went into surgery stronger than I had ever been. And I was back in the gym as soon as I could walk after recovery.

Parallel to all of this, when COVID swallowed the world and I lost my job, I packed a bag, borrowed a car, and drove away with no real plan or direction. I lived in national forests for three months. I hiked every single day. I was completely alone, and I found something I had lost so long ago. I had forgotten it existed: the deep, rejuvenating power of nature immersion.

I couldn’t go back to who I had been. So I didn’t. I moved to Colorado. Then to the woods of northern Maine, where I lived in a tent through bugs, rain and snow for six months. I learned to travel by canoe, fell trees, read the water, and live with practically nothing in genuine comfort. Then I taught the next round of students who dared to venture out into the woods how to do the same.

These two things: strength training and nature immersion, were always building toward each other. I just hadn’t found the words for it, until now.