june 3-7, 2020 in north carolina

The 13th annual Firefly Gathering will take place June 3-7, 2020 at Deerfields in Mills River, NC, just 30 minutes outside of Asheville.

We gather each summer to learn and celebrate the skills necessary to live with the Earth. Our family-friendly classes, experiential learning, and culture bring together folks of all ages.

Each day is full of workshops spanning wilderness survival skills to permaculture, plant identification to cooking over fire, cow milking to bowl carving, basket weaving to blacksmithing. Through our time together at Firefly, we not only share skills to connect to the land, we connect also with ourselves, one another, our ancestors, and our future generations.

the site

The 2020 Gathering will be at Deerfields in Mills River, NC. We hosted our first event there in 2019, and were blown away by the beauty of this sacred land. Firefly is honored to return and invite you to join there again.

Deerfields is just 30 minutes south of Asheville, and offers a truly beautiful location for us to share and grow together.

The site boasts two spring-fed freshwater lakes, sweet creeks, and robust hiking trails that meander through mature and diverse forests. Come enjoy over 900 acres of unspoiled wilderness.

about

Our mission is to share skills of outdoor and traditional living, natural medicine, crafts, and community resilience in Southern Appalachia to promote healthy, connected, and sustainable livelihoods on Earth.

In a time of disconnection, industrial specialization, environmental injury, and rapid climate change, we believe it is of the utmost importance to adapt the way we live to not only survive in the changing world around us, but to thrive within our contributions to the human experience.

Firefly Gathering is a community organization dedicated to sharing the skills that help us to live with the earth. We are currently in the process of becoming a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and anticipate IRS approval later this year.

Click here to meet our Board of Directors.

scholarships

Firefly Gathering offers scholarships to support underserved communities, people of color, refugee communities, indigenous communities, communities that speak English as a second language, folks who are not already established in the Earth skills communities, and at-risk youth.

We offer these scholarships with the hopes to foster a strong and powerful diverse community of earth-centered people steeped in the earth-knowledge that Firefly has to offer, who in turn can work in their own greater communities, spreading this knowledge and sharing the skills they have learned with others.

The scholarship application will be available in early spring 2020; we look forward to hearing from you.