Our Guide Team
Although her roots reside in the foothills of Northern Colorado, Akasha lives a semi-nomadic life exploring deep wilderness, new perspectives, and communal connection. She was raised tending to awe and honoring the cycles of the natural world that mirror the changes within human beings. Her Mother, both Mama and Mother Earth, have served as her greatest teachers, graciously cultivating space for curiosity, empathy, and transformation.
The connection between the self and nature has propelled Akasha around the world: mentoring youth in Spain and Chicago, living communally on off-grid organic farms in Guatemala and Hawaii, leading nature-based women's circles in Washington and Colorado, and working on environmental conservation projects throughout Southeast Asia and Oceania.
Her belief in the healing power of nature and reverence for the teachings of all more-than-human Beings led her to rite of passage work in 2021, where she has found a synergy of her greatest passions. She brings exploration of ‘eco-hierophany’ (eco pertaining to earth and hierophany meaning a manifestation of the sacred) to her work and personal life. Guiding and sharing her passion for wilderness, art, food as medicine, and nature-based ceremony is a reciprocal gift that continues to offer her a deeper understanding of self, others, and the Earth.
Akasha’s education and training in Outdoor Leadership, Recreation Management, Wilderness Medicine, Psychology, and Polarity Balancing aids her work as Rite of Passage Journeys' Assistant Director, Basecamp Manager, and Guide, as well as her own ever-evolving quest to fully inhabit all of her glorious humanness in this unrepeatable magic life.
Akasha Dove
Founder, Lead Guide
Shaped by the alpine majesty of western Montana, Koby has always found solace in the wilderness. Growing up on the edges of suburbs and woodlands, he developed both a natural affinity for the land and a keen sensitivity to the societal disconnection that plagues our times. His early experiences sparked both a profound reverence for the beauty and need for nature, and a painful awareness of the shortcomings of a culture which fails to provide true guidance and mentorship to young people.
For Koby, serving as a wilderness rite of passage guide is a way to help address the mental health and greater meaning crisis afflicting today's world. Driven by what he calls an ‘initiation urge’, he embarked on numerous journeys of extensive solo travel, musical creation, education and meditation before undergoing his own 12-day wilderness rite of passage 2022. There he realized his calling to guide others through similar experiences, embracing the role of apprentice, then mentor and finally lead guide the following summers.
Since then, Koby has deepened his work by guiding with both Rites of Passage Journeys and Journeymen in Washington, supporting people ages 12-70 through thresholds of change. He also co-founded Living the Wheel, where he designs and facilitates wilderness vision fasts, mentorship immersions, and nature-based rites of passage for all ages.
