An Ithaca native, Sophia, unfortunately, didn’t spend much time outside while growing up, preferring rather to read books inside. With an undergraduate degree in International Relations and Anthropology, she spent two years in Istanbul, Turkey studying and working at a political research center. After leaving her job she spent time in a cabin in some mountains in southern Turkey where she spent most of her time eating pomegranates right off the trees and learning about composting toilets and alternative living. This experience propelled her to engage with the life around her and explore other ways of being and knowing in this world. She has a master’s in Human Ecology from Lund University in Sweden and has spent time wwoofing and interning at farms in several countries. In 2016 she was a play-worker at Ithaca Children’s Garden summer camp and worked at Ithaca Montessori as a classroom teacher with ages 5 months to 5 years. From 2017-2019 she was a fellow with the Allegheny Mountain Institute in Virginia where she got to spend a lot of time building relationships in the forest she lived in, took an herbalism course and received a Permaculture Design Certificate. Her passions include wildcrafting, herbalism, lacto-fermentation, cooking, foraging and painting Ukrainian Easter eggs. She is battling against the idea of human exceptionalism through becoming place-based here in Ithaca and building relationships in the Hector Forest. Her passions in working with young children are to share with them the wonders of the world we live in through participatory observation and the building of relationships.
Check out Sophia’s how-to videos on the blog!