Amber Van Cleave

Amber grew up in the forest in Southern Oregon, where she developed a strong relationship with the natural world. She identifies primarily as a collaborative experiential artist. She is trained and has years of experience as a Waldorf teacher, and she volunteered and worked in youth outdoor education programs for a total of 6 years. She sat intentionally in rituals with Dagara teacher Sobonfu Somé to learn the art of community ritual. She studied Plant Spirit Medicine with Eliot Cowan. She danced for years and found mentorship through Coalessence Ecstatic Dance in Eugene, Oregon, and has been facilitating a monthly Ecstatic-style dance in Paonia since 2023. She has attended and led songs at many song circles stemming from the Singing Alive movement, and she gathers people to sing to the river in Paonia on Mondays at 10 AM. She founded and led a Red Tent Temple-inspired women’s new moon circle monthly for years, culminating in a Red Tent House, where many creative Village-building events took shape: some for women and some for everyone. She helped organize and lead both young men’s and young women’s initiations, coming of age education and peer mentorship circles for girls, ancestral skill sharing events, seasonal theater and seasonal community ceremonies, dream sharing and active dreaming circles, individual and small group rituals (including a wedding), community grief rituals, and conflict resolution rituals. She has created and led a variety of women’s retreats. She holds two Bachelor of Arts degrees, one in creative writing with a minor in French; the other in environmental studies. She traveled abroad for a semester in Paris, and she participated in the Tahoe-Baikal Institute’s summer environmental exchange program, spending five weeks each at Lake Baikal in Siberia and Lake Tahoe in California. She acted as chef and organized camp chores for the American side of the program for several summers after that. She studied the equivalent of four years of college level Russian language. She is an avid gardener and loves gathering community together for meaningful experiences of connection to the land. She is most drawn to growing three sisters - Corn, Beans and Squash - as a sacred, relational garden. This is her third season working alongside Sarsa with the Mariposa Ascendente garden project.