Qwalen Berntsen

Qwalen Berntsen grew up in New Hampshire, with a passion for spending time in the wilderness, tracking wildlife, hand collecting maple sap and making maple syrup over a wood fire, and growing a connection with his community and natural surroundings.

Between 2009 and 2013 he was a co-leader on several month-long wilderness packing expeditions, hosting families, adults and youth. During this time, he focused on wildcrafting food, leather making, clothes and shoe making, and meeting the needs of the group from their immediate surroundings - finding sustainability in the wilderness.

In 2013 he attended the Twin Eagles Wilderness apprenticeship program, doing a 16-month intensive on group facilitation in a natural setting, using ancestral skills to foster awareness, compassion, and resiliency for groups and individuals.

Qwalen is a carrier of the Eight Shields model, which was developed by John Young and has been in use for over forty years. Eight Shields refers to an eight-direction cultural mapping system which holds the cycles of the day, the seasons, and life as its foundation - pillars of many earth-based cultures all around the world. These maps can be used to guide us in understanding the patterns, cycles, and energies of the natural world, how they are expressed through us as human beings, and how they teach us to be in right relationship with all of life.

In Eight Shields the honoring of lineages is a cultural healing tool within the teachings – with a clear intention for the healing of all, human and non-human. The core teachings of the Eight Shields model come from nature as the foundation and include distillations from earth-based cultures and specific lineages from around the globe. A central method is to share principles rather than practices, and support people to develop their own appropriate practices for themselves, attuned to their own unique culture, landscape, and time, rather than appropriating another tradition’s practices.

Since 2001 Qwalen has worked part-time as a carpenter and electrician to help support his dream of having a self-sufficient homestead, growing and raising food for the people that live there.

Qwalen has worked with prescribed fire since 2010. As of 2023 he was helping to form a local Prescribed Burn Association and a member of the local VFD, Search and Rescue, and the WRTC Fire Management Program. He applies his land-based knowledge to understanding the effects of both prescribed fire and wildfire on local ecosystems, native plants, wildlife, and human communities. His love for seeing and understanding the relationships of all things in an ecosystem remains an ongoing exploration and passion at his home in Hyampom, CA.