The Wild Cypress

About

Our Story starts with a tree.

How The Wild Cypress began, who guides it, and the land it grows from.

How It Began

A practice built on belonging.

The Wild Cypress started with a simple observation: Deaf and disabled people are rarely the ones invited into the woods, and when they are, the invitation usually stops at the trailhead.

A practice built on belonging.

The Wild Cypress started with a simple observation: Deaf and disabled people are rarely the ones invited into the woods, and when they are, the invitation usually stops at the trailhead.

It began in 2014 as The Giving Cypress, a media company making visual learning accessible to sign language users. Like the tree in the children’s story “The Giving Tree”, it gave and gave until there was little left. Years of screens led to burnout, and Summer followed a quiet call back to the forest. In 2020, they became a certified Nature and Forest Therapy guide, and the work changed shape.

Then came rewilding: the idea that returning to our wild selves, inside and out, is an act of healing as much as conservation. So The Wild Cypress stepped out from the mother tree to find its own roots. It traveled the country by bus, reached out to diverse communities, trained Deaf/signing guides, and came home to North Florida, where Summer’s parents wrote a song about keeping America wild.

“Oh, sing to be wild and free…”

The Giving Cypress continues as an independent nonprofit, The Giving Cypress Foundation (opens in a new tab), which supports scholarships and access.

The Name

Where the name came from.

The bald cypress stands in water and holds its ground through storms. It grows in company, in domes and cypress “knees”, rather than alone. And it is quiet. It does its work without a sound.

“Wild” is the promise: to rewild both land and self.

What Guides Us

Mission and vision.

Mission

The Wild Cypress guides people back into relationship with the land, with each other, and with themselves. Through retreats, education, and training, we use silence, sign, play, and presence as tools for connection, wherever we are invited. Some come to rest in silence. Others come to heal in their own language. Every path is grounded in access, belonging, and care for the wild places that hold us.

Vision

We envision a world where silence is understood as a language, where nature is open to every body and every way of communicating, and where the gifts of Deaf experience help all of us listen more deeply.

How we see it

Deaf Gain.

A hand-drawn illustration of black-eyed Susans, a coneflower and wild grasses at either edge of a pale page, with a small butterfly fluttering between them.

We work from Deaf Gain: the understanding that being Deaf is not a loss of hearing but a gain, in visual attention, in presence, and in language beyond sound. Those gifts shape everything we offer, from how a silent walk is held to how a guide reads a group without a word.

Deaf Gain is a framework from Deaf Studies scholars H-Dirksen Bauman and Joseph J. Murray. Summer is a contributing author to their book, Deaf Gain: Raising the Stakes for Human Diversity (University of Minnesota Press, 2014).

Core Values

Five things we hold to.

  • Silence

    Silence is not an absence. It is a language. We teach it, hold it, and protect it.

  • Accessibility

    Sign language first, never an add-on. Access is designed into everything we offer before the first person arrives.

  • Belonging

    Belong in nature. Our spaces center Deaf, disabled, and signing people, and welcome anyone willing to learn alongside them.

  • Reciprocity

    The land gives, and we give back: tending the meadow, supporting Indigenous-led work, and leaving each place better than we found it.

  • Rewilding

    Both land and self. We restore what was paved over, inside and out, and we do it through play. Healing doesn’t have to be heavy: curiosity, gesture, and wonder keep the work light enough to carry.

Indigenous Solidarity

Wherever we gather, we are on Indigenous land. We honor the peoples who have long stewarded these lands and waters, and we name them wherever we guide.

Colonization is ongoing; many lands remain occupied by those with enduring ancestral ties. With gratitude to the ancestors who nurtured these ecosystems, we commit to listen, learn, and act with care. Guided by Indigenous wisdom and our earth-honoring ancestors, we see plants, animals, waters, and humans as relatives with unique roles.

Knowing humans can behave as an invasive species, our aim is not to control or erase, but to co-create with the land: asking permission, tending, and giving back. This acknowledgment is one small part of solidarity. We pledge gentle, reciprocal practices, and to protect and honor the land’s peoples, histories, and futures.

In practice, that means volunteering each summer with Indigenous Ways (opens in a new tab) and holding a paid membership in Turtle Island Hand Talk (opens in a new tab), a national Indigenous Deaf organization.

May the stars carry your sadness away, may the flowers fill your heart with beauty, and may hope forever wipe away your tears. And, above all, may silence make you strong.
Chief Dan George, chief of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation