ABOUT

Pilgrim Venture exists to explore pilgrimage as both a practice and an orientation toward life. We understand pilgrimage as more than a journey to a defined endpoint. It is a way of moving through the world informed by those who came before us. Ancient pilgrims discovered that pilgrimage itself can be formative, and they left paths and practices that remain open to us. Pilgrim Venture is an invitation to step onto those paths.

“Pilgrimage is…a journey... to find the place of my resurrection.’’

— Esther de Waal, The Celtic Way of Prayer

Pilgrimage has traditionally involved leaving the familiar and entering a period of uncertainty. That remains part of its value. The pilgrim cannot control the journey or know in advance what it will mean. We can only respond to the call and allow the journey to have its way with us. Pilgrimage often disrupts our expectations and opens us to something larger than we could have anticipated. For this reason, we do not approach pilgrimage as a self-improvement project or through the lens of wellness culture. Change may happen through pilgrimage, but it is not something we promise or try to manufacture. The practice itself is the work.

Pilgrimage can take many forms. Long-distance walking is one of them, and an important one. It can also include time in solitude, retreat, wilderness practice, ritual, writing, or the work of bringing a pilgrim orientation into ordinary life. What connects these forms is the willingness to step out of familiar patterns and become more attentive to what is happening.

Pilgrimage is, in a sense, a school of mysticism.

The work of Pilgrim Venture is grounded in four practices.

  • Embodied Journey

    Pilgrimage begins with the body. Walking and other forms of embodied practice place us in direct relationship with time, place, weather, effort, and the physical realities of the journey. The outward journey can become part of the inward one.

  • Time on the Land

    The natural world is not simply a setting for personal experience. It is an alive participant, full of stories and beings waiting to be known. We seek to develop a relationship with particular places and to restore relationship with the more-than-human world of which we are a part.

  • Attentiveness

    We cultivate the ability to notice how the Sacred is calling for our attention. We then learn, slowly, how to respond.

  • Threshold and Trust

    Every pilgrimage involves some form of crossing a threshold and entering the unknown. We step beyond what is familiar and encounter circumstances we cannot fully control. Pilgrimage offers a practice of living with uncertainty and mystery.

Who We Are

Pilgrim Venture is a community of guides, storytellers, and practitioners exploring the practice of pilgrimage together. We seek to recover and reconnect with the practice of pilgrimage for the world we inhabit now.

The work is informed by Christian pilgrimage traditions, contemplative and mystical practice, and ecospirituality that grounds this work in relationship with the more-than-human world. Pilgrim Venture does not require a particular religious identity or theological framework. At the same time, we do not remove pilgrimage from its spiritual roots. The work remains concerned with relationship to the Divine, however that relationship is understood.

We are interested in what happens when pilgrimage moves beyond the road and becomes part of daily life.

The Work

Pilgrim Venture offers walking pilgrimages, retreats, day walks, wilderness vigils, and forms of Companionship. Writing, storytelling, and ritual are key parts of the experiences we offer.

Together, these offerings create different ways to practice the way of the pilgrim. The forms may change, but the underlying invitation remains: to walk, listen, notice, and respond.

The Guides

Nathan Schultz, Founder

Nathan Schultz is someone whose life was changed indelibly by saying yes to the call to walk on the Camino. He is a lifelong pilgrim and wanderer whose background includes spiritual leadership, social work, arts administration, coaching, pastoral care, and nonprofit consulting. He has worked for decades to connect with others as they have crossed their own thresholds.

Nathan describes his first time on pilgrimage as one that left marks: “My first time in pilgrimage on the Camino was a reawakening; after a period of spiritual fallowness, I was met by the Divine all over the path. I experienced intimate blessings from others on the route and found a sense of spiritual community that answered a longing I had forgotten I had. My pilgrimage became a profound act of letting go of the life I had previously lived. I injured a knee, limped through blisters, and walked with tears running down my face as I listened to the call I was receiving in my heart. Pilgrimage offered me a deeply embodied spiritual experience of aloneness, closeness with nature, and time with others and God. It was formative and changed me in ways that continue to move in me. It also left its permanent marks on my feet and knees – remembrances of the ways I was met.”

Nathan trained as a Wild Guide through the Center for Wild Spirituality, with a focus on EcoMinistry, spiritual leadership, and relationship with the natural world. His own practice is rooted in an understanding of the natural world as a place where we may encounter the Divine and the Sacred. He is also an ICF-accredited Coach. Nathan holds a bachelor’s degree in social work, a master’s degree in public administration, and a certificate in applied mythology. He has trained in rites of passage and spent time in vision quest. He continues to be formed by the Christian mystics and by his study of spiritual direction, mythology, and ecospirituality. When not on pilgrimage, Nathan is the Co-Director of the Bushwackers Drum & Bugle Corps.

Ashley Lewis

Ashley is a spiritual care practitioner and ordained Wild Guide from Durham, North Carolina. Her solo-preneurial project, Doom Doula, offers eco-spiritual guidance for those struggling with climate anxiety and doomism, on-land and online. She is also a Travel Advisor who helps travelers discover the spiritual significance of seeing the world.

Her first career was in hospitality management and conference sales, and she now applies this industry knowledge to skillfully coordinate group travel. Hospitality as a value is deeply embedded, and she finds it is a powerful throughline across diverse life and vocational experiences.  

She planned and led her first group on the Camino in Spring 2025, while working for a seminary grant project, and (after resting a bit) she was hooked. From there, the Holy Wild persistently called her outside – in both the physical and spiritual sense – until she eventually left traditional church and academic institutions for professional eco-spiritual practice. 

She is certified and ordained by the Center for Wild Spirituality. She is also on the Council of Stewards at Farm Church, an outdoor worshipping community that grows food and gives it away. Ashley’s companionship approach involves journeying with fear, building capacity for discomfort, and healing relationships with self, earth, fellow beings, and the divine to grow eco-spiritual resilience for these uncertain times. 

Whether on the Camino or the urban forest trails of North Carolina, walking is her daily spiritual practice, opening up sacred connections with the ancients, the guides and ancestors, and the more-than-human ones. She shares a home with her childhood sweetheart, Ryan, and their cat companions, Tes and West. She is known to lead walking songs and looks forward to singing them on an upcoming Pilgrim Venture with you!

Ethan Teed

Ethan is a Wild Guide with the Center for Wild Spirituality, an EcoSpiritual Director, Wild Church Facilitator, and Celtic Mystic accompanying others on the path to remembering our interconnection with the Sacred Wild. He is also a Men's Work Facilitator, sharing the journey of remembering what it means to embody the generative, divine masculine.

A lifelong lover of story and myth, Ethan holds a deep fidelity to the sacred truths found in archetypes and mythology and to the timeless wisdom carried by our collective ancestors. He is also, as he might put it, a bit of a storyteller himself.

Ethan and his wife, Karyn, are blessed to tend the lands at Anam Cara Fields, a hobby farm and spiritual retreat center in Bellingham, Washington, on the lands of the Coast Salish Peoples.