PBS
History Through Deaf Eyes
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Link coming soon
Who Guides It
The person behind the practice.
Summer Crider is a cultural studies educator, certified Forest and Nature Therapy guide, and founder of The Wild Cypress, dedicated to creating inclusive, healing experiences for Deaf, Disabled, and marginalized communities. With a background in Expressive Arts Therapy, Educational Media, and Cultural Studies, Summer combines academic depth with entrepreneurial creativity as a self-taught business owner, filmmaker, and media consultant.
Raised in the cypress swamps by a family rooted in environmental conservation, Summer developed a deep relationship with silence and nonverbal communication. Their work invites people from all walks of life to reconnect with nature, each other, and themselves, expressing the unspoken and healing through wonder, sensory awareness, and connection.
- MA
- ANFT Trainer
- WFR Certified
- DEI Certified
Press & Features
Where the work has been seen.
Seek The World
Deaf Travel Series
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Link coming soon
Success Wisdom
Book Feature
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Link coming soon
All Humans Outside
Book Feature
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Link coming soon
Travelability
Accessible Travel Feature
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Link coming soon
The Gainesville Sun
Local Coverage
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Link coming soon
Partners
- ANFT
- Alachua Conservation Trust
- Florida Springs Alliance
- Grow Hub
- Aspen Camp for the Deaf
Consulting & Speaking
Bring the work to your people.
Summer works with schools, organizations, and universities on what access in the outdoors actually asks of them, in lectures, workshops, and longer engagements.
Engagements range from a single talk to a semester-long partnership. Most are booked ahead and can happen on your ground, on ours at Wildflowers Meadows, or online.
Send an InquiryDeep Listening facilitation
Deep Listening for teams.
We help teams and organizations hold hard conversations across differences: Deaf and hearing colleagues, meetings that run through an interpreter, and differences of culture and sense. Summer brings the deep listening practice in silence into the room, so everyone is heard before anything is decided, and people leave softened rather than defensive.
Topics
What we come to talk about.
Access & belonging
Who the outdoors has historically been built for, who it hasn’t, and how to change that in practice.
Deaf culture & ASL integration
What changes when ASL is the working language instead of the accommodation.
Silence & non-verbal communication
How people connect when nobody is talking, and how to teach it.
Inclusive retreat & program design
Designing access in from the start, so a program works for everyone who signs up.
Fees
What it costs to bring us in.
Interpreting and other access services are arranged with you and billed at cost. Sliding-scale rates are available for Deaf-led and grassroots organizations.
- Speaking engagement
- from $1,500 in person, plus travel · from $750 virtual (up to 2 hrs)
- Workshop or training day
- from $1,500 half day · from $2,500 full day
- Deep Listening facilitation
- from $1,500 per session
- Ongoing consulting
- scoped and quoted per project
Trusted by
- Gallaudet University
- Association of Nature and Forest Therapy
- National Deaf Center on Postsecondary Outcomes
- Georgetown University
- World Federation of the Deaf
- Aspen Camp for the Deaf
Selected credentials
- MA, Deaf Studies (Gallaudet University)
- BA, Psychology & Expressive Arts (Gallaudet University)
- ANFT Certified Guide and Trainer
- DEI Outdoors Certificate
- Contributing author, Deaf Gain (University of Minnesota Press)
Inquiries