Wildheart Women’s Retreat

May 14-17, 2026

Wildheart Women’s Retreat is an invitation to find your path back home to yourself, to be quiet with the beautiful land that encompasses Turtle Island Preserve, and to connect with other women in deeply nourishing ways while in a supportive, caring community setting.

A woman with long wavy brown hair, light skin, and a septum piercing, smiling with her arms crossed, standing against a weathered wooden wall.

Emileigh Zola

Retreat leaders

From an early age, Emileigh Zola has been drawn to communion with the natural world, an exploration of mystery, and earth based teachings.

Right out of high school, she embarked on a journey to India to explore spiritual depths and then moved to Western North Carolina to apprentice at an herbal medicine business. She has called these mountains her home now for nearly 20 years.

She considers herself to be a student of life: always seeking, always learning, always growing.

She has studied various earth based healing modalities over the years (including Wilderness Fusion, where she is in year 4 out of 7), home birthed her two children, now 11 and 15, taught earth crafts to children and adults, facilitated womens retreats and circles, and managed events and businesses. For over a decade she has been making handmade brooms and loves teaching others this craft, as she considers the broom to be both a practical and spiritual tool - and a perfect merging of the spiritual and mundane worlds.

What Emileigh loves most of all is bringing her grounded, loving, and practical approach to life into the realm of spirit. Her heart sings when she has opportunities to circle with other women and hold containers of transformation for them to come home to themselves.

Emileigh is a heart centered, humble guide who loves to be in service to women, the Earth, and the Great Mystery.

You can check out her offerings at www.handmadebrooms.com

A woman sitting on a stone bench outdoors with her arms raised and smiling, surrounded by plants and trees under a blue sky.

Carleigh Fairchild

Carleigh Fairchild (she/her) has a deep love for the Earth. She gardens, keeps bees, wild harvests, processes animals, tans hides, weaves baskets, and finds joy in time spent around the fire.

As the founder of Human Nature Connection LLC, Carleigh feels called to help others remember that we can live in a collaborative and respectful relationship with the Earth. She joined the survival show ALONE to share that message with a wider audience and to explore the depth of her own connection to the land. Over 86 days in the wilds of Patagonia, she relied on her skills, intuition, and connection with the Earth—emerging with a deeper understanding of what it means to truly belong to the natural world.

Carleigh first learned survival and earth skills as a teenager through kids’ camps at the Tracker School, founded by Tom Brown Jr. Over the last 25 years, basket weaving has become one of the skills she’s most deeply developed. It is more than a craft—it’s a practice of connection, a quiet dialogue with the nervous system, and in a chaotic world, a path back to self and stillness.

Living and teaching in Western North Carolina, Carleigh offers both online and in-person classes, often working with families, friends, and community groups. She loves weaving not just materials, but relationships—believing that a basket is never just a basket, but a symbol of creating containers that connect us to ourselves, each other, and the Earth.

Carleigh is also a NIASZIIH bodywork healer and a teacher at WildernessFusion, with a practice based in Asheville, NC, where her work continues to weave together body, earth, and spirit.

You can learn more about her offerings at humannatureconnection.com

What makes it special?

Three people in a forest making heart shapes with their hands.

“There is no place like home...there is no place like home.” Dorothy’s words as she clicked her red sequin heels together and prepared for her journey home. We, at Turtle Island Preserve, believe that home exists within each of us, but sometimes we just lose our way to that familiar place. It’s a difficult path to find when we are burdened with lots of responsibility, scheduling and so much incessant noise from our day to day activities.

Our journey begins together as we leave our vehicles and trappings of the busy world behind us and travel along a tranquil mountain trail through the pristine forest that surrounds us, arriving in our basecamp. Your essential belongings will be transported to your assigned lodging. During this walking meditation, our awareness of ourselves grows as we find our comfortable place in the natural world.

During your stay at Turtle Island Preserve, you will learn new skills: broom making, basketry, medicine making, off-grid cooking & nourishment, and fire making...but it’s not the skills themselves that will leave the biggest impact. It’s what happens inside of you as you begin to listen more deeply to the natural world intimately surrounding you. It’s what you begin to feel in your heart as your physical being slowly remembers what you have been craving. It’s the simultaneous grief and joy you will feel as you listen to your sisters speak your longing and understand your desires.

This retreat is a return to what many of us long for: the unimaginable beauty of the rising sun filtering through a carefully crafted spiderweb, covered in dew. It’s the thrill of feeling totally alive after immersing your body in cold, wild mountain waters. It’s the way we begin to love ourselves again for our courage, for our vulnerability, for our tenderness, because this has not only been a gift for the woman sitting next to you in a sacred circle, but our sharing has allowed all of us to feel for the first time in years...and to rediscover our “Wildhearts”.

Person with tattoos on arm sitting on a chair, weaving straw with a tool in hand, in a sunny indoor setting.
Group of women sitting on mats outdoors, weaving baskets together.
Two women are engaged in a craft activity outdoors, with one woman showing the other a small object, possibly jewelry, while both focus intently on it.

Welcome/Intention ceremony - Morning Watch - Burn Stick Ceremony - Closing Ceremony

  • Broom making

  • Basket making

  • Movement/yoga

  • Bodywork with a partner

  • Herbs/medicinal plants

  • Edible plants

  • Fire making with Bow Drill

  • Cordage

  • Caretaker mind

  • Fox walking & wide-angle vision

  • Dancing

  • Breathing

A woman with long, curly hair, sitting cross-legged on a wooden deck, holding a parasol, overlooking a lush green valley and distant mountains under a partly cloudy blue sky.

Activities could include

details & Registration:

Group of people standing barefoot on grass in a circle around baskets of freshly picked fruits and vegetables, including apples, peppers, raspberries, and cherry tomatoes.

Date/Time: Arrival - Thursday, May 14th 9:30 am. Departure - Sunday May 17th, 2:00 pm.

Available Spaces: limited to 15 adults.

Cost: Sliding scale. $850-$1500 Please pay what you can within this range. Choose the lower end if you are low income, or the maximum fee if your household earns over $115,000 per year. Place yourself within this range based on your income. The medium range only covers our cost of the Retreat.

Cancellations: Registration for this class requires a $400 deposit that is non-refundable. All cancellations made after May 10th are non-refundable. No exceptions!

Balance due must be paid by April 1, 2026, and you MUST contact carolyn@turtleislandpreserve.com to arrange for the final payment as this is a sliding scale.

Includes all meals and camping accommodations or you may elect to stay close by in Boone, NC, however pricing remains the same.

Road Conditions: 8 miles east of Boone, NC - Base camp at Turtle Island Preserve is just

2 miles off the Blue Ridge Parkway - Bamboo Gap Exit

Registration Form
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