Insight Garden Program

This past weekend, our reentry team joined participants for one of our monthly restorative nature retreats at Samuel P. Taylor State Park and Point Reyes.

Nopal led us on a guided hike through the redwoods, slow enough to notice the chipmunks, banana slugs, and fungi tucked into the forest floor. From there, a circle reflection at a secluded pebble beach at Tomales Bay. The water, the breeze, the shared space. You know something real is happening.

We closed the day at Olema Campground, setting up camp and gathering around the fire (shoutout to everyone who powered through the wind).

Thank you to Cal Parks staff, Shelagh, Nopal, and the Park Ranger team for sharing their knowledge and presence with our group. And gratitude to California State Coastal Conservancy for supporting these coastal excursions.

Grateful for these moments together. 🌿

Our Reentry Manager recently caught up with Andrez, a program graduate from California Medical Facility. He’s enrolled in school, pursuing entrepreneurial training, and working toward launching his own motor supply business.

You are an inspiration Andrez. Keep going.


We are beyond proud of our Director of Reentry, Jamala, who earned his Master’s degree from USC last week! Between leading our reentry team, showing up every day for people walking the same path he once walked, and all those late nights hitting the books, this degree represents incredible dedication and hard work. A Land Together alum, Jamala has always been a natural leader who inspires everyone around him. Congratulations, Jamala! 🎓🌱



Last month, our Program Manager at Lancaster State Prison, Ivy, had the honor of representing Land Together at the annual UW Nature and Health Symposium in Seattle, a gathering of researchers, community members, and policymakers exploring the connections between human health and the natural world.

Ivy shared Land Together’s history, programs, and the values that ground everything we do. She spoke about the parts of our work that resist measurement: the ways transformation unfolds when nature opens the minds and hearts of people who so rarely get to experience it. She closed with a poem from a former participant, and the response from the room was something none of us will forget.

She came home with new connections, new ideas, and a deeper sense of how many people are working toward the same vision: a world where everyone, no matter where they are, has access to the healing power of nature.

Thank you to the Earth Lab at the University of Washington for creating space for this conversation.

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We’re hiring! 🌱

Land Together is looking for a full-time Northern California Reentry Coordinator.

This role works directly with participants in the 6 months before release and up to a year after: gate pickups, housing and employment navigation, mentorship, and coaching through a critical transition. You’ll also help lead our ecotherapeutic reentry hikes and camping trips, deliver presentations inside Northern CA prisons, and build out our alumni network.

If you’re passionate about reentry, land-based healing, and walking alongside people as they come home, we want to hear from you.

landtogether.org/careers

We’re hiring! Land Together is looking for a Program Associate to support our in-prison programs at Avenal State Prison and Central California Women’s Facility. If you’re based in the Central Valley and passionate about healing, land, and justice — we’d love to hear from you. Part-time, Apply by May 19. https://bit.ly/CVprogramassociate

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🍓 84 strawberries. That’s what our San Quentin program participants harvested on Friday, alongside mint, lemon balm, chard, kale, and broccoli. The flower garden is in full bloom. They topped off the compost, practiced w**d ID with grass and oxalis samples, and got a demo on why spring w**ding matters.

Then the kitchen dropped off pineapple scraps for the compost pile. One participant knew the scraps could be replanted, so we followed his lead, and in 3-5 years San Quentin might have pineapples!

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Three weeks after his release following 31 years in prison, Deshawn stood at the Venice Sand Dunes and said: “This is the first day that I truly feel free.”

That moment came at the end of one of our monthly restorative nature outings — the weekend before last, bringing a group of recently released Land Together community members to Madrona Marsh and the Venice Sand Dunes in Los Angeles. Overcast skies, flowers, ducks, beetles, and black hairy caterpillars. Opening and closing circles led by Participant-Leader Klonie, with breathing, meditation, and reflection. In the closing circle, people shared memories from the day: community, new friendships, jokes, stories, and shared time on the land.

Nature and community are not extras here. They are the work.