Author, speaker, wilderness guide, and musician

Douglas Wood engages every audience on an entertaining and inspiring journey. Knowing that being “inspired” can be short-lived and will soon leave us feeling “expired” once more, Doug connects with warmth, humor, and substance. He empowers any group, leading them to their own insights and inspiration through the human connection to the natural world. With his songs and stories, Doug entertains and educates, his ability to lift the human spirit making a large hall feel like an intimate campfire. He leaves an audience laughing, misty- eyed, uplifted, and feeling just a little more confident in their own lives.

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Douglas Wood has touched audiences of all ages across the country with his story of going from the “worst reader in the class”, a painfully shy kid who suffered from ADHD and dyslexia, to a best-selling author and speaker. Doug is the creator of thirty-six books for children and adults, with over two and a half million copies in print. He is published by Simon and Schuster, Dutton, Candlewick, Scholastic, and University of Minnesota Press. Best-sellers “Old Turtle” and “Grandad’s Prayers of the Earth” are recognized as timeless classics. As a wilderness guide he has led scores of trips for the National Wildlife Federation, Science Museum of Minnesota, The Smithsonian Institute and countless others. His books and music are grounded in his background as an environmental educator, and emphasize the timeless bond between nature and the human heart. Doug brings unmatched warmth and empathy to all of his personal appearances, along with a lively sense of humor and knack for spontaneously connecting with any audience. As a musician he performs on 6 and 12-string guitar, banjo, and mandolin, often with his Wild Spirit Band.

A program by Douglas Wood leaves an audience restored and energized, feeling just a little bit closer to their own heart and to the natural world around them.

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Every Stone a Teacher… Every Breeze a Language

A keynote for audiences of all types and ages, highlighting Doug’s music and story-telling, with everything tied in to an abiding love for the earth. From a Native American legend of how mosquitoes came to be, or how a rabbit reached the moon, to songs about Spaceship Earth, Someday Isle, and being careful about what you step on, to the quiet pondering of our place in the universe, this program takes an audience on a gentle journey. Along the way Doug “transports his listeners back into the fabric of Nature” and “reminds us of our unity with all of life”. Des Moines Register; Joseph Cornel, author of Sharing Nature with Children

Nature is filled with teachers and teachings, for those who know how to listen and look. There are clues on how to live a “human” life, in harmony with our deeper selves and our environment. Each of us can explore the meanings that are there; within the sunrise, the stream, the flower, the rocks and woods of everyday life.

And what is each of us but a universe in miniature…with lakes and forests,  stars and planets undreamed of, and unexplored.” —Douglas Wood

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Walking in Old Turtle’s World

The simple yet profound spirituality of this wise old being has entranced millions of readers. Join Doug and Old Turtle in a guided journey through a world in which “every lake is a mirror and every tree a ladder to the stars.” It is a world in which the sacred can be found in every one of us and in the world around us, in which we see ourselves in one another’s faces.  In Old Turtle’s world, there is no place and no one who does not matter, who is not important. 

For, of course, it is not only Old Turtle’s world, it is ours as well.

And the people began to see God in one another…  and in the beauty of all the Earth” —from Old Turtle

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The Wilderness Within…

Our Psychological-Spiritual Relationship with the Natural World

St. Bernard de Clairvaux once said, “You will find something greater in woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you what masters never knew.” And Longfellow wrote, “All things are symbols; the external shows of nature have their image in the mind.”There is an inseparable bond between external and internal landscapes, each one reflecting and illuminating the other. There is truly a wildness within.

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All One Trip

Much of Douglas Wood’s life has been about trips: wilderness expeditions, river journeys and canoe trips, motorcycle trips, book tours. But the essential idea for any traveler is that in spite of beginnings and endings, hellos and good-byes, it is all one trip. How we travel is who we are. And we are all traveling together.